Join us as Mike Walloch, a Certified SOLIDWORKS Expert and Instructor, leads us through the process of creating a part from start to finish. Starting from a blank slate we’ll cover sketching 2D profiles, extruding 3D solid bodies, and creating cut-and-hole features. We’ll also look at some other useful and time-saving features like mirrors and shells.

But wait, there’s more! Mike will show you various tips and tricks along the way. Taking advantage of SOLIDWORKS extremely user-friendly interface you’ll see how to reduce picks and clicks, minimize mouse travel, and make your work seem almost effortless. This webinar will give you a good idea of what to expect from the part modeling lessons in the SOLIDWORKS Essentials class.

During this SOLIDWORKS Training webinar, you will learn:

• Creating 2D Sketches
• Extruding 3D Features
• Using the Hole Wizard
• Modifying Solid Bodies
• Tips and Tricks

Join us as TriMech Solutions Consultant, Applications, Tony Bucchino takes you through the ins and outs of surfacing in the software. Starting with a simple task of taking surfaces and turning them into solid parts, while comparing a couple of different approaches. Next, we will show how to fix common issues when importing legacy data with bad geometry. Finally, we will take a look at general tips and shortcuts when creating models using the surfacing tools.

During this SOLIDWORKS Surfacing video, you will learn:

• Different approaches in taking surfaces and turning them into a solid part
• How to fix common issues when importing legacy data with bad geometry
• General tips to speed up your surfacing creations

The Artec Space Spider II is perfect for capturing small objects or intricate details of large industrial objects in high resolution, with steadfast accuracy and brilliant color.

The scanner’s ability to render complex geometry, sharp edges and thin ribs sets the technology apart. It is an ideal industrial 3D scanner for high resolution capturing of objects such as molding parts, PCBs, keys, coins or even a human ear, followed by the export of the final 3D model to CAD software.

With this latest acquisition, the TriMech Group continues to deliver on its plan to expand and diversify its service offerings and build the best-in-class solution partner to the global advanced design, engineering, and manufacturing sectors.

Chip Hogge, Chief Strategy Officer for the TriMech Group, and President of TriMech’s Advanced Manufacturing business, said that adding MAKO’s expertise sets the stage for TriMech to offer enhanced, comprehensive product development support for clients of all sizes.

“Over its 20-year history, MAKO’s award-winning team has perfected their product development process, which creates high-caliber products to be sold in North American and international markets. Their expertise will form a solid foundation for a new product development line of business for the TriMech Group.”

Support throughout the product design and development lifecycle

MAKO’s unique platform supports inventors, designers, manufacturers and e-commerce brands through planning, strategy development, designing, prototyping, manufacturing, and scaling to production volume, all to efficiently transform a concept into a fully functional, market-ready product.

At the heart of this process is MAKO’s talented team of industrial designers and mechanical and electrical engineers. TriMech’s Project Engineering Group (PEG) provides additional design capabilities and capacity in the key engineering stages of the product development lifecycle. And TriMech’s global teams of advanced simulation specialists can support additional simulation and analysis needs clients have during those stages.

Hogge explained that the TriMech Group is focused on steadily expanding the depth of its expertise in critical service areas to meet evolving client needs.

“Clients in all industry verticals are seeking professional, reliable services and support. We stand out because we offer much more than software and hardware. We can serve as that single technology and business partner who can help clients accelerate their product development lifecycles while improving quality and reducing risk.”

Meeting needs in prototyping and manufacturing

The MAKO team’s experience across the product development lifecycle can also bring new manufacturing connections and projects to the TriMech Group, already well known for its 3D printer sales and services, as well as its expertise in other advanced manufacturing methods, from traditional to emerging.

“Collaboration across production stages will really benefit clients,” Hogge said. “With advanced prototyping and short-run manufacturing capabilities in house, our Advanced Manufacturing Services business in North America and 3DPRINTUK in the UK are perfectly positioned to step in. Access to their knowledge will move client projects efficiently through creating physical models and finished parts.”

Opportunities for MAKO’s team and clients

MAKO’s founder, Kevin Mako, will remain in the business to provide leadership in the TriMech Group’s expanded product development services team.

“My team and I will continue to serve clients the way we always have – with personal, customized service that gets their product to the finish line quickly, efficiently and at a world-class standard,” he said. “At the same time, we are extremely excited to collaborate with one of our favorites in the industry – the TriMech Group. Tapping into their team of design-for-manufacturing experts, prototyping and manufacturing facilities, and advanced software will help us ensure the best solutions for our clients.”

For more information, visit trimechgroup.com and makodesign.com.

About the TriMech Group

The TriMech Group of companies is a collection of established brands operating in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Ireland, and Europe’s Nordic regions. Its global team includes hundreds of engineers who excel in areas including design, collaboration, simulation, analysis, process and workflow optimization, product data management, lifecycle management, manufacturing, and production floor solutions.

As a leading technology and business solutions partner for designers, engineers, and manufacturers, the TriMech Group works with top software and hardware partners, including Dassault Systèmes, SOLIDWORKS, Stratasys, Artec, and Zeiss, and its experts provide design and engineering software, advanced manufacturing solutions, and associated training, consulting, implementation, and staffing services for clients across a variety of industries.

The TriMech Group has more than 50 locations serving more than 30,000 clients with over 750 employees. It is part of the portfolio of Sentinel Capital Partners, a U.S. private equity firm.

For more information, visit trimechgroup.com.

About MAKO Design + Invent

MAKO Design + Invent has been setting the standard for best practices in product development for more than 20 years.

Its North American team, located in Austin, Toronto, Miami, and San Francisco, provides world-class product development services tailored to inventors, startups, and manufacturers. Known as an award-winning, one-stop-shop for taking an idea to a physical product, MAKO has in-house industrial designers and mechanical and electrical engineers, and helps with all aspects of product development, from initial market research and patent referral, to manufacturing, distribution, brand launch, and marketing. As owners of “The Product Startup Podcast,” MAKO has surpassed 200,000 followers across their social media channels.

For more information, visit makodesign.com.

Instead of focusing on your next steps in designing your product, your brain gets busy hunting for icons or browsing the FeatureManager tree. By the time you found the icon and completed the feature, you lost track of what is the next step in the design process. It’s no wonder that at the end of the day you feel tired.

In this SOLIDWORKS productivity on-demand webinar you will learn:

• The most efficient workflow for working in the SOLIDWORKS graphics area.
• How to reduce the amount of work carried out in areas outside of the graphics area such as the FeatureManager Tree, the static toolbars or the Command Manager.
• How to reduce your mouse movement by more than 75%, but, more importantly, your eyes will stay focused on the model, allowing you to concentrate on design and stay in the flow. When the mouse cursor moves on the screen, your eyes are following it, creating micro-distractions.

• The 3DEXPERIENCE Virtual Twin solution from Dassault enables engineers to plan, evaluate, and optimize manufacturing operations without interrupting current production.
• The Plant Layout role facilitates the planning of future states within a plant by visualizing point clouds, existing layouts, and all sources of CAD data in a common, easy-to-navigate environment.
• The Factory Simulation role gives engineers a way to quantify the differences between competing design concepts through data-driven simulations of operations including cycle times, schedules, downtimes, and product variation.
• All of these roles and many more from Dassault are available in the collaborative environment known as the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. This single source of data means everyone on the team always has the latest data to make accurate, timely decisions.

The company is based in Waterloo, Ontario and was founded in 1988. It was known as Systematix until 2021, when Samuel, Son & Co acquired Systematix, and the Samuel Automation Solutions Group was formed.

We talked to two members of its multidisciplinary engineering team, Admir Mujanovic and Jim Peltier, who explained that as custom machine builders, every day is different. Customers present a product design and rely on Samuel Automation to automate the mass production process.

“Creating one-off custom equipment can be challenging,” Jim said. “We know the goal and we know what’s needed to get there. And there’s no stopping us.”

Matching the industry standard

Admir Mujanovic – Systematix Engineer

Samuel Automation chooses SOLIDWORKS, sold and supported by their technology partner Javelin, part of TriMech Group.

Jim said SOLIDWORKS allows their designers to get ideas out of their heads and into the minds of their colleagues who build the tools and machinery.

“It’s our design platform, but also our communication tool. It’s the language we use to communicate ideas. That also applies externally when we communicate with suppliers and customers.”

Samuel Automation started their switch to SOLIDWORKS in 2017. Admir explained that one reason for changing from Autodesk Inventor to SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD software was to better match the skills of the available talent pool of designers and engineers, both recent graduates and established professionals.

“SOLIDWORKS is the industry standard. We’re keeping up to date and have been upgrading over the years.”

In switching to SOLIDWORKS, the team’s engineers were also hoping to avoid costly rework.

“With the SOLIDWORKS parametric approach to modeling, I know for a fact that no one here is talking about misaligned holes anymore,” Admir said.

Unlocking the potential of SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional

A recent upgrade took Samuel Automation from SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard to SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional. Professional takes storing and managing data to the next level, with advanced workflow automation and the SOLIDWORKS PDM Application Programming Interface (API).

Jim completed the Using SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional training course with Javelin to gain the confidence to maximize the capabilities of the tool. He shared how he leveraged its high-end functionality – with tech support from Javelin – to create a macro that updates the geometry of an assembly in just two clicks.

“This means that if someone on the shop floor opens an assembly file, they see the most up-to-date version. Without this macro, they would see the assembly’s geometry as it was last saved. This is custom functionality that Javelin helped us develop.”

Automating documentation

API is used to automate redundant and lengthy design tasks and to create completed engineering applications that can run both inside and outside of the SOLIDWORKS application.

When a Samuel Automation customer asked that thousands of their drawings be formatted and numbered according to the customer’s methods, Jim relied on his design automation experience and the power of SOLIDWORKS API to create processes to do the work. Each drawing was updated in 30 seconds, when a more manual process would have taken 30 minutes. Overall, a project that Jim’s manager thought might take 10 months took just one.

Open API has also allowed Samuel Automation to integrate SOLIDWORKS with internal custom software and their ERP system. Data shared include part numbers, costing, and due dates.

Javelin on standby

Admir said that when his team was in the process of switching to SOLIDWORKS, they had a lot of questions about the installation and how to integrate with their custom software.

“I’ve dealt with vendors who made us feel like we weren’t supposed to ask questions.

Not once did Javelin say, ‘we can’t help you.’ You fill out a quick report and within a couple of hours, if not minutes, someone is reaching out to help you. You get quick, in-depth responses from very knowledgeable people. Having someone pretty much on standby during the tricky parts was fantastic.”

He added that various disciplines across the company – from designers to analysts to assemblers – use SOLIDWORKS tools differently, and that he appreciates that Javelin provides floating/network licensing for clients who need a pool of software licenses that can be shared among users.

Continued success with manufacturing solutions

Samuel Automation looks forward to an ever-expanding focus on sustainability measures, including persistently improving efficiency, reducing waste, and meeting customers’ growing need for energy savings through fully electric actuation.

Admir said integration is an ongoing theme, as Samuel Automation finds more opportunities to collaborate with their sister operations within the Samuel family of companies and continues to standardize software and processes among departments internally.

With personal support from Javelin and access to the wider product and service offerings of TriMech Group, Samuel Automation is well positioned to take on new challenges.

“Javelin is always happy to drop in and chat with us about the latest and greatest,” Admir said. “They understand what we do and how we do it, so they know what can help us.”

Samuel Automation is online at samuel.com/our-businesses/systematix.

Systematix – Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Model Mania

Initial Modeling

I’ll walk you through how the contest runs with some tips that I use when sitting down to model the part. We were given the following print and 3D Printed model to examine and then create. I recommend taking a minute or two before hitting start to examine the print and take some time to formulate a plan. I keep these three guidelines for modeling in mind when formulating how I’m going to model the part:

1. Add all your material first. Start with all your boss/base features and place them all first.
2. Remove all your material second. This would be all your cuts or holes.
3. Add cosmetic fillets and rounds last. I always save my fillets and rounds until the end of the feature tree.

For this year’s print, I wanted to keep two things in mind: symmetry and simplicity. The part looked very symmetric, so I used center rectangles and circles centered on the origin and midplane extrusions where possible. I also determined that the part could be completed with simple extrusions, cuts and fillets. When modeling for Model Mania, make sure to read all the dimensions, verify their attachment points, and read all notes, and accuracy counts. Finally, make sure to add the correct material to the part. Once it is modeled, make sure you know where Mass Properties is found, as Mass is the quantity that you need to enter to continue.

Design Change

At this point, you’re given a second print with some design changes. Even though the clock is running, take a few seconds here to examine the print and formulate a plan on how to change the part. This is typically the most difficult part of the challenge. The two big changes this year were increasing the size of the cylinder and making it the back of the part and adding draft. I added draft in three different ways: draft while extruding, neutral plane draft, and parting line draft. Again make sure to look over the print, as accuracy still counts. I double-check all the dimensions, verify the material didn’t change, and take my mass properties.

Conclusion

The award results are announced in the 3DEXPERIENCE Playground on the last day of 3DEXPERIENCE World. They break the contest up into two groups: one for resellers and one for customers. This year I was lucky enough to win the reseller contest with a fairly slow time of over 16 minutes. It isn’t necessarily the fastest who wins, but the fastest most accurate model. In past years I’ve messed up a fillet, or forgotten to add a material, which will ruin accuracy pretty quickly. The customer group was much more competitive. The winning time was under 8 minutes.

SOLIDWORKS has a blog with all past model mania parts, 24 Years of Model Mania. This is an opportunity to try your skills on models and changes from previous years. These also make good team-building events with your internal engineering team. Take twenty minutes out of your day and create an internal contest with one of these models. It will build everyone’s confidence with SOLIDWORKS with a fun competitive contest.

• Virtual Twin vs Digital Twin
• The Virtual Twin Spectrum
• Practical Examples
• Keys to Succes with Virtual Twin