A Focus on Manufacturing in the New SOLIDWORKS World ‘Shop Floor’
Live Digital Manufacturing
At SOLIDWORKS World 2018, SOLIDWORKS is turning the spotlight on manufacturing. This year’s event features a 40 x 70 ft. “Shop Floor” booth, recreating a typical manufacturing environment for the production and inspection of an automotive gear shift arm.
This shop floor puts a big emphasis on design to manufacture and for the first time ever, there is live digital manufacturing at SOLIDWORKS World. Attendees can see a Gear Lever Arm and Shifter Grip Handle being manufactured.
The parts have been designed in SOLIDWORKS and they’re being made using SOLIDWORKS CAM, on machines designed in SOLIDWORKS too. SOLIDWORKS really is everywhere.
Configure a Custom Gear Shifter
We’ve set up a configurator so attendees can customise the gear lever arm and grip handle.
The SOLIDWORKS part being used for the arm includes Model Based Definition (MBD) and Product Manufacturing Information (PMI) to enhance the quality of information supplied to the manufacturing teams.
The part also contains machinable data created using SOLIDWORKS CAM including toolpaths to produce parts from stock.
We have included CAM data along with MBD information in our configurator. These are great SOLIDWORKS tools that we can control with DriveWorks.
Using DriveWorks ‘rules based definition’ means you can retain the integrity of the parts you create. They will always meet your requirements for manufacture, no matter who specifies them.
To demonstrate this, we have taken the Gear Shifter assembly and added some options for configuring your model.
All of the necessary 3D printing information, MBD and Machining information are automatically updated and recalculated by DriveWorks, to whatever options you choose.
Next, select your options for the arm. Choose a style, an angle and connector type and decide whether you would like a set of drawings for the Arm and Gear Shifter assembly. Choose if you would like DriveWorks to use SOLIDWORKS CAM and generate a G Code file for manufacture or output MBD data to a 3D PDF file.
With this configurator you can create and preview your designs whilst specifying your options. It works on any device, desktop, mobile and tablet.
It highlights just some of the functionality DriveWorks has to help designers and engineers work smarter. We are proud to take part and contribute to SOLIDWORKS World 2018 using our software.
Stop by Booth 511 in the Partner Pavilion to configure your own Gear Shifter!