tips backlog - draft analysis

Discussion in 'SolidWorks' started by Edward T Eaton, Jul 18, 2003.

  1. I've been driving SW a lot the last two months, and have recently picked up
    a couple of simple tips that might help a person or two out there in
    cyberworld. Instead of sitting on the tips, I thought I'd spit one out
    every day or so until I run out/get busy again. Please don't haze me if
    they seem obvious - I've got thousands and thousands of hours on the
    software, and the tips were new to me (little things I've missed or only
    just recently figured out), so I figure they might help someone else too.

    Tip for today:

    Draft analysis on molded parts is so important, its worth a hot key.

    When doing draft analysis on a ribbed part with lots of faces, it can be
    really hard to be sure you caught everything; one tiny little yellow,
    undrafted face in a sea of green is easy to miss, especially if you have
    HLR-edges-when-shaded on.

    What I've learned to do is to turn the SW background to white, and the
    positive draft color to white. With HLR-edges-when-shaded off, I know that
    the part is completely drafted when it disappears against the background!
    This makes it almost impossible to accidentally miss a tiny, little,
    undrafted face. Saved my butt a couple of times already.

    Cheers!
    Ed
     
    Edward T Eaton, Jul 18, 2003
    #1
  2. Thanks Ed,

    Nice tip - reminds me of how the SWX 'Compare' utility displays when one sets
    it to show only the differences. The differences show themselves as features
    flying around on an otherwise empty screen - impossible to miss!
    Keep the tips coming.

    Sincerely,
    Jerry Forcier
     
    Jerry Forcier, Jul 18, 2003
    #2
  3. Edward T Eaton

    Ray Reynolds Guest

    I've been driving SW a lot the last two months, and have recently picked
    up
    Keep these Tips flowing Ed. Nice one!
     
    Ray Reynolds, Jul 18, 2003
    #3
  4. Edward T Eaton

    pete Guest

    Thank you!
    Just what the cad doctor ordered (well what I asked for a while back!), I'm
    very new to Solidworks and any help is greatly appreciated. :)
     
    pete, Jul 18, 2003
    #4
  5. Edward T Eaton

    matt Guest

    But wait, there's more!!

    If you use the "Face classification" switch, the number of faces for each
    classification is shown in a little box, and you don't have to play trix
    with the colors because you can hit the lightbulb and turn off the faces
    for any classification.

    Way ccol.

    Plus, for guys with faulty memories like me, with the face classification
    turned on, when you hit the green check to exit, it gives you the option to
    save the face colors. Now that's cool. The only problem is that it would
    take you a week of RMBing to set all the face colors back to the model
    color, so I hook up a macro someone else wrote to a hotkey and it just
    happens!

    Draft analysis is definitely one of my favorite functions in SW.


    matt
     
    matt, Jul 19, 2003
    #5
  6. I was just showing this to one of the guys in the office, and we hit the X
    to exit the dialog, and the face colors got changed anyway. An ugly bug if
    you don't have a macro handy to remove those colors. I have not been able
    to reproduce - anyone else run into this problem?
     
    Edward T Eaton, Jul 21, 2003
    #6
  7. Edward T Eaton

    Lyle Fischer Guest

    Ed,

    Have you ever looked at FaceWorks? FaceWorks has its own draft analysis
    which not only stores the positive, negative, and zero draft surfaces in a
    seperate folder, it also will find undercuts and gives you an option to
    split them automatically. Everything is in a folder - there is now way to
    miss anything.

    Lyle
     
    Lyle Fischer, Jul 21, 2003
    #7
  8. Edward T Eaton

    Andrew Troup Guest

    Jerry and others

    With multibodies, comparing bodies (parts, at least) has become very easy
    for those who don't own SldWks Office, but there's one catch (there may be
    others, but I haven't found them yet)

    When I want to compare an old version with a newer version of a part, I
    simply "Insert/Part" and subtract one from the other. The differences show
    themselves as you describe ....... BUT

    What is not obvious is that subtraction of bodies doesn't work quite the
    same was as arithmetical subtraction:
    if you subtract a number from another, there is always a non-zero answer
    unless they are identical
    when you subtract a larger body from a smaller in SldWks, there is no
    remainder, 'cos negative volume (anti-matter) is considered not to exist.

    So you have to do the subtraction both ways around to be sure.
     
    Andrew Troup, Jul 22, 2003
    #8
  9. Edward T Eaton

    GNB Guest

    Hi Edward,

    You should look at SplitWorks, which also saves the different faces in
    different folders, and also has an automatic display of ALL open and
    closed parting lines - which allows you to recognize the undercuts
    immediately even if they are very small. This is very useful
    especially when you have real size parts and a small undercut face is
    stuck in the core or cavity side and the classification in different
    folders doesn't help.
     
    GNB, Jul 27, 2003
    #9
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