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3-D Fastener Library for Solidworks

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nhengineer

nhengineer

Mechanical
Apr 2, 2004
15
Greetings,

Does anyone know of a threaded fastener library for Solidworks available on the Internet. Freeware would be good. Shareware would be OK.

Regards,
DSLee
 
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NHEngineer,
Is this a leigt copy of SW97plus? If so.....I think you can upgade it for a couple of grand though a VAR. Hope hope your boss can least cough up a couple of bucks. Just a thought.

Scott and CorBlimeyLimey,
Am I all wet on this one? Sounds like NHEngineer is struggling here. The poor chap (that ones for you CorBlimeyLimey).[glasses]

macduff
 
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When we skipped our SolidWorks upgrade for about 5-6 months, we where told that we had to pay back support fees. Our VAR worked a deal because we had budget hardships in our department for a while. The wait still cost us extra when we did restart support. Skipping support is not saving anything. I would think that it would be cheaper to purchase the SolidWorks Office Pro than all the labor hours put into work a rounds.

Bradley
 
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Bradley
A previous company I worked for had the same problem with their CAM software, although we were several years without an upgrade. They insisted we had to pay back-support, even though we hadn't used it. We told them to stick it where the sun don't shine ... we will go elsewhere & purchase a new copy or an alternative program, as the cost was geeting close to buying new anyway ... they soon recognized the error of their ways & relented. We got the upgrade for cost of one years support. [thumbsup2]

[cheers] from (the City of) Barrie, Ontario.

[lol] Everyone has a photographic memory. Some just don't have film. [lol]
 
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I would recommend you upgrade to the latest version and also upgrade the seat to SW Office. SW Office Pro is everything in Office plus PDMworks. If you don't need PDMworks, don't get SW Office Pro, stay with SW Office.

If he is struggling then he needs to go through a tutorial. The only way to learn is to do it yourself or pay for training. There is no one out there that would train him on 97. He either needs to find some 97 Tutorial books or one of the old 3rd party published books on SW97. I think David Murpy wrote one of his first books in that year.

NHEngineer,

You might try looking online to see if someone has some old SW books. Also, you might try posting a new thread here asking to see if someone has some old tutorial books. I would take it offline after you get a contact since selling items on this website is prohibited.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP [borg2]
CSWP.jpg

faq731-376
 
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NHEngineer,
Tear the office upside down looking for the CIMLOGIC Toolbox/SE v2.5 or 3, that might have been purchased with your SolidWorks. If you can find it, but can not find the authorization code, you can plead with SolidWorks customer service to fax you whatever the old registration record might have been.
Unfortunately, most of what you can get now, will not support 97Plus file format. Building what you can from the feature palette sample parts and adding your own design tables is probably the best approach.
Come to the local users group meeting in Nashua on April, 27; and I will talk you through it.
Otherwise you might try getting ACIS or Parasolid files from a free copy of Thomas Register PartSpec or something similar. It will be very difficult to find any downloads still supporting 97Plus native file format.

Your boss doesn't want to know what I would charge to recreate the 1000 Toolbox items and their million plus size and length configurations. It might be worth getting a VoTech student in for a couple of nights a week to generate library files for you. Many cheap bosses don't view labor costs the same way the see equipment or software purchases. And the kids cost will look darn good next to my quote.
Of course, upgrading to SW Office 2004 would cost less than 1/10 of what this little project will burn up in labor and overhead.

DesignSmith

Ps. CIMLOGIC Toolbox/Pro for AS went off the market in February 2001 and is no longer produced. SolidWorks Customer Service will help with providing old registration records, as long as the seats keep running. But that is all.



DesignSmith
 
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MacDuff said:
Is this a leigt copy of SW97plus? If so.....I think you can upgade it for a couple of grand though a VAR. Hope hope your boss can least cough up a couple of bucks. Just a thought.
Scott and CorBlimeyLimey,
Am I all wet on this one? Sounds like NHEngineer is struggling here. The poor chap (that ones for you CorBlimeyLimey).
macduff[/quoet]

MacDuff,
Yeah, it's a legit copy. I've seen the CD. He won't spend a dime on engineering. I have to bring my stuff to Kinkos for plotting big drawings. In a month or so, he could have bought a plotter with the Kinko's bill. The cylinder took all morning but it came out swell and I learned a lot about SW.
David Lee
Click to expand...
 
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SBaugh said:
You might try looking online to see if someone has some old SW books. Also, you might try posting a new thread here asking to see if someone has some old tutorial books. I would take it offline after you get a contact since selling items on this website is prohibited.
Click to expand...

I did the 97Plus tutorial. I must be missing something though. Although 4 hours for a cylinder may have been a bit excessive, it came out slick. Is there a way I can post it here and have you guys critique it and tell me where I went wrong?
David Lee
 
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DesignSmith said:
Otherwise you might try getting ACIS or Parasolid files from a free copy of Thomas Register PartSpec or something similar. It will be very difficult to find any downloads still supporting 97Plus native file format.
Click to expand...

Can ACIS or ParaSolid files be converted to SW files?
 
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NHEngineer & CBL,

I'm pretty sure 97 did have design tables. We started with 97+ and set up our fastener library using tables. However, I do not recommend setting them up the way we did.

We have one part for each type of fastener and table the sizes (diameter, thread pitch and length). The problem with this method is that our most frequently used fastener (hex head bolt) has over 310 different configurations and the part file is over 2.5 MB. Get a hundred of these in an assembly and you will see a major performance hit.

I would recommend tabling the length only, and making copies of that file to change the diameters. Also look into Mate References which will allow you to drag the fastener directly to a hole, and all mates will be added automatically. Great time saver!

Michelle
 
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NHEng,

SolidWorks will read in ACIS or Parasolid files, but you will not get feature dimensions. So you might import the longest screw you can and then use a cut feature and a design table to get all your various lengths. The catch is that if you download an ACIS or Parasolid file from a vendor's website, you may have to be carefull to choose an ACIS version 97 Plus supported. (the importers are upgraded nearly every release) Look in the Help or in the File Save options to determine which versions of ACIS and Parasolid 97 Plus worked with.

DesignSmith
 
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Michelle,
Mate References did not happen until SW 2003. We have to put every screw into our assemblies. This feature saved us thousand's of dollars.

Bradley
 
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Bradley,

I just did a little research and mate references were added in SWx99 (I knew we were using them before 2003), but you could only have one. I also found out that the feature pallet wasn't added until SWx98.

It looks like NHEng is out of luck for those two.
 
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Michelle,
Thanks, wish I would have known this back then. Could have saved even more time.


Bradley
 
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SW Toolbox parts use Equations with the combination of a Access DB. I'm not saying build it like this, but I think Equations would work better than a DT would. I believe DT can not be saved in a Library feature. That's why I suggest using Equations.

NHEngineer,

You could honestly make those parts pretty quick, now adding a equations will come with practice. If you can't find the Cimlogic Toolbox, re-making the fasteners maybe your only option left.

As for posting files you will need or find someone that is willing to share his\her Web space. Then they can post your file and place a link here for everyone to download your file(s).

Regards

Scott Baugh, CSWP [borg2]
CSWP.jpg

faq731-376
 
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NHEng,
You mentioned that you had seen the disks. Can you also find the box with the books? The tutorial for 97+ was a book then instead of being online and should be in the box along with a user's guide.
 
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NHEng,
Without Feature Palette examples in 97 Plus, and most downloadable files supporting only newer SW versions, you are pretty much stuck with importing dumb Parasolid files wherever you can get them from or making your own.
If you want to do your own, you can at least learn from prior mistakes. I have a long tip about the subject posted:
If you want further direct technique tips like that, you can email me off-line.


DesignSmith
 
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MElam (Mechanical) Apr 6, 2004
NHEng,
You mentioned that you had seen the disks. Can you also find the box with the books? The tutorial for 97+ was a book then instead of being online and should be in the box along with a user's guide.
Click to expand...

There was only one CD in the owner's desk drawer. I printed the User's Guide and the Tutorial while he was with a customer. I returned the CD before he came back. It wasn't in a box. It wasn't even in a case. It was in there with a bunch of other CD's. I feel like a kid in high school doing stuff I'd get yelled at if the teacher came back and caught me. This guy is a skinflint.

David Lee
 
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DesignSmith (Mechanical) Apr 6, 2004
NHEng,

SolidWorks will read in ACIS or Parasolid files, but you will not get feature dimensions. So you might import the longest screw you can and then use a cut feature and a design table to get all your various lengths. The catch is that if you download an ACIS or Parasolid file from a vendor's website, you may have to be carefull to choose an ACIS version 97 Plus supported. (the importers are upgraded nearly every release) Look in the Help or in the File Save options to determine which versions of ACIS and Parasolid 97 Plus worked with.
Click to expand...

I can see that I've got a great deal to learn. What do I look for on the Thomas Register WEB site? Is it called PartSpec?

David Lee
 
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NHEng,

Goto (a Thomas Register site) and click on PartSpec. You need to register and sign in, but it is free. You can download from there, or you should be able to find a request form to get CDs in the mail. Most of the content is 2D DXF, but there are few items that are 3D. (such as cylinders) I haven't used it in a long time, so I can't say which catalog will have good bolts and screws sort of hardware. But its free, and could be worth searching through.
Don't bother downloading 3D DXF files, stick to Parasolid or ACIS. If you can't get those, it may be time to make them yourself.


DesignSmith
 
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