I have always had a fascination with classic cars. They are fun to admire, drive and work on, but sometimes they lack the comfort of modern cars. Driving a car without air conditioning in the hot summer months has led me to test many window configurations to maintain a cool internal temperature … [Read more...] about Testing Airflow Through a Classic Car With SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation
Recently, I ran into a scenario where I had to design some custom-sized gears and found a creative way to make a beveled gear that I thought I should share. There are equations to calculate specifications of the bevel like the cone angles of the gears, tooth, face width and cone distances. I wanted … [Read more...] about Designing Bevel Gears in SOLIDWORKS Using Sketch Blocks and Lofts
I was asked if I could take the surface area of selected faces in SOLIDWORKS and have that value be referenced in a drawing file. When this problem first came across my desk I assumed it was going to be an easy task, but boy was I mistaken. My first thought was using the SW-Surface Area Custom … [Read more...] about Create a Custom Property from a Selected Surface Area in SOLIDWORKS
Spreading Holiday Cheer with Hawk Ridge Systems I have designed myself a catapult with some specific design criteria in mind with the intent on spreading holiday cheer through the office. I will be firing a Hawk Ridge Systems present to all of my coworkers! The catapult is going to be 3D … [Read more...] about SOLIDWORKS Simulation: Validating the Strength of a 3D Printed Catapult
SOLIDWORKS adds hundreds of new features every single release – and SOLIDWORKS 2019 is no exception. With great improvements in assembly performance, new workflows with touch and markup, and new surface texture features, SOLIDWORKS continues to innovate in 3D CAD. In this first part of a two-part … [Read more...] about What’s New in SOLIDWORKS 2019 – Release Highlights Part 1
When creating the wrist components of my gauntlet I ran into the problem of needing a slot for some of the connection points. In my first iteration of the design, I had a 4 pieces covering the wrist that all needed to be able to rotate relative to the wrist joint. As you can see in Figure 1 … [Read more...] about Creating Fully Functional Medieval Armour Part 4
Cyclical references: A case study when creating the gauntlet hand and wrist plates To create the hand section of the gauntlet I used a lot of Surfacing techniques. I started off with a 3D scan of a hand and used the Offset Surface command to create the inside surface of the gauntlet. I made all the … [Read more...] about Creating Fully Functional Medieval Armour Part 3
To begin the design for my finger plates I first had to take some measurements of my finger. I measured my finger to have a diameter of around 20mm at the thinnest section, 25mm at the thickest section, and a length of about 110mm. Using these dimensions, I revolved a cone to represent my … [Read more...] about SOLIDWORKS: Creating Fully Functional Medieval Armour Part 2 – Creating the Gauntlet Fingers
