Checking safety critical spacing
Checking safety critical spacing
(OP)
I am looking for a way to determine if 2 parts are within a specified distance from one another.
Example: a battery terminal needs to be 5mm away from any metal surface. I would like to be able to pick 2 components, the terminal and the enclosure, and have Solidworks tell me if there are any areas that violate the 5mm spacing. I know interference detection will not work (because there is no interference)... does anyone know of any other way to accomplish this short of measuring distances manually?
Thanks,
Jim
Example: a battery terminal needs to be 5mm away from any metal surface. I would like to be able to pick 2 components, the terminal and the enclosure, and have Solidworks tell me if there are any areas that violate the 5mm spacing. I know interference detection will not work (because there is no interference)... does anyone know of any other way to accomplish this short of measuring distances manually?
Thanks,
Jim






RE: Checking safety critical spacing
Select the two components from Feature Manager Tree, and use "Measure" command to measure distance between the two components. "Measure" command can be found at Tool menu.
Alex
RE: Checking safety critical spacing
You can use the offset surfaces command and some of the other surface commands for this.
I know of no other way automagically....
Regards,
Anna Wood
SW 2007 SP2.2, WinXP
Dell Precision 380, Pentium D940, 4 Gigs RAM, FX3450
http://designsmarter.typepad.com/solidmuse
http://www.phxswug.com
RE: Checking safety critical spacing
Scott Baugh, CSWP![[pc2] pc2](https://www.tipmaster.com/images/pc2.gif)
www.scottjbaugh.com
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies
RE: Checking safety critical spacing
Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.
RE: Checking safety critical spacing
RE: Checking safety critical spacing
In my past life in automotive product design when we were doing 3D wireframe and surface models in CGS, we would just offset the few surfaces of interest then spin the model around with our spaceball and give it a good look for interference.
If there was air to spare life was good....
A configuration for interference checking would be all you need to keep your model clean.
Regards,
Anna Wood
SW 2007 SP2.2, WinXP
Dell Precision 380, Pentium D940, 4 Gigs RAM, FX3450
http://designsmarter.typepad.com/solidmuse
http://www.phxswug.com
RE: Checking safety critical spacing
However, I didn't think about offset surfaces and thickening... sounds like a good solution. Thanks Anna and Jeff. Next step will be to use VBA to try and automate this
Jim
RE: Checking safety critical spacing
It is not possible to miss a spot (did not look at the model thoroughly enough, etc) when you use "Measure" command. You were looking for distance between the terminal and the enclosure. This measure command will give you exact what you want. Just make sure that you select your terminal and enclosure from Feature Tree Manager when you use "Measure" command. If you select them from srceen graphic area, you may not have them selected depending on setting of your selection filter.
Good Luck!
Alex