SOLIDWORKS Premium includes design tools that build a path of pipes, tubes, or electrical cables for your assembly. These tools cover the needs of a growing number of products that use sensors, control systems, and other systems that require wiring and cabling.
Routing creates a special type of subassembly that builds a path of pipes, tubes, or electrical cables between components. Routes include electrical wiring enclosures, fabricated cable, soldered copper, PVC, flexible tubing, welded piping, and associated fittings. Start the route by inserting route components into an assembly to define the start and end connection points of the path. Next, define the path using a 3D sketch. Then, SOLIDWORKS software generates the pipe, tube, and wire parts along the centerline and connects the parts to the route components.
Specific electrical cable harness and conduit design functionality includes the ability to:
- Position all equipment and run electrical routes throughout the overall design
- Route electrical cable, harness, and conduit systems through your product, including ribbon cable
- Determine required lengths of all wires, cables, harness segments as you design
- Flatten electrical cable harness for manufacturing documentation
- Import “From-To” electrical connection information from schematic design tools
- Automatically route segments through your products to speed creation
- Generate complete bill of material (BOM) and wire cut lists for harnesses for manufacturing
- Create cable harnesses as mechanical-only or with electrical data
- Run rigid or flexible electrical conduit segments
- Include additional components, such as mounting hardware, splices, connectors, insulation, looms, heat-shrink tubing, cable ties
- Routing Library Manager (RLM) wizard to guide creation of custom electrical components
The Rotating Regions capability with SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation enables designers and engineers to quickly and efficiently analyze Fluid Flow impact while they create their design for high quality, performance, and safety.
The capability simulate Fluid Driving motion with rotating regions for multiple motion cases:
- Wall Motion – enables product engineers to define Fluid Driving translation or rotation of a surface
- Global Rotation – enables computational fluid dynamics (CFD) users to define Fluid Driving rotation, such as a single impeller
- Local Region – enables CFD users to define local Fluid Driving rotation for multiple rotating regions, such as fans in an electronic enclosure
- The Sliding Mesh capability simulates rotating equipment where Fluid Flow entering the rotor is nonsymmetric with regard to the axis of rotation. Transient by nature, this powerful feature offers a wide range of possible simulations for Fluid Driving rotational cases.
Determine the impact of a liquid or gas on product performance during the design phase using CAD-embedded SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) studies provide meaningful insight into the impact of fluid flow, so you can address problems early, reduce the need for costly prototypes, and eliminate rework.
Fluid Flow Simulation Overview
CFD simulates fluid (either liquid or gas) passing through or around an object. The analysis can be very complex—for example, one calculation can contain heat transfer, mixing, and unsteady and compressible flows. The ability to predict the impact of such flows on your product performance can be time consuming and expensive without some type of simulation tool.
SOLIDWORKS CFD analysis for liquid flow, gas flow, or heat transfer can help you deliver innovative designs and greater product efficiency. Typical problems solved include:
- Pressure drop for a valve to calculate its efficiency
- Airflow inside a home or office environment to calculate thermal comfort factors
- Temperature distribution for an electronic component to calculate electronic thermal models
- Aerodynamic simulation to calculate lift and drag forces
