“I use SolidWorks to design any type of frame because the Weldments tools make it so easy.”

Did you go to SolidWorks World this year?  I missed the big event but I learned that it was recorded and posted online.  If you shift the timeline on this video to about 5:25, you will catch Mike Puckett and Avelino Rochino introducing us as “Rock Stars”.

I highly recommend becoming certified, not because the test is easy or hard, not because it will make you stand out above the crowd, but because it will stretch your skills.  Stretching means learning and learning is something you should never stop doing. It was fun to support SolidWorks with some cool images, but I’m no Rock Star!

Last July, the pastor of my church began talking to me about a new program he wanted to start called Family Style. The idea was for a daily devotion time shared by the whole family. Just 15 minutes a day to make a connection between the family and God through prayer and Bible reading would produce lasting benefits for individuals, their families and the church as a whole. I was excited about the idea because most churches I’ve attended have taken over the responsibility of the spiritual training of children that has been abdicated by their parents (especially their fathers). This plan gives parents the tools (Biblical devotional materials), encouragement (reinforced every week at church) and accountability (read on) needed to enable success. Pastor Tim’s desire was to encourage the whole church to participate for one year and to keep track of our progress using dimes and that’s why he was talking to me.

His idea was to have every family bring one dime to church for each devotion they did during the week (up to 5). We would then place those dimes in clear plastic tubes that could be on display at church to show our progress. Washers painted blaze orange (called “wildcards” by Tim) would serve as replacements for missed days (nobody’s perfect). As the display fills with dimes and washers we can see in a tangible way our families growing closer to Christ.

The first question he asked was if I knew where to buy clear plastic tubing in the right size for dimes and something to cap the ends with. I pointed him the the place that has everything, McMaster Carr (www.mcmaster.com). I’ve used McMaster Carr for years as a source for everything from metric fasteners to raw materials to tools. Most of my customers rely heavily on their quick delivery and low quantity requirements. From McMaster, Tim ordered 7 pieces of 1” clear acrylic tubing that were 6 feet long (click here for link). As it turns out, I already had a whole box of white plastic caps that fit perfect in the 3/4” ID tubing (if you send me a note, I will share) but you can also buy them (black color) at McMaster (click here for link).

So with the key materials in hand, my task was to come up with a way to build an interesting display. Here are my first concept sketches. The finished product was simply a refinement of these concepts based upon discoveries and choices made along the way.

Upon receiving the tubes, I discovered that they were actually a bit longer than 72”. This was a blessing in planning the cut lengths as I could ignore the width of my saw blade in my calculations. After some trial and error, I came up with a cut list resulting in 19 tubes measuring from 6” to 42” in 2” increments. A few pieces leftover could serve as a sample in presenting the idea to others. I used masking tape to protect the tubing as I cut each piece to length with a miter chop saw (my favorite power tool). Be sure to make your cuts quickly as the tubing will melt if you cut it too slowly.  Scroll to the end of this post to find a link to the PDF drawing showing a detailed cut list for the project.

Next I made a quick drawing in SolidWorks to get an idea of how to make the spacer blocks. As you can see from this drawing, each spacer block is made from standard 1 X 3 lumber which measures 3/4” X 2-1/2” and is cut to 9” long. A standard 8′ piece of 1 X 3 can make 10 spacer blocks with only a few inches of waste. This means that I needed 4 sticks of 1 X 3 to make the 36 spacer blocks. Scroll to the end of this post to find a link to the PDF drawing showing detailed plans for the clamp block.

A miter chop saw and a small drill press proved to be the perfect tools for making the spacer blocks. First I setup a stop block to assure that each of my spacer blocks were cut to the same 9” length. Then I set the saw to miter at 45° with an adjustment to my stop block and I cut the corners off of all 36 spacer blocks. Using a 1” Forstner bit and the drill press setup with a simple fixture (made from some of the leftover cutoffs), I drilled the 72 holes in the correct locations (centered 6” apart). I highly recommend using a drill press for this step to assure the holes are straight and parallel to each other (critical feature). After that I used the drill press to drill a pilot hole in the sides of the stop blocks for each clamp screw. I ended up with 2-1/2” deck screws from the local hardware store. They look good and they clamp well (in retrospect, you might consider a shorter screw as some of them broke through ever so slightly when clamped tight). A 1/8” hole for each screw is small enough to assure a good grip on the #10 size screw but large enough to keep the wood from splitting. After drilling pilot holes as deep as I could, I placed the blocks back in the chop saw for the final cut – in half. It’s important after this step to keep the matched halves together so you might consider using masking tape as a temporary tool. Before jumping into the best part of the project, assembly, I recommend placing one half of your clamp block back in the drill press and opening up the 1/8” hole to 3/16”. This guarantees your clamp blocks will actually clamp as the screw will slip through one half and grip in the other.

At this point, you may choose to apply some type of finish to your clamp blocks. Paint, wood stain or clear coat are all possible finishes for wood. We chose to keep our clamp blocks “au naturel” so we could move right on to assembly without waiting for things to dry making this a one afternoon project.

On to the best part – assembly. The first step is to cap the bottom of each clear acrylic tube. Push the cap with even pressure against a hard surface to encourage it in. These caps have barbs that hold them well in place so you can be sure that you will not lose a whole tube of dimes in an embarrassing pile on the floor should you decide to move your display (or take it to a convention like Pastor Tim). Next, assemble the clamp blocks with your fastener of choice making sure to leave them a little loose for final assembly. Finally, begin attaching the clamp blocks to the tubes in an alternating fashion, spacing them as you go.

The beauty of this display is that it is fully modular. If you are concerned about the overwhelming task of filling a huge display over a long time, only attach 5 or 6 tubes together at first. Consider alternating the sizes in a random way rather than a steady increasing progression. I found that it is possible to tighten the clamp blocks to a point that the assembly is rigid but it can also be pushed, pulled and twisted into new shapes without adjusting the screws. It’s quite fun to play with the thing to make unique configurations.

The practical use of our Family Style display is quite remarkable. Every week the kids go up front and place their dimes or orange washers into the tubes. The smallest and largest tubes filled first (Pastor Tim used extra caps to seal them up). The distribution of washers and dimes shows that our church is not perfect (all dimes) nor is it willing to give up (all washers). The display is a constant reminder of our spiritual growth as a church family and a continual encouragement as it slowly fills up each week. And it is fun (the kids keep changing it so it is always different)!

I couldn’t resist doing a few quick designs in SolidWorks for fun. Maybe they will inspire you. Download the assembly and give it a try yourself. If you don’t have SolidWorks 2011, make an announcement at your church and I’m sure you’ll find some engineer nerd like me that is eager to have some fun helping you.

Techincal notes – a dime is about .050” thick so every inch of display will hold 20 days of devotions.

Aside from the Family Style program, this display concept can be used to visibly track any type of growth campaign (good deeds done for the community, days sober/cigarette free/free from ______, fund raising, etc.).

It’s also important to note that this project was an undertaking of my entire family. My kids ran the chop saw and the drill press, assembled the clamp blocks and made several cool variations of the final display. Don’t miss out on this cool opportunity to spend time working with kids!

Here are some things you can download for more info:
McMasterAcrylicTubing.pdf
McMasterPlasticCaps.pdf
ClampBlock.pdf
Tubes Cut List.pdf
HeartAssy3D.pdf (3D pdf’s require newer versions of actobat reader and allow cool 3D navigation – click and drag in the window)
DimeDisplaySW.zip (2M)

First, the 3 members must be made using one “Structural Member” feature in SolidWorks.  This means that you cannot use any weldment profiles that have undercut features such as the 80/20 profiles that I have posted here.  Build your structure using multiple Groups (SolidWorks will not allow 3 members in one Group to meet at a corner so you will need at least 2 Groups).  While still editing the “Structural Member”, click the magic pink dot that represents the intersection of the 3 members in question.  This brings up the Corner Treatment override tool.  This is where the secret lies!

Clicking through the >> and << arrows, you can see all of the corner treatments that will be applied at this intersection.  Notice the Trim Order box changes from 1 to 2, etc. as you click through the choices.  The secret is to change the Trim Order for both intersections to the same number.

Notice the revealing message that pops up when you do this, “Two or more groups have the same trim order.  Same trim order groups miter each other and no other end condition options are available.”  The big hint is to make them the same and then they will all miter each other.  For more details, you can also search the SolidWorks Help for “Weldments – Change Corner Treatment”.

Here is a sample SolidWorks file (in SW 2011 format).  3CornerMiterExample

The last time I added 80/20′s new profiles to my library, I was so excited about the new smooth fractional profiles that I skipped the metric profiles altogether.  Looking back I’ve discovered the new metric profiles are truly unique as they’ve added curved sections (along with a few more LITE profiles).  The presumption is that people will make interesting frame assemblies with 30°, 45° and 60° angled corners in place of the standard 90° box frame design.  I love them and only wish they came in the fractional series as well.  I decided to attempt a design that would highlight the unique capabilities of these profiles.  C3-8020 is the result.  He certainly is not traditional 80/20 frame design, but he looks very cool.  You will have to pay extra to get him anodized gold, but I think it would be worth it.

I’ve uploaded all of the new profiles to 3DContentCentral as before AND I’ve placed them all in one slender zip file here.  Enjoy!

CurvedProfiles (1.4Mb)

Company policy states, “Thou shalt not send proprietary engineering data to anyone outside the company.”  This is, of course, for good reason as your engineering design data is what differentiates you from every other competitor, it’s who you are, it’s your life blood and deserves protection at all costs (within reason).  Enforce the policy and you upset the customer or worse yet, lose the sale.  Send them the production drawing and you slowly erode the value of your intellectual property and run the risk of your competitor or customer stealing your design.  Non Disclosure Agreements (NDA’s) can help, but they are a pain because you have to get lawyers involved and they’re difficult to manage.  Some customers just will not sign them – what can you do?

The solution:  Customer Use Drawings.  Customer Use (CU) drawings are just what they sound like, a drawing made for a customer to use.  They are different from production drawings that contain every detail needed to manufacture something.  The information they offer is sufficient for the customer to make proper use of your product in their application.  The level of detail will vary widely, but you can always expect a CU drawing to have less detail than a production drawing.

Companies handle CU drawings in different ways.  Some will assign a completely different drawing number to a drawing that is designated for customer use.  This can be challenging if you do not have an efficient way to link CU numbers to production numbers.  Initial drawing creation is fairly simple as you can just take the production drawing and do a Save As to the new number.  Then add, delete or change the drawing for customer use and you’re done.  As you can see, one major limitation of this method is that now the production drawing and the CU drawing are no longer linked to each other.  They might be driven by the same part or assembly so major design changes will carry through, but they will now have independent revision histories.  The engineer/designer assigned to make changes at some future date needs to be careful to update both drawings separately.  This doesn’t always ever happen.

Another method for creating CU drawings is to use the same drawing file for both.  With this method, everything comes from one file so updates are simple.  New drawing numbers do not need to be created and managed, making the search for the CU drawing the same as the search for the production version.  Drawing creation is even easier than a Save As because you don’t need to delete anything.  The only drawback that I can see is that if you revise a production part from A to B and change a feature that doesn’t show up on the CU drawing, you may still want to output a revised CU drawing to be consistent.  I recommend hiding the revision history on a CU drawing so this change may be nothing more than renaming the file (if you have the revision level in the filename).  Having a different drawing number for the CU drawing enables independent revision histories.  Most cases for the application of CU drawings, however, involve special one-time circumstances where a customer is asking for something out of the ordinary like the dimensions of the “small thermal exhaust port right below the main port”.  A typical configuration drawing of the entire assembly would never include such inconsequential dimensions as no customer would need them (except yours).  A CU drawing could be quickly made of just the “exhaust port” so the customer could be sure their “product” will fit inside.  These cases are usually one-time requests that vary from customer to customer making separate revision histories unnecessary.

The tool that makes it possible to create production drawings and CU drawings from the same file is Layers.  If you have a 2D CAD background like I do, you have probably worked with layers before.  At WDI, like most firms that design products that fit inside buildings, we would design an entire themed attraction in one 2D drawing file using a different layer for every discipline.  Each drawing sheet would have only certain layers showing and all the others hidden.  In the 3D realm, this seems foreign to some, but the old rules still apply and layers make CU drawings possible.

In SolidWorks, the first thing you might consider is to turn on the Layer toolbar.

This gives you easy access to all of the layers and the button that brings up the Layers dialog box.  Things you can control with the Layers dialog box include layer name and description, layer visibility (on/off), object color, object linetype style and object linetype thickness.

By default, SolidWorks places all objects on a special layer called –None-.  This layer is special because it doesn’t really exist.  It cannot be turned off nor changed.  I mention it as if it were a real layer because it can be selected from the Layer toolbar when you are choosing what layer to place an object on.  Placing an object on the –None- layer makes it always visible.

I created a few standard layers in my drawing templates.  First, a layer called NOSHOW which is a dumping ground for important information that may be needed to make a drawing but you don’t want to show when creating output.  Currently on the NOSHOW layer are dimensions used to define the titleblock.  SolidWorks lets you hide things at will but it’s not always easy to unhide them if you do not know they are there.  The NOSHOW layer makes it easy to see what’s there but meant not to be shown.

In addition, a layer called FORMAT where I put the drawing format (titleblock, border, etc.) enables me to turn off the sheet format when I want to print a copy of the drawing with just the drawing views and no titleblock.  Having a titleblock implies officiality, completeness, design verification, drawing checks and approvals, assigned part numbers, etc.  No titleblock implies a quick sketch, a negotiable design, a work in progress, not complete nor official, open to discussion, etc.  There is a time and a place for both making the FORMAT layer a valuable tool.

The other two layers I created are CUSTOMER USE and NOT FOR CUSTOMER.  Placing data on these layers and turning the appropriate layer on or off makes creating CU drawings a reality.  To create a CU drawing from a production drawing, simply select the items that are not for customer (CTRL-Click to select multiple items) and place them on the NOT FOR CUSTOMER layer by selecting the layer in the toolbar.  Turn off that layer by launching the Layers dialog box and clicking the light bulb icon beside it and click OK.  Change your current layer from -None- to CUSTOMER USE by selecting it from the pop-up list in the toolbar.  Add any details that are customer specific including a note that says CUSTOMER USE DRAWING.  Any items left on the –None- layer will show up on both the CU drawing and the production drawing.

By hiding the CUSTOMER USE layer and showing the NOT FOR CUSTOMER layer, you can see what the production drawing will look like.  I usually place some text on the NOT FOR CUSTOMER layer somewhere outside the printable area that says, “THE ANNOTATIONS ON THIS LAYER ARE NOT FOR CUSTOMER USE”.  This helps the user to know what layers are turned on or off.

The final step is output.  It is always a good practice to save engineering documentation in a neutral file format, preferably one that is difficult to edit.  Many companies use PDF files for their released documents.  The Save As tool in SolidWorks includes a PDF option, making creating PDF’s easy.  I typically recommend using a filename that captures the moment in time for the file.  For example, a drawing 84848.slddrw could be saved as 84848.pdf but the next time it is revised, a new PDF would overwrite the old.  How would you know what version of the file you had?  Saving it as 84848 Rev A.pdf creates a snapshot in time at Rev A for this drawing.  A revised drawing would become 84848 Rev B.pdf thus preserving the older version.  If your revision system doesn’t include revision tracking, you might use the date instead, as in 84848 07Jul10.pdf.  For a Customer Use drawing, I recommend appending CU to the end of the filename so they sort next to each other in your file system (e.g. 84848 Rev A CU.pdf).  Adding “CU” to the end makes it clear what the file is intended for.

My drawing templates are setup to include both the CUSTOMER USE and the NOT FOR CUSTOMER layers but they are both turned off.  All drawing is done on the –None- layer.  The CU features lie dormant until I get that call for some obscure question about the size of my exhaust port compared to the size of a womp rat.  Since I’ve never seen a womp rat and I’m not sure what the customer really needs, I send them a CU drawing of the exhaust port and everybody is happy (for now).

For your convenience I’ve created a detailed printable tutorial that you can download here:  AVSITUT-0017 CustomerUseDrawings Rev B.

SolidWorks 2010 files for this tutorial can be downloaded here:  CustomerUseDrawings.

Update:  Special thanks to GabiJack.com for the idea of placing a downloadable pdf tutorial at the end of this post.  Her tutorial on Modeling a pair of scissors is an excellent example.

In the design phase, however, the grooved profiles drive me crazy.  I use SolidWorks to design my frames because the weldment tools make it so easy.  But, when you make a drawing of an 80/20 frame, it looks like a big blob of thick black ink spilled all over your page. Every one of those grooves creates 2 lines and the standard single-width profile has 4 grooves per side.  A view which would normally have a few lines per stick of 80/20 has many.  What a mess this makes if your views are small because your frame is large (and who makes a 1:1 scale drawing of something as simple as an 80/20 frame?).

Smooth profiles to the rescue.  Thank you 80/20. I just completed a design for 3 new frames and they are going to look so nice with the new smooth profiles.  In addition to the improvement on the drawings, working with these in 3D is also much improved. The big black blob thing is also a problem in 3D but more importantly, it is much easier to mate other parts to your 80/20 frame because you do not need to zoom in so far to pick the correct face to mate to. All of those grooves always had a vertigo effect on me forcing me to pan/zoom/rotate my model to reorient myself. The smooth profiles are much better.

But wait, there’s more! The title of this post implies more to be discussed. So, here it is: I downloaded all of 80/20′s new profiles from their website and did some work to convert all of them to SolidWorks 2010 weldment profile library features. They are all available for individual download at 3DContentCentral. Also, for your convenience, they are all here in one chubby zip file. Place them in your weldment profile directory and you should be able to enjoy all of the benefits of smooth profile frame creation that I’ve mentioned above. Special thanks to Van Graves who provided quality control on these. I finished them late last night but had to fix them all this morning after he pointed out some missing critical features. Working as a team is always better than going it alone. -Amos

SmoothProfiles (3MB)

Update: if you’re looking for all of 80/20′s old profiles (the groovy style or the metric products), I’ve already made those available here.

The Problem:  design a new wheel in SolidWorks for the SC10 RC car.

The Rules:  Points will be awarded in these key areas:  1) Is the wheel designed and supplied in SolidWorks format? 2) Is the wheel rendered and/or animated in a cool way? 3) Is the wheel construction feasible? (decided by Team Associated engineers/designers)

The rules seem a bit awkward to me – the company obviously wants some free design work, but I want to have some fun. My best designs come when I ignore the Rules and just get creative (notice I said “ignore” and not “forget” – eventually you need to come back to the rules, but if you can ignore them for awhile, your creativity will not be limited.)

My wife still has her childhood Spirograph!

The first idea that comes to mind is an old toy – the Spirograph. What if my RC car wheel had spokes that looped around in a continuous weave that looked like one of those designs you can make with a Spirograph?

There must be a mathematical equation to describe the path made when a point on one circle is plotted as it rotates around another circle. If I can plot the path mathematically, maybe I can create a 3D path in SolidWorks to describe a sweep for the spokes of my wheel.  After searching for “spirograph equation”, I discovered David Little’s page at Penn State University. As it turns out, the path of a Spirograph is called an epicycloid.  It’s described by a pair of equations:

x(t)=(R+r)cos(t) + p*cos((R+r)t/r)
y(t)=(R+r)sin(t) + p*sin((R+r)t/r)


R and r are the radii of the 2 circles, p is the position along the radius of the first circle (the hole you put your pencil in on a Spirograph).  Mr Little’s website has a cool Java applet that draws epicycloids based upon your input. If you experiment with this tool, you can discover all sorts of interesting geometry.  After a few iterations, I found a combination that I thought might look like the spokes of a wheel using the values R=72, r=66 and p=67.

Where would engineers be without the spreadsheet? I remember seeing a documentary on PBS called Nerds where I learned that the first spreadsheet was called Visicalc and it was for accountants.  Excel is the tool that I am most familiar with – version 2003 being most preferred. The Excel version of these formulas seems a bit more complicated. First, cells are made for all of the constants (R, r, p). I added a few extra for scaling – the final goal is an equation of a curve that will intersect the hub and rim of our wheel. Examination of the formula quickly reveals that t is an angular variable. I made a column for t in degrees because I know this is a cyclical function that will repeat every 360º (remember, it’s a circle rotating around a circle). I also made a column for radians (degrees times pi divided by 180) because Excel evaluates sine and cosine in radians. I probably could change this default somewhere, but that is something I would probably forget later and it’s easy to remember how to convert degrees to radians.

I know I want X and Y coordinates for the entire path and that they will eventually return to zero. I wasn’t sure how to know how many points to plot so I made some check formulas that subtract the current X and Y values from the original X and Y values – when the check columns both hit zero, I know I’ve returned home. The last step for X and Y is to plot a curve using Excel’s graph tool. The Excel graph matches the epicycloid plot so I know I’m on the right track. (Actually, I’m thoroughly appreciating the same feature that the original users of Visicalc appreciated, Excel’s power to iterate until I get it right.)

Some interesting observations: my epicycloid has 12 loops and the equation to describe it requires 3960 points at one degree increments. If I made another with 22 loops, I would expect it to take 7560 points to describe it (360 x 21). For some reason, my check equations did not exactly return to zero until I placed a round function into my formulas – I added a variable for the number of rounded decimal places as well.

What about Z? The equations for an epicycloid are only in 2 dimensions, but I want a 3D path for my wheel spokes. The options are limitless, but a sine function would make a nice smooth equation and it would behave in a similar way as the epicycloid equations. Some constants are necessary to vary how often the equation returns to zero and vary its scale. Graphing the function over the same range gives a clue how the path will vary in Z.

Excel’s worksheet functionality makes it easy to create formatted output. It turns out that the way the wheel was originally created, I need my X and Z data points to be swapped. By creating a new worksheet with only X, Y and Z values, I can swap the values very easily. The final result is a text file with 3960 points of X, Y and Z data.

Now to SolidWorks! The Insert Curve Through XYZ Points tool quickly creates a 3D path.

As a point of interest, I believe it was because of this tool that Walt Disney Imagineering chose SolidWorks as it’s 3D design tool – they had 3D points to describe the path of a rollercoaster and needed a tool to model the track. I created a second sketch on a principal plane perpendicular to the path. I started with just a sketch point and some dimensions tieing it down to the path.

Then I made the geometry for my sweep all tied to the sketch point. This way, if I want to change the profile from a circle to a square, I don’t lose my dimensions when I delete the circle. The Sweep tool turns all this hard work into an effortless expression of mathematical beauty. A few features to tie the spokes to the wheel and I have my entry.

Of course, I must return to the rules. I already know I will not win because, although my design is interesting, it cannot be molded which is the intent of rule 3. Rule 1 is easy – SolidWorks makes the whole thing possible. So Rule 2 is the only one left to satisfy.

I’m running out of time so a quick assembly with a cut-away view and a few minutes of rendering in PhotoView 360 and, at last, I have an entry.

Here are all of the files I used to create this design.  -Amos

AEA Entry 1 of 2
AEA Entry 2 of 2

Followup:  SolidWorks World was great. The CSWP event was very fun even though I am a very poor RC driver. I did not win the design contest (for obvious reasons). I did, however, win one of 40 SC-10 RC cars, which is VERY cool!

Non-Welded Weldments

SW FILES

8020 PROFILES

Update: I’ve just added all of the new 80/20 smooth profiles here.

I discovered yesterday from reading Mike Pucket’s blog that the SolidWorks certification team had released another advanced exam, CSWP Weldments.  Since I am scheduled to teach a hands-on session at SolidWorks World next month titled, “Non-Welded Weldments – Using SolidWorks Weldment Tools and 3DContentCentral to Create Cool 80/20 Structures”, I thought it would be a good idea to get certified.

The first thing I discovered is that SolidWorks is just like any other company – their website is not up-to-date.  The certification page in the Customer Portal lists a coupon code for subscription customers to take an advanced exam for free (one of the perks of being on subscription).  The code didn’t work.  It had expired 5 days ago.  The Weldments exam wasn’t even listed.  A quick email to certification@solidworks.com brought a new code from Av (Avelino Rochino, Certification Specialist) that worked just fine.

On to the Sample Exam.  The nice thing about the sample exam which can be said about all of their sample exams, is that it is, in some ways, harder than the actual test.  I know Weldments fairly well after creating over 40 weldment profile library features of 80/20 extrusions and uploading them to 3DContentCentral.  It turns out that my weakness is 3D Sketches.  I really had to work to get my answer to match the key on the last page of the sample.  [Note to self, work on 3D sketch techniques.]  Next the sample exam showed me something I’d never done before, a 3 member miter.It’s possible to have 3 members come to a corner and miter all 3 together.  It was new to me and took a few minutes to master – a few minutes well spent.  So the sample exam was a challenge, but I did all right, so on to the real thing.

120 minutes, 27 questions.  I jumped into the first few with fervor and made a few profiles.  Something to consider if you work mostly in inches, make yourself a part template that is in metric as most every CSWP exam I’ve taken has started most exercises in metric units.  Another suggestion that I teach my students is to add the Weldment Profiles directory to your Design Library task pane.It makes it easier to create weldment profile library features (drag the sketch from the tree to the pane and drop it) and you get a nice preview of the profiles that you don’t get inside the weldment tools.

So I felt pretty confident after the first few consecutive questions and then I remembered my failure in the cave of 3D sketching.  I took my own advice from the Sheet Metal exam – stop and read every problem.  I’ve recently made lots of drawings with weldment cut list tables, so I jumped on those questions next.  Then to the advanced questions which focused on proper profile alignment and finally the big 3D sketch problem.  I was glad I saved this part for last because at that point I figured I had already passed the test.  I’d also wasted 15 minutes of test time on a quick bio break and an urgent discussion with a customer about their customer who wanted us to fudge our paperwork because they made a mistake on their paperwork.  There’s nothing like having someone ask you to throw away hours of work you did over 2 years to fix a paperwork glitch to distract you during a CSWP exam.

I tried hard, it looked perfect, but my 3D sketch answer didn’t match any of the choices.  I triple checked, redrew some of it and still no match.  Finally I chose the closest answer and the test ended.  Wow, 120 minutes are gone and I passed.  Not a perfect score, but I can proudly say that I’m the first person in Minnesota that chooses to be listed in the CSWP database to pass the Weldments exam.  Hmmm.  Well, my kids weren’t that impressed either.  The good thing is that I can teach my SolidWorks World class with official credentials.  And, I can now add CSWP-AWS to CSWP, CSWP-ASMS and of course, BSME.  Woohoo!

The exam was pretty fair.  There was one question series that didn’t specify a material in the questions but it was already chosen for you in the downloaded file you must start with.  The other exams are notorious for throwing in material changes to catch you up, so I’m hyper sensitive to this – it should have been in the question a least for verification.  Also, on my system, everything seemed to hang for an undetermined period of time after downloading a file (several times during the exam).  This is a bit unnerving for fear the exam is locked up and all of your time will be wasted.  Overall, a good test – glad I passed.  I’m not sure where you stand on divine intervention, but I can honestly say that I thanked God more than once during the test for showing me something in question 12 that corrected a slight mistake I made in question 8.  It’s a good thing you can go back and improve your answers.  Say a little prayer before you begin, it will help.

-Amos