Week 8: Solidworks

So As mentioned Earlier I've decided to trial Solidworks as a building design and documentation tool for my project this semester. Some discussion and initial results follow after the jump.
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so the main problem with solidworks is that you have to define everything, any physical object is either the product of an extrusion or revolution process, each sketch has to be linked to a plane, and the plans have to be fully defined by markers in the model. What's more is there is a hierarchy to the parts construction. An initial defining sketch for a part cannot use a reference from drawn elements lower in its file.

But im willing to overlook this drawing method because it also has some advantages. objects can be dynamically altered with dimensions, even from the documentation drawings, and the entire model will update to reflect the changes.

But the main reason I wanted to try this program is because it has very powerful structural simulation tools, computational flow dynamics tools, animation tools and the rendering engine is simply amazing.

I've been tinkering with it for a while and have become basically proficient in it but the fact of the matter is I'm taking a bit of a gamble. While I have performed the simulation tests and modelled things in the wind tunnel of solidworks before, they have always been small simple objects, and I've had all manner of errors spit back at me from the program. What's more is that even a basic flow analysis takes about 4 hours to render, simulations take a similar time.

Nevertheless I'm going to give it a go, and am interested to see how it turns out.

Sources: [Original Works]