SollidWorks Routing

[drawoh]

Has anyone here installed and used SolidWorks routing? I am starting design of some electronics enclosures with cables, and I am curious about it.

What do you think of the software?

JHG

 

[JMirisola]

I messed around with it a few years ago and thought it was pretty good. Granted, I didn't have any experience with any other routing software...
Strangely enough, though, I find myself needing to reaquaint myself with it for a project I'm working on now. I had a tutorial at one point, need to dig it up again...

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
CAD Administrator
SW '07 SP2.0, Dell M90, Intel 2 Duo Core, 2GB RAM, nVidia 2500M

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/jeffs_blog

 

[Standing]

I installed a trial version for testing a couple months ago for 30 days. It will take some time to build a library of parts. I was able to get it to work, but is not a plug and play time software. Give extra time in your estimates.
Currently we use AutoCAD to draw our cables. No parametric there.


Bradley
SolidWorks 2007 SP2.2
NVIDIA Quadro FX 3400

 

[Theophilus]

If you don't need this for the cable ends (fittings) necessarily, and if you don't need too many of the cables in any given assembly, I would think a good work-around would be to use a spline in a 3D sketch. Your spline is your path and you sweep a circle profile over it to create your cable. You can edit the path to drag the spline where you need it (and avoid other components). The downside to this is that I think you would have difficulty measuring/tracking the lengths of your cables.



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.

 

[drawoh]

Theophilus,

It is possible to figure out the length of a spline. You know the cross-sectional area and the density. You can ask SolidWorks what the mass is.

I have done the spline method. How far I can go with it depends on how well I can communicate with our electronics people. The automatic routing and pegboard stuff could be useful if the work efficiently.

JHG

 

[Theophilus]

Yeah, maybe you can create a macro or something to speed the length-finding process a bit. Very inefficient (difficult) to do if you have a big mess of cables that get edited somewhat frequently. I think the routing package takes care of that problem, but you could certainly figure it out (and perhaps automate it) yourself, too.



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.

 

[Mindnumb]

I have used the routing for some 6 years now, and find it wery good. stability has been an issue on previous releases, but for 2007 it seems pretty stable. It works pretty well in consert with FlowWorks, although you have to make some considerations when modeling.

The main problem is the trouble you will have with configurations in the routing subassemblies , and if you use PDM works you willl get in to trouble using it for the routing files.

Once you get your library of routing parts up an running you will experience a tremendous speed up on your piping/cable modeling.


Best of luck, Bernt Ødegård.