SolidWorks Motion – Trace path and convert to SolidWorks Curve, a hidden gem.

The other week I took my daughter to the science museum, my favorite educational distraction.  While we were exploring the exhibits we came across a pendulum drawing machine (Harmonograph) that makes cool pictures.  We whipped out a few before moving onto the Bernouli Ball (I’ll have to get back to that as that’s something SolidWorks Flow Simulation can do).  Here’s a picture just like the drawings we made now hanging on my refrigerator.

The next week I was discussing SolidWorks motion with a prospect and how it allows you to simulate complex motions and the Harmonograph came into my head (can you imagine a more complex motion than the above image?).  So I made a first example, really simple, two pendulums, probably took all of 5 mins to create.

In motion I added gravity and clicked run, although I left out the details that connect the pendulums to the drawing pen I was able to see the drawing was working by tracing a point on one pendulum with respect to the other pendulum.  See how the curve moves with the pendulum on the left while tracing the path of the pendulum on the right.

After determining the system was working as expected (crawl, walk, run) I added a simple drawing mechanism.  To reduce the modeling effort I replaced the wires linking the pendulum to the drawing mechanism with 2 simple equations.  Now the system was quite recognizable, even to my 3 year old.

From there I had to try another version of the drawing machine I’ve seen with rotation (loved my spiralgraph so much I wore the teeth off). 

Of course there’s a point beyond Motion’s ability to simulate these really cool drawing machines.  I’ve created a few cams over the years using this functionality.  Basically what we do is simulate the desired linear motion, then trace that with respect to some rotating object and SolidWorks motion with automatically draw out the required cam for your system.  From there you can make that trace become a curve in SolidWorks, simply extrude, rinse and repeat.  So if you’ve ever needed a complex path created by the motion of objects in your design SolidWorks Motion is the tool for you.

Tim Newton

Symmetry Solutions Inc

In 2013 SolidWorks you can now automatically deploy an admin image from the option editor. There is now a link to do this in the editor and you can set this to deploy to any or all machines on the same MS Active Directory Domain.

In this image you can see that I have added machines on the domain and selected them to deploy. You also have options of when to do the install Now or at a specific time later.

Then in the client options you can set it to either install or uninstall and if it is to uninstall is it going to be a custom one. This will give you more options of what to remove from the machine during the uninstall like registry settings or data folders. You can also select to have the computer automatically reboot after the install/uninstall is complete.

Additionally there is a place to add the admin log in so the installs are performed using this. Once you have this all set to run you then get a status feed back on the install so you can see if any of them fail. This is also a silent deployment method so there is no indication on the client machine this is happening like in a manual admin image deployment.

This and more will be covered in an upcoming webinar about installing SolidWorks 2013.

One of the great new enhancements that we have seen with the release of SolidWorks 2013 is the ability to utilize Luxology custom appearances for rendering within PhotoView 360.  SolidWorks recently has updated the customer portal with the links you will need in order to access the Luxology appearance assets to start downloading and using these fantastic appearances for you SolidWorks renders.

The Luxology appearance assets are located on the Luxology website (Luxology is the partnering company that has created the software for the PhotoView 360 add-in), but don’t be fooled and try to create an account with Luxology, you will not be able to download any of the assets from their site if you do so (unless you have a license of Modo).  Further more if you have already created an account for the Luxology website, make sure you are logged out before accessing it through the SolidWorks customer portal.

Login into the customer portal through www.solidworks.com, you will see a login link on the upper right hand side.  Once you have logged in, click the customer portal link to access the main page of the customer portal, here you will see a new link that is added for PhotoView 360 appearances.

This link will bring you to another page with another link to get you to the SolidWorks Asset Sharing:

This will bring you to another page with one more link:

Finally you are on the Luxology assets page; from here you can look through their library and download appearances  for all of your rendering needs!  Keep in mind that some of these appearances will actually render off of the surface of your model, giving a much more realistic final render than what we saw with previous appearances in Photoview 360.  There is an example at the end of this blog that has ‘Chipped Paint’ as an appearance which gives an extra 3D feel.

So now that you are logged into the assets site for Luxology, how do you start downloading and using these appearances for your rendering?  One method is to download and unzip directly to the default location for SolidWorks <Installation Drive>/Program Files/SolidWorks Corp (2013)/SolidWorks/data/graphics/Materials.

Or create a specific location for your Luxology appearances to separate these appearances from the standard appearances that came from the installation.   I created a Luxology folder in my working drive, with sub folders similar to the default folders in SolidWorks.  Either way works just fine!

Be sure to add the folder location to the SolidWorks system options if you do it the second way.  Tools>Options>Folder Locations>Custom – Appearances

Now you are set to start applying these appearances to your part/assembly for rendering.  If you start applying appearances and it doesn’t look anything like what you thought, don’t worry!  The Luxology assets for PhotoView 360 are generally only visible in the preview and final render windows.  When I went to create a Christmas Snow Globe the view from the SolidWorks window is far from what PhotoView 360 will see:

But when you create the final render, you get amazing appearances!

If you’re working in a folder in your EPDM vault frequently, wouldn’t it be handy to have a shortcut directly to the folder?   It’s almost as easy as creating a shortcut to any Windows folder but keep in mind you can’t browse to a vault folder during the shortcut creation so but below is and easy way to copy the path.  Just one thing to keep in mind – if you use the EPDM login, you will be prompted to log into the vault as soon as you open Windows if you add one of these shortcuts.

(1)    Locate the file or folder in your local view and select it so it is highlighted.these shortcuts.

(2)    Hold the SHIFT key, then RMB (right mouse button)

(3)    From the menu select Copy as path.

(4)    Browse to the desktop or other location where you want the shortcut to reside and  RMB > New > Shortcut

(5)    Paste the path from the clipboard in the text box and complete the shortcut wizard dialog.

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