Name: SOLIDWORKS Tips & Tricks: Unlock the Full Potential of Simulation
Uploaded: 2026-08-27T18:00:06.993Z
Duration: 41 min 25 s
Description: SOLIDWORKS Tips & Tricks: Unlock the Full Potential of Simulation

Transcript for "SOLIDWORKS Tips & Tricks: Unlock the Full Potential of Simulation": Alright. Alright. Well, thank you, everybody. We're gonna go ahead and get started here in a few seconds. I just wanted to pop in and show myself. My name is Enrique Garcia, and I'm one of the senior simulation specialists here at GoEngineer. So, again, welcome. Welcome to all of you that are showing up here to our presentations this month. We have, quite a bit of simulation presentations. We're really excited about presenting and sharing our knowledge with you guys and collaborating with you all. So we'll get started here in a moment. Alright. So what I'm gonna do, I'm going to turn off my webcam feed to maximize bandwidth here for us to maximize the sound quality, and we're gonna go ahead and get started. So I just wanted to show, show my face here and see you guys have a, a face to the name. welcome to our simulation tips and tricks webinar. Again, my name is Enrique Garcia, and I'll be present presenting this, this content for us today. So in the next thirty minutes, we're gonna be showing you some tools, tips, and tricks that you could take advantage of when using, both SOLIDWORKS Simulation and Flow Simulation. Alright. If you're new to our events and presentations, first of all, welcome. Our company here is GoEngineer, and we're a reseller of SolidWorks and SolidWorks products or resource to many different engineering tools that are pretty central for for many different industries here. We offer products that include three d CAD modeling, of course, like SOLIDWORKS, three d scanning, additive manufacturing, FDM metal, stereo lithography, three d printing. I myself specialize in learning, presenting, and training our simulation products into our customers. That's a little bit about ourselves. This is just a little slide form for myself. Again, my background is in bio, biomechanical engineering out of Arizona State University. I've procured a little, a couple of certifications over the years, reached an elite AE status back in 2018 there, and and haven't looked back. Let's talk about the agenda. So the agenda for the next thirty minutes is broken down into two sections. First, we'll showcase some items that are native to SOLIDWORKS CAD functionality, but also can be used within our simulation products. Then we'll finish off by showing you some simulation specific items. So all of these tips and tricks are aimed at increasing your efficiency just to help in to help streamline your setups and usage in our simulation tools. So once you commit, maybe some of these tips and tricks, just to your own workflows, you'll you'll definitely be able to iterate on designs with more confidence or maybe gain a deeper understanding on your own simulation and and designs in general. The whole the whole goal from us here at GoEngineer with all these simulation presentations this month is just to be able to help you with, just to get more out of your your integrated simulation tools and just to help you make better design decisions with with less time. So that's, that's the name of the game here for us today. So let's let's jump into it. Let's go right into it. Let's start and talk about some very valuable simulation, tools that we can use, but they're actually native SOLIDWORKS tricks. They're SOLIDWORKS functionalities you can use within simulation as well. So the first is gonna be design library. So the design library, if you haven't used it before, it's a directory that lives natively inside of your SOLIDWORKS interface. It shows up there on the right hand side of SolidWorks. And it's just a shortcut that's populated with folders. It just it organizes reusable entities such as parts or maybe some subassemblies. So So I can just click and drag and drop into my my top level assembly structure. We can put in features to make, for forming tools, for sheet metal, just to name a few different items we can use it for. It's really convenient. It's basically a a shortcut to a Windows file explorer structure that's nested inside of Windows, and it's just a shortcut to the Windows file explorer that you can go back and forth to without leaving the SOLIDWORKS interface. And it's just a great way to add, additional instances of a feature without making them from scratch every single time. Now when it comes to working with SOLIDWORKS simulation, the the design library can organize commonly used simulation features, things like force loads, or any external, load feature, virtual connectors, anything that you feel can be reused over and over again just to help save some simulation time. Let me show you how we can save to this design library. There's a little bit of nuance I wanna share with you guys. Let me jump over to a SOLIDWORKS instance here. So let's open up a model to just start working with. Let's, let's do one of these guys. Some of you guys may know what this model is. Let's pop it open. Alright. So, friendly neighborhood, Spider Man, web shooter. So let's say that I have some features I wanna save or I wanna work on. Let's turn on the SOLIDWORKS add in. If If you're new to simulation, simulation is just an add in away. So we can pop on the add ins here. We can go to the tools menu, pull down tools add ins. Just the same way you turn on toolbox, we can turn on simulation or flow simulation. Quite straightforward. So let's say I go over to static here, and I'm working on this model. And I decided, hey. I like to maybe save this force load. Maybe the idea behind this, just to to give you an idea, this is a a web shooter design I made for my nephew, Jack. So there he is, man. He's all proud. He's he's, he's Spider Man. Right? So in his mind, he looks just like Spider. He's so darn cute. Anyway, so I made him this this toy, and let me go back to the the PowerPoint there. I was a little concerned about the the fact that, you know, he'd probably break the the actual trigger. So so I wanna make it as robust as I could just with whatever resources I had for three d printing and all. So So, anyway, I made up this design, and I got into it and and, you know, figured out some deflection. And and he was only five at the time, so but still a strong kid, man. So I wanted to make sure I got some something that was that could stand up to that kid. But let's say that I'm using this over and over again, and maybe I'm making another design for him. And I decided maybe one pound force or whatever the magnitude was for this was gonna be sufficient for him loading and squeezing on things. And so if I'm gonna be reusing certain features in simulation, I can navigate over to the design library. And under the design library, I can make a regular folder. This is just regular design library functionality. Come down and make a new folder called simulation, and then I can start to populate this folder directory with all of these library feature parts. That is the trick here, my friends. So what you do here is you pin down the design library. So this whole panel gets pinned down. Then you can navigate over to your simulation design tree, click and drag and bring over whatever you're gonna be saving as a library feature part. Once you're ready, let go onto the panel. The property manager on the left hand side will open, and just make sure that it's saved as a library favorite there. You're pointing to the correct directory. Give it a name. Force, maybe, five year old Spider Man. Right. And then click okay. Now it's gonna save that to our directory, and we can put in, put in that directory there, five year old Spider Man. We can click and drag it to other new features on different faces. Or maybe in this case, I have some gravity, external loads I've saved here. Maybe I wanna save and bring in gravity on Mars. Maybe maybe my nephew Jack is, Sam is gonna be testing this on Mars. I can click and drag and quickly streamline the creation of any of these features using the design library. But, again, just a little native, native SOLIDWORKS functionality we can use in simulation. Alright. But, that is design library. Let's move on. The next tool I wanna share with you is, a native tool called select other. So it's a very subtle tool. It's off of the right click menu, and and, basically, it allows a SOLIDWORKS user to just on the fly dig into or expose the different layers of their model in the graphics area, just, wherever the pointer was located. It'll expose, and you can select interior surfaces while adding, editing adding or editing features in the SOLIDWORKS. And this also includes SOLIDWORKS simulation and flow simulation. For example, when you're in, maybe the middle of adding an inner surface for a boundary condition, any flow, or or some other constraint, just for the selection box, you can simply right click on the outer surface of the model just on top of where you're gonna be choosing an internal surface on, and then choose select other just from the right click menu. Once that's done, continue to right click until the desired surface is just exposed, and then you just left click to select it. Then the whole, the whole feature, the graphics, sorry, reverts back. It it's, it's really convenient. It's, it's definitely a a much more convenient workflow than having to hide and then show different components or if you're going through and creating exploded views of your models. So depending on what you're doing, if this is kinda like a one off thing, then, yeah, it's just a quick and dirty way to get to interior or hidden, entities within the model. So I just wanna show you really quickly how that works, just to show you if there's any nuance to it. Let's say that I am working on maybe adding a, some sort of fixture or boundary condition. I don't know. Maybe like a local interaction between maybe this little web cartridge and the housing. Right? Maybe I wanna choose the bottom of this web cartridge, and I wanna apply, a sliding boundary condition or contact interaction. So what you'll do is you'll go down to where you wanna expose the hidden face. Do a right click. Choose select other. Now SOLIDWORKS treats this, like, temporarily as a surface body, if you will. So now you can continue to select items. You can use the select other window if the things show up. But if you continue to right click, you can see I'm blowing out a bunch of different faces until I'm exposing the bottom of the web cartridge there. Then I click left click to add to the select, the selection box, and you're golden. So that's that's the select other tools there, friends. Really straightforward. But, yeah, something that's quite quite powerful and can streamline your workflows. Alright. Let's keep on going. Let's talk about the, the next tool. So let's talk about, let me think about this. What else do we wanna show? Maybe yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about this next one here. Let's let's talk about preprocessing your model here next. So, usually, like, before you start setting up a simulation study or project, you have to preprocess the models, right, just to get it ready for an analysis. This usually includes, like, simplifying your model, defeaturing, suppressing things. And then SOLIDWORKS, that's usually how it's done. Right? It's done manually by suppressing detail oriented features, especially if you have a parametric model with different, with the feature manager design tree or by maybe direct editing your model. If you've imported geometry, you have a dummy body, you can use features to remove details like delete face, for example. So another option I wanna give you here is, an more of an automated way that you can suppress features in your design tree or of your design in general by using a tool called the simplify utility. So this tool is located under the analysis preparation tab whenever you're working with part files. It can also be accessed from the tools, find modify submenu, when you're working with especially when you're working with assemblies. And, again, once the utility is turned on, you can then specify how you'd like to simplify the model, by the strategy either by reviewing the individual features of the design tree or in general by the volume of the model. And then, again, it just kind of automates this process of simplifying features, if you're doing that particular approach. You can collect those features, and then you can turn you can then suppress those collected features. You can make, derived configurations to organize the simplification. But, but, yeah, let me show you a little workflow of how we can use the simplify utility in SOLIDWORKS Simulation. So let's say I'm working on this, web shooter, and maybe I wanna simplify it for putting it into a larger assembly could be the the trick here. Or maybe you're have a bunch of little rounds or or detail oriented features that really don't matter for the response to model, right, in simulation. And if that's the case, we can jump over to the analysis preparation tab. We can click on simplify. And now at the top at the right hand side, we can specify how or what the approach would be to simplification, and we can do it volume based. Just looking at this is more, I guess, for for maybe imported models where you don't have the the parametrics, for the design. In our case, we have a nice feature tree that's quite long there. We can go into feature manager, and we can specify simplification factor here. So the idea is you go in and you, you maybe enter a value. You can specify what you're wanting to simplify, maybe all. You can hit find now, and it'll collect all of the different items that we can simplify. Maybe if that's not enough, we can go in and increase that to maybe point five. Hit find now. You'll find a lot more, for example. Or maybe in this case, I just wanted to get rid of maybe some of the the, the features that break edges. Maybe maybe I wanna get, just collect all the the different chamfers and fillets maybe of the model. Let's just do chamfers. Right? I can find now on chamfers. There are my three chamfers. If those are the ones I wanna get rid of, I can then go down below and I can say all, and then I can suppress it. I can say create derived configuration. This way when I hit suppress, it'll create that, derived configuration of the simplified model. So there it is. I got rid of the chamfers in my feature tree, and, I can now go over to the configuration manager tab, and I'll be able to have a derived config. I can call out anytime I'd like so I can go between the different configurations there. But, that's the simplify utility. Again, it's, it's built into the analysis preparation tab if you have simulation and you're using part files. If you have an assembly, you'll go into the, you'll go into tools, then modify, find modify to hit get to simplify. Alright. Let's keep it going here. Alright. This next tip, is a SOLIDWORKS capability, but it's very useful for simulation. So it's called selection sets. And so selection sets allows you to save or or package a group of points, edges, faces, solid bodies, or or any reference geometry just for the reuse, just without having to select it all the time, just all the items over and over again. It works out great, especially if your if your model is especially detailed. Maybe you're doing a topology study and you export a a meshed model. Right? When you when you export that as a solid, maybe as a separate part file or a separate configuration, you wanna move forward with that mesh body, every single facet is a face. Right? So it can be a pain in the butt to have to reselect 97 edges or faces for adding a feature. You can use this, this the selection set tool to prepackage this, this tool ahead of time so you can eliminate any of the extra redundant clicking that you that you've done before. So, again, the worst is when you're so close to finishing selecting all of the small faces in the command, and then you mess something up. Right? You maybe you you you you, your your finger gets sweaty on the control key, and you have to start all over again. It just it's a first world problem. Right? But it's still a problem. But, yeah, let me show you how it works, inside of SOLIDWORKS and how we can use it in simulation. Let's say I jump back over to the model tab here, and I'm working on something. Let's go back to my full model there. And let's say I'm selecting maybe a couple of different faces. Maybe this, I'm doing the control select. I'm choosing all this, maybe the top faces of the model there and maybe a couple of edges, maybe this internal face for for whatever reason. So and I wanna prepackage this selection of faces. So all you're gonna do is if you have the control key down, you selected all your entities, whether that's edges, faces, combination of all those entities, then you do a right click on your mouse. You'll come down to save selection. You'll say new selection set. And now this will save this selection of entities in a folder called selection sets in the feature manager design tree. If you expand it, you can see all the different entities that were saved in there. You can manage it here as well. But more importantly now, if I'm in a feature, I can easily go and call out by selecting that selection set. Maybe I'm inside of a a simulation that I'm working on, and I'm applying maybe an external load. And I can go in and call out the that selection set in the abbreviated area of the design tree in the graphics area, then call out my selection set. You can do as many of these as you'd like, and they're they're, again, a native SOLIDWORKS functionality that can help us streamline setting up our simulations. Alright. Any, any comments so far? I think we're we're good so far. Let's keep it going. Let's, move on and then talk about another CAD functionality that I wanna share with you. And, again, it's a bit subtle, but, again, very efficient. So and, honestly, I don't even I'm not sure about the name of this technique or tool. If you all know what what this technique or tool is called, please feel free to just mention it inside of the chat for us. But, basically, when you're in the middle of maybe selecting entities, you have the property manager open in a feature, you can then right click in the graphics area, of your screen, and you'll you'll be able to maybe switch, the selection to the next available option or or selection box in the property manager. It'll move to the next logical selection or option. And the nuance is is right there on that on the screenshot here. Once you select something, the mouse cursor will get an icon. It'll get a larger feedback of a mouse icon. And now we can see here that if I do a right click with that blue arrow on the right click, that means that it's going to move the selections to the next selection set. Selection set two are that pink box in that screen. But you can keep doing that until you actually, create the, in this case, the the local interaction. So let me show you how it works. Again, it's a bit subtle. It it did take it took me a while to a couple of years, I'll admittedly say, to kind of, establish that, hey. There's something different about this tool. Let me click there, and I was pleasantly surprised. So so so let's say I have this example here, and I'm going over to connections. And then we'll jump into local interaction. And maybe I want to apply, an interaction between different components. Maybe this component to maybe this component or this geometry. And so I'm gonna use this, this right right click to move kind of to the next selection by right by clicking on this first selection box, you get that mouse cursor icon feedback. I'm going to not move the mouse. If I move the mouse, it'll go away eventually, and it won't come back. So, again, that's that's, you know, that's why maybe it took me a while to to, detect or realize this thing was there is once you move the cursor, it's game over. You don't have to do this more traditionally by by moving your mouse around. But if I select that face and don't move my mouse and then I do a right click, notice on my left hand property manager, the selection box is now highlighting the selection set one box. Once I do a right click now, it'll go over to the right to the next selection set box. Now I can select the next item or entity that I'd like. And then after that, I do another click. Right? The cursor changes again. Now we get a little green check mark. The next logical step here is the okay or the green check mark. So now I can do a right right click once again to accept that particular interaction, all without moving my mouse, that much. Again, it's it's a very subtle little nuance, but it could be very powerful just to maximize your workflows there, friends. Alright. Oh, let me just check here just to see if anyone knows the name of that tool. So here, my colleague, Terrence, says he likes to call this the the right click, left click method. Hey. I like that. That's pretty good. I think I might try to call that that as well, the right click, left click method. Sounds like a like a like a doctor Seuss book or something. Right? That's the way I'm gonna try to remember it. So alright. Yeah. Thank you for that. Let's keep on going here. We got a a few minutes here, so let's try to maximize our time here with you guys. This next one is gonna be, let me just jump over here. This is the last, important suggestion for CAD here that we have, and this is going to be, editing, or, actually, so let's yeah. Let me let me show you just another here thing here. I discovered this a few years ago, and since simulation, functions inside of the SOLIDWORKS ecosystem, right, excuse me, we can take advantage of environments, more specifically, the lighting settings. So just under the the multicolored sphere tab inside of that display manager over to the to the left there, if you go and go down there, we can go to that lights, scenes, and cameras sub icon, and we can edit the light. You can edit, more importantly, the ambient light. If you do that, you're gonna be able to adjust the the color temperature and and maybe sometimes simulation results, both in flow simulation and in in simulation FEA, the colors can, can be a little bit different, right, than the color bar. Sometimes it's subtle. Right? Sometimes they're just a little bit muted. You're not sure why. Well, the reason is because of the lighting and SOLIDWORKS. So if you look here at this slide, if I edit that and I if I increase the slider bar over, you're gonna start to see that the, that the ambient environment light is gonna increase. So now it's gonna match more precisely to to the the legend or the color bar. So, again, it's a very subtle thing. It can be a very subtle thing, but it's gonna make a big difference in your results for for for displaying results for your for your clients. Alright. So next, let's take a look at, just some simulation specific items. So let's start off with, this first one. And this one this one I like a lot. This one, an old colleague showed me. And let's say that, this so this first item is specific to SOLIDWORKS Simulation and FEA, and this is more for maybe conceptual brainstorming. Let's say you're you're there at the at your office with your colleagues on a Monday. You're doing a design review, or you're trying to figure out some concepts for different profiles. And the idea is that you're maybe doing, like, a paper napkin sketch of something. Right? And you wanted to see how that will deflect or respond relative to attempt to another basic design, so another paper napkin sketch design. Right? So in simulation, you can actually go in and create sketch, a two d sketch of your profile, initiate or exit the sketch. Right? So it's a regular sketch. It doesn't have to be fully defined or anything. And you can jump into a new simulation study, and you can it'll force the the two d simplification workflow so that you can specify what the the the length is of this profile and then run a two d simulation on it. And in the end, you can get a nice three d model, that's been responded to, and you can get some some some qualitative and quantitative results all based off of a two d sketch. So it is pretty straightforward. This is the the the workflow for the steps of that, so feel free to to to make note of that. Let me show you this workflow here, back at SOLIDWORKS. Let's jump over to a next another model I wanna share here with you. Let's go over to, this this TreadPhone, this Treadmill phone stand. So the wife and I joined a gym here in Phoenix. It's too darn hard to to go in and jog and and run around outside. So we joined a, an indoor gym, and they have, treadmills. And the the treadmills are really beefy, right, compared to what you can buy at home or or or the consumer market. So I'd made a little a little shape. I wanted to figure out that the the the best shape to can maybe hug the top of the treadmill so that I can maybe pull on this and maybe not clip it, but maybe use some, you know, just some some passive forces, and, kind of forces to, like, to, you know, really sturdily set this little this little, jig in there so I can place my phone or my or my Kindle or something on this. And so the idea was that I could, just create a sketch. Right? Just a little sketch of some kind. And then once I'm in the sketch, I can go into new study and then just pick this type of study. You can do a nonlinear, thermal, or a static study. It'll automatically turn on two d simplification. You can specify again, this is something that you can go through on your own, and you can specify the different items on this. Enter the section plane I'd want and maybe give it the thickness that I want. Maybe I wanna start off with 50 millimeters to start there. And then I start setting this thing up like I would normally. Instead of picking faces, I have just edges that I can pick with. I I did that here, and this to maximize our timing here, I set up a a fixture, and then I applied a a reference temperature of maybe a couple of millimeters, maybe five millimeters, pushing outward, maybe, simulating this being installed on this beefy treadmill. Right? And then I can look at some results. Again, all just by using a sketch. So that's, that's the first that's simulation tip here I have for us. Let's keep it keep it going here. I have another one here. I have a couple more. I I guess, also, before, we we move forward, I just wanna, I guess, mention that it looks like we're really close to the thirty minute mark, but I still would like to show you a couple of these other tools for y'all. I mean, it might take me another five or ten minutes or so, but I definitely wanna respect your time. So if you have to leave, we we definitely understand. If so for those of you that are leaving, in a moment here, thank you for joining us today. If you can stick around, I'm very happy to show you some, some more useful things here for you. Let's, let's let's talk about, let's go on back here. Where are we? Let's do this one here next. So let's talk about a flow simulation, little tool. So I wanna introduce this, this utility for you. So this is a a native, tool that we have inside of SOLIDWORKS flow simulation. If you're a seasoned flow simulation analyst, you probably know this already, but, you can go in and automate the creation of lids using planar surfaces of your geometry inside of flow simulation. Now if you're gonna be doing internal analysis in flow, one of the requirements is to have an airtight container so that we can sample the internal volume for the the fluid fluid domain. Right? And so we do that typically however we can, whether that's creating, features inside of SolidWorks, importing, existing geometry, or we can use this create lids utility, to go in and and create these lids. They're treated as, as, as a dummy bodies if you have a part file that just puts in these solid bodies, or it treats them as virtual components if you have an assembly. So I just wanna quickly show you this functionality here, for SOLIDWORKS flow simulation. So let's say I take this little colander, this, this geometry. It has a lot of openings, and I wanna go in and preprocess this for an internal analysis where I have some some sort of, CFM going through, and I wanted to exit the the different outlets of the header model here. Now before jumping into a flow project, we know this isn't gonna be an internal analysis. So I can add and slap different extrudes on this thing to close-up the model, or I can automate that under the tools menu, under create lids. Now I can select every surface, every planar surface that I'd like, and the software will give me a preview of what those, what the geometry would be to be able to lid the model. And, again, it's, it's very straightforward. It's a simplistic tool. Right? It doesn't understand that this opening or this void doesn't need a lid. So it's gonna be what whatever it is. Right? It's a very, very straightforward tool. And then we can manage these. If I just add these here and click okay, it's gonna generate some virtual components. I can maybe get rid of the ones that are the small circles. But, yeah, that's a tip there. The the other thing about this tool is that these components are not fixed by by default. So it would be wise to go in to take these lids and maybe fix them in space so you don't accidentally move something along the way. But, again, it's a great way to automate, the creation of lids, in a preprocessing phase of your workflow. Alright. Next, let me show you how you can automate the creation of a large number of interactions. This is a SOLIDWORKS simulation functionality, and it's something that's built in directly into the local interactions property manager. And it's especially helpful for for setups with studies with a large number of components. So let me jump back over to SOLIDWORKS. Let me open another model here to show that. Let's do a file. Let's do, let's go over to this guy here. Let's rebuild the model, of course. And so let's say for this, we wanna start a new simulation study, a new FEA simulation study. We'll stick with static. So we have a new study here, and we have quite a bit of different interactions. Right? Our job as analysts is to explore and fully understand how every single component will interact with the other component, whether they're bonding, they're slipping and sliding, and and responding. Right? One way that we natively could do it is by going into the interactions viewer inside of inside of SOLIDWORKS and and choosing interaction viewer to go in and and look at these different detected faces. Another more old school way is to go to the evaluate tab before interactions viewer. We have the interference detection tool. And this tool, we can turn on treat coincidence as interference to detect all of those touching faces here in the model. Right? And so the reason I show you that older tool is because of the the way that we automate the creation of these local interactions uses that second or older model. It uses, this interference detection tool by by detecting those coinciding or touching faces. It can detect, and we can mass apply many, many interactions at the same time. So the way this works is by right clicking on the connections folder, we'll initiate the local interaction. Now under this interactions, section, we're gonna switch the radio button to automatically find local interactions. We can specify if there's a tolerance, if you have small gaps maybe in your geometry, if you have imported it or something. You can adjust the the detection of face pairs by a certain amount. In our case, we're gonna just make sure all the touching faces are selected. For the the black the the box or this pink section, we'll select the top level assembly, then we'll click find local interactions. Now this detected, it looks like, a total of 23 different interactions. And now we can go in and select each individual one to see what face pairs were were detected. We can specify and assign for each one. Oh, excuse me. I need a sneeze. Boy. Excuse me. Alright. So we can detect and select each line item there and specify the type of interaction we want. Or in in this case, right, we wanna we wanna mass create all of the interactions. So I wanna go in and select the top entity or the top line item. Do a shift select with your keyboard so we can select all 23 items that we can specify here, what we would like for the the interaction type, if we wanna apply a a a coefficient of some kind, maybe the the gap range. Maybe you wanna put in a value there. Maybe, I don't know, like, I don't know, point one millimeters or something like that for the gap range. You can see the contact if you did have gaps in there. But, ultimately, once you're ready to mass apply all these interactions, click the create local interactions icon. And in a fraction of a second, let me click okay. Yeah. We can see all those interactions are put in place. So, again, that's just a way to quickly speed things up for you. I still recommend go back and spot check things and make sure that all the interactions are legitimate. Right? It's up to us to make sure that, that we were signing off on these results. Right? So just, this is just a quick quicker way to add these interactions that we're ultimately responsible for. Alright. Let me check my chat here to see if there's any other comments, anything we'd like. So So looks like, Enrique had a question. Why did results for a stress study for a thin plate show a picture of the resulting flex plate, but no thickness in my results? So why did the results of a stress study for a thin plate show a picture of the result flex plate with no thickness in your results? So there there's there's a couple of things there. We may have to go a little offline on that, Enrique, explore what your settings are, but, you can do, like, render thickness. It depends on maybe how you're, maybe assigning the thickness of those plates if you're using, sheet metal parts or something or or using shell elements. But, yeah, feel free. I'll I'll have my email at the end here. Feel free to hit me up, and we can explore that offline a little bit. Alright. So let's finish this thing off here. So let's talk about another functionality. Next is gonna be, some other automation tools. So this is a way that we can convert your toolbox fasteners into virtual bolt connectors inside of SOLIDWORKS Simulation. So it's an automated way to help idealize, your model and just another it's kinda do my job button. Right? It's it's just a way to create virtual fasteners, and replace the actual toolbox fasteners. Unfortunately, it's only possible if you use toolbox functionality or or toolbox components in your assembly. Just each toolbox component, has internal metadata that's mapped to the properties of the virtual connector feature in simulation. And so that's it. That's how it automatically applies the correct properties for each instance. So, you can go in and manually then after the fact and, you know, just adjust or spot check the created virtual components. You can also do this, this, this creation of these virtual interactions at the onset, the the initial creation of the study. Or if you forgot or maybe, you wanted to do it later, then you can then right click on the on the on the connections folder and then choose that toolbox fasteners, the bolts interaction or that that, that action. So the way it works here let's say I did forget to do that here. I can go in to I have these these toolbox fasteners, these countersink screws with nuts. I can right click on connections, and I can say toolbox fasteners to bolts. It'll then collect all those toolbox components. It'll then take it in my parts list, and it'll it'll it'll exclude them from the analysis as well. And so that's that takes care of that. And, again, if anything is is excluded in the analysis, any feature, if it's even if it's not suppressed yet, will still be excluded. It's just there's no there's no reference to it. So it's a great way to get rid of those. And down below here, we have a new folder under the connectors for those particular virtual components. It made all four of those, and we can jump in there and see what it applied, what edges it detected for each each instance, and the different material property the material properties, if you wish, or the preload conditions. And, again, if you're doing this maybe from scratch, if you're doing a new study, all it is, it's saying convert toolbox fasteners to bolt connectors. Once you click okay, it'll automatically do that functionality for you. So, again, very straightforward. You do need a license of simulation professional or premium for this one, if I remember correctly. So so, again, it's nice to quickly if you still use a toolbox toolbox components or fasteners, it's a great little workflow. Alright. Almost on time here. Another minute or so. This last functionality this last functionality for SIM is going to be a way to reuse simulation features that you've defined maybe at a lower level of your model, whether that's a a subassembly or maybe a part file. And you've done all the work already. Right? So we can then upgrade those features and reapply them higher up in your simulation, workflow, right, or or your your model's workflow. You're at the top level assembly. You know you set up all those convection coefficients and all those faces on this pesky part. Let's just recycle that. And you can do that with this, with this tool here, this import study features tool. So let's jump over to SOLIDWORKS here and show you how it works. So let's let's say for this model, I did add some features on this particular component there. So let me open this up. And we have this this, study called lower level features. We have applied a side load, maybe a mesh control, and, of some some bolts, from some foundational bolts. So let's say back at the SOLIDWORKS CAD model, if I go in and, let's say I start a new simulation study, I can say Import Study Features, click Okay. It'll bring up a little pop up window. And if I have any features on any lower level components like my base plate, I can select it. I can choose which which type of features I'd like to include in the import. Or if I don't wanna include one, you just unselect it. You specify the the design of the the simulation study if you have more than one, and then you click import. And then upon the creation of the study, we have all of the same features that were, brought over from the lower level assembly. Now this tool can be accessed also by right clicking at the very top of the simulation design tree. If you don't wanna do it upon the the, the onset or the creation of the study. So that is, how you import from lower level components. Alright. The last, trick here that I wanna share with you before we part ways, is actually a a a tool or a trick that I found out kinda as a dare in a simulation class I taught a few years ago. I was I was actually thinking this wasn't gonna work. I was very pleasantly surprised, though. So the trick here is that you can have flow simulation result plots on on, basically, or or animating, like a like a flow trajectory, and then you can create a SOLIDWORKS walk-through. So let me show this little animation here. So here on the slide, you can see a video. And, basically, we have a little electronics box with a fan, and then, we can see that the air starts to heat up as it interacts with the the little heat sink structure here in this in this in this section of the video. And, again, it's more easy. It's a it's a easier way to maybe spot check maybe an area of recirculation. And, again, it's just using SOLIDWORKS walkthroughs. It's just a different way to to show a different perspective or experience your model and and flow simulation results. Maybe it'll help you find issues or behaviors that that maybe you didn't really see with maybe more traditional ways of interrogation. So it it also would be perfect to explore or showcase for HVAC applications or projects in larger scale models. But let let me show you how it works. So for those of you that haven't used walk throughs in flow simulate with flow simulation, It's just we're using walk throughs, basically. So let me open the last model for us today. We'll jump into something here, and I wanna initiate the results. Let me load up some results, and let me turn on my animation for for flow trajectories. And you know what? Maybe I wanna do a a surface plot. I wanna show the the temperatures of everything, and maybe I wanna play the flow trajectories. I have a internal fan, trying attempting to cool the model here. And once I have my, my graphics area set up, I can navigate over to the display manager under the view scene lights and camera section, and I can turn on walk throughs. You can see I have one walk through there. Let's make it from scratch. It's very straightforward. You do a right click, add walk through. You specify the floor for your walking plane. Maybe instead of choosing the top plane, I can choose the the top surface of this PCB. I give myself a height. This thing is, smaller than than a than an HVAC, in the cooling, cooling center. So I'm gonna do five millimeters for my height, then I'll say start walk through. It'll give me some navigation information there, and now I can start to navigate through my model. If you if you guys do get a little queasy there, be be sure to close your eyes a little bit, but I'll be as ginger as I can here with this. But you can start to see a different perspective of your results. So I'll stop it there just to give everyone some time to adjust to to the the craziness that could be. So, again, it's that's using walk throughs with your flow simulation projects. Let me click the little close button, and we can save that, that's that particular setup, to reuse later on as walk through number two. But, yeah, that's how you can go in and use walk throughs with, with the software. Alright. Well, that is the last tip I had for us for the session today. If you like this type of presentation or wanna watch it again, it'll show up in our on demand webinar section on our website at GoEngineer.com. Just follow the steps here for the training and resources section under webinars, and just click on the on demand webinars. We have quite a bit of different simulation based webinars and many different other, other types of webinars, not just simulation, but there's some filters you can use there. Very straightforward. And, yeah, we're happy to share this information with you all. With that being said, I'll stand for a few minutes here just to help answer any other questions you may have in the chat. But, again, thank you for attending on my presentation today, and we'll see you on the next one.