Anybody use SolidWorks?
 

I am taking a class in SolidWorks 3D CAD, and the project was to build either engine parts, a firearm, a vise, some tool of your own invention, or a bicycle crank. My choice was easy. I made the cylinder out of a 6000 series Aluminum, the rod out of Ti-6Al-4V Titanium, the wristpin bushing in standard brass, the rod bearings in copper, and the piston out of a 2000 series forged Aluminum alloy.

All these parts are very closely approximate (if not exact) to 911 designs and I thought you guys might enjoy.

Now I'm going to try to model up a crankshaft before next Tuesday.

Cheers,
Scott

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I'm taking a break from SolidWorks as we speak (write?). Looks nice! Good luck with your class.

I took the class and never used it, so I forgot everything I'm sure.

I use to use it, then I moved on to a different industry.

Looks like you put a lot of work in your modelling, good show!

Using '07 mostly now (XP), '08 a little on Vista.

Photoworks use mostly lately, trying to get some photoreal renderings for the website redesign, since Sales & Marketing can't figure out how to take some of our parts & hand them to a photographer...

Been using CAD since AutoCAD 2.5, circa 1986... it's less of my plate since moving almost completely into IT over the past year or two though. We went from AutoCAD 14 to Mechanical Desktop, then bailed as they ditched that for Inventor, moving to SW04. I also was a beta tester for CorelCAD 1.0, which was ACIS-based & remarkably similar to MDT / SW, but for a tenth the price.

I'd be curious to see your technique on the piston & cylinder...

That is very cool. I always liked messing around with CAD programs and seeing what people can do with them.

Very nice. I use ver 6 plus a Dimension solid modeller to make a few parts for projects. It is a great way to make fixtures and tools for assembly and disassembly purposes. Oh yeah, I do use it for work as well.

i'm an inventor user - basically the same as solidworks. i was thinking of modeling the entire engine for fun but i think the case would be very difficult to measure to make the model. we should combine all our abilities and pick a part to model and then someone can do the final assembly. we could even model various years of parts so we can mix and match the parts to build different engine configurations. i did model a piston top, cylinder and the inside of a head to calculate compression ratio, i also did it the old fastion way to see how accurite my model was and it was right on. this would be useful for illustrating different machining options etc..

great idea - have people contribute models of various parts - could use STEP files as the final product, this makes somewhat easier for various CAD packages to be used. Eventually build up a complete engine/suspension/etc... I used UG for awhile now it is called NX. Very fun. Of course now I just do email engineering. ;-) I need to trick my boss into letting me hide in a hole and do CAD again. ProE is used mostly here.. it is liked by the people that that is all they have used. Nuf said.

Cool. How about swapping in a high compression piston while you're in there? Should be good for a few extra ponies.
;)

I will make a higher compression piston, haha.

The piston and cylinder started with the Revolve feature (revolved sketch), and then to get flat sides you do Extruded Cuts. Then the valve pockets are done by aligning a plane on the domed surface of the piston, and the bottom of the piston and bore of the cylinder are again cut with Extruded Cut. The fins are made with a Linear Pattern of a separate Extruded Cut.

I have done some ProE as well...I find SolidWorks somewhat more intuitive

Thanks for the comments! I'll post up the crankshaft when I get that done.

Where you are done, send me the files and I will throw them into ansys and we can look at stresses and thermal distributions...

I use Mastercam 9, Mastercam 10 and Mastercam X but haven't used SolidWorks. Looks pretty neat.

I had the billet 914 T-4 taco plate done in SW so I could take it to machine shops for manufacturing. (Most of you don't know about my few manufacturing adventures.) All the shops told me SW was useless to them as a CNC program. OK, so what's the point in using it then?

BTW, this was in like 2004.

Myself and another fellow wrote the very first "toolbox" for Solidworks. It let you drop threaded holes, screws, nuts, etc. That was years ago and SW has since bought the company.
-Chris

Chris, that toolbox feature is neat. SW didn't have the hardware I needed for the rod so I made my own bolt and McMaster-Carr has 3D SW files for most of their hardware. Just downloaded a 10x1.5 nut and imported it.

I, with a friend of mine, made this in SolidWorks:

935-based ONE-PIECE Brake Caliper that uses all Wilwood componentry and fits under 15" Wheels (930 Rotors). File was converted into MasterCam. This is our prototype in 7075-T6 Al. This is a prototype-production items will be made in A356-T6.

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Cheers,

Milt - not sure what sort of CNC shop you went to, but we have many clients designing in Solidworks and have never had a problem machining from their files. We use Surfcam as our CAM software and also we have seats of Solidworks and ProE so that we can translate the native files to iges and import into Surfcam. As far as I'm concerned, Solidworks and ProE produce the cleanest 3d CAD files out there.



Matt

I use Pro-Engineer WildFire3 (upgrading to WF4)

Parts look good, where did you get the spec sheets for the components

Most of the parts I have lying around so I just measured.

Pro E user... and going to Catia classes