The Buckle Group Assembly is a project that our team is working on, and we are collaborating on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to get the job done. The team has gone through an internal discussion on the platform that turned into a poll to see whether there’s a need to go ahead and run a few simulations on the buckle and clip. By accessing the 3DEXPERIENCE through a web browser, I can constantly communicate and collaborate with the team using Communities. Check out this blog on how to improve project communication in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. The poll is complete and the ‘ayes’ have it. I’m going to go ahead and upload my design data to the platform and run my simulations. I will be able to look at the results and communicate with my team all within the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
In SOLIDWORKS, I modeled the clip and buckle and made an assembly out of it. Next, I’m going to get this data into the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, but first, we must make sure that we activate the 3DEXPERIENCE centric connector add-in. The 3DEXPERIENCE centric connector will create a bridge between SOLIDWORKS and 3DEXPERIENCE platform. From within the context of SOLIDWORKS, I can save my model. This enables me to see real-time feedback of what design changes are made in the 3DEXPERIENCE connector. Saving will prompt notifications asking if there’s a need to have the data uploaded to the cloud and stay up to date with any changes.
At the bottom of the screen, there are controls for data management such as being able to push the design into a release date, or maybe you want to branch out, or maybe look at different types of designs. You can also create different provisions to brainstorm different device design changes.
Within the 3DEXPERIENCE connector, I can search for the application that I would like to utilize to run my simulation. In this case, I want to use the Mechanical Scenario Creation app. I have access to all the functionalities of the platform right from within SOLIDWORKS. I’m not even leaving the SOLIDWORKS interface. Next, when I go back to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, I can see right away when I open the design that I need to provide more information regarding my study. For this study, I will title this simulation ‘Buckle Clip FEA’. This is the first study to perform, so I will designate this study as the baseline.
From a comparison standpoint, SIMULIA is slightly different than SOLIDWORKS Simulation but still very easy to use. Other options are the type of simulation that you want to perform and adding more information regarding the iteration of that simulation if needed.
I will now create a Finite Element Model (FEM). FEM is a means to create a meshed version of geometry. I can run as many FEMs as I want if I want to run different types of simulations tied to the same geometry. In this case, I’m not going to give any mesh specifications because I want to create the mesh in a more manual fashion. We can even see what’s happening in the background. In this simulation setup, I have a virtual assistant that’s going to be guiding me along the way to set up my simulation from start to finish.
3DEXPERIENCE Works SIMULIA is a portfolio of connected, powerful and collaborative simulation solutions on the cloud. This allows you to accelerate design innovation by solving engineering challenges.
