Monday, July 13, 2015

DriveWorks and HSMWorks...

So, we know that in Inventor we can use ilogic to create some automated parts and assemblies to quickly and easily modify them, but in SolidWorks we have what is called DriveWorks.
Now, the standard DriveWorks that comes with SolidWorks is the Express version that is free.  now this is not as powerful as ilogic, but it will still do the trick to help us speed design changes or creation of parts for customers that just want little tweaks from a standard part.

So, in this I am not going to walk through the whole process (mainly because this would be one long post if I did).  But, I will show phases of it, and I will also be creating a video of me doing this as well.

Here we go!
I have a model with 2 solid bodies (i know you have probably seen this part before).  1 represents the finished product and the other represents the stock.  Now, the stock is driven by the dimensions of the finished part so you won't have to worry about the stock being wrong.

On the Evaluate Tab in SolidWorks you will find the DriveWorksXpress Wizard.  Click on this to get it going.  So, i went through and created the new database, and am to the point where I am capturing dimensions and features that are needed to drive this part.
Once I have the dimensions captured that I need the next step is to create the inputs that will define the form that is filled out.

The last thing to do is to build the rules that are going to drive the part.  So, in this case I am going to have all the inputs driving my dimensions so it is pretty easy working this one out.
the only other rule that you have to build is the naming of the part.  For this I just had it driven by the customer name which is one of the input values.
Now, I have a functional DriveWorks Build, but we are looking at the HSMWorks aspect as well.
So, in my CAMManager tab you can see that i have toolpaths already programmed for this part.  And the setup is setup to read the part and the stock solid that i built as well within the part.
Now, I can run my DriveWorks Form and see what happens.


Once I hit the create button you will see that the part has now been created with the new name and you can see in the image below that the toolpaths are still there and are now needing to be regenerated do to the changes in the model.
And now all I have to do is regenerate the toolpaths, post it out and I am good to go.


Later this week I will post another one regarding text and Driveworks with HSMWorks.
Hope you enjoyed this and helps to inspire some new creativeness.

Happy Programming!







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