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In This Part

Chapter 18

Using DriveWorks Xpress

Chapter 19

Employing Master Model Techniques

Chapter 20

Using Weldments

Chapter 21

Using Mold Tools

Chapter 22

Working with Large Scale Design

Chapter 23

Animating with the MotionManager

Chapter 18: Using DriveWorks Xpress

In This Chapter

Introducing DriveWorks Xpress

Automating Design with DriveWorks Xpress

Discovering what you can do with DriveWorks Xpress

DriveWorks Xpress — DWX for short — is rules-based design automation software that is aimed at engineered-to-order businesses. The version you find in SolidWorks 2011 is free and available with all levels of SolidWorks. It enables you to drive the creation of variations of parts, assemblies, and drawings based on rules attached to a simple form that you fill out. SolidWorks 2011 contains a new version of DWX, where the interface resides mainly in the Task Pane.

The basic workflow with DWX is as follows:

1. Understand the various factors that drive the design of a product.

2. Reduce the factors and the potential values to a form with questions requiring responses selected from a list, or that are numerical.

3. Create a model parametrically driven by dimensions linked to the form.

4. Make sure that assemblies, parts, and drawings all update properly in response to data from the form.

5. Run the project, fill out the form, and watch the assembly, parts, and drawings update.

The results of using DWX are very familiar – the ability to make many versions of an assembly. When you first use DWX, it just looks like a nice interface on a design table. While these do describe some of what DWX does, they don't describe all of it. DWX does not work by using configurations. Every time you run a DWX job, it makes new copies of the original files and follows the rules you establish during setup. This method offers several advantages. Primarily, you never have to worry about separate projects being tied up together like different configurations in the same assembly do. You save them out with unique filenames, and the projects are not connected at all. Doing this with configurations would be difficult and problematic. You could certainly do it manually by copying assemblies, parts, and drawings, but with DWX it happens automatically.

Introducing DriveWorks Xpress

You access DWX from the Tools menu in SolidWorks. It is not an add-in, and it is available in all versions of SolidWorks. Figure 18.1 shows the initial Task Pane interface.

FIGURE 18.1

Getting started with DriveWorks Xpress

If you are new to rules-based or knowledge-based engineering tools in general, DWX offers you an easy and out-of-the-box method to automate repetitive design work. If you are already familiar with one of DWX's big brothers, DriveWorks or DriveWorks Solo, you may notice that the Xpress version lacks certain functionality of the paid versions, such as advanced file management, non-SolidWorks-based interfaces, web configurator, Product Data Management integration, administrator interface, and so on. SolidWorks users do use the Xpress version for real production work. You should try it, and if you need to use the more advanced features, you can always upgrade.

Exploring DriveWorks Xpress for your products

If your place of business produces built-to-order products and you are not using a rules-based configurator tool like DWX, then you may be missing design automation savings.

Many products can benefit from DWX. If you think of any type of product that can have unlimited variations due to size or replaceable parts, then you can probably automate the design of that product. For example, think of windows that you might buy for your home. Windows can be built to order and are made from many smaller parts that must be cut to different sizes, which change from order to order. Design automation collects information about the new design from the user, and then automatically creates the changes from a default model. Figure 18.2 shows a window that might be ordered in this way.