Most Important New Thing You Learned w/Swks?

What is the most unexpected NEW thing you learned using SolidWorks?

The field is WIDE open.

Wacky, Engineering, Design, Materials, Molding, Strength, Linkages...?

You name it.

Bo

 

"The field is WIDE open."

"You name it."

I decided to change the question being asked to:

What is the most unexpected NEW thing you learned about SolidWorks?

I don't run Linux now. I have never run Linux. It seems that it might
be worth running SolidWorks on Linux because Windows is still such a
fucking piece of shit.

How is it possible that after all this time Windows can still suck so
bad? How is it possible that people continue to claim Windows is just
fine? I can't even do a search through 6,000 files without having
Windows File Explorer bog down to useless. I'm running 2 Gigs of RAM
and a processor that's only a year and half old. Would any amount of
processor speed make Windows XP decent? I'm posting from a machine
that has Windows 2000 Professional on it and it's still faster and
better at many things then my Windows XP box with a fairly modern
processor and much more RAM.

 

The most unexpected thing for me, even though I had heard about it for
years, was being able to order, receive and try out 3 different sets
of RP parts all in less than 2 weeks, to nail down a final design on a
plastic part assembly.

Mocking up molded plastic parts prior to that was painful and
painfully slow.

Bo

 

I like UNEXPECTED, & the reason is that in engineering and design, it
is the UNEXPECTED that reveals the most in new products.

Serendipitity might be said to be what a creative person has to turn
the unexpected to good use.

Bo

 

Another: Simulating flexible hinges in plastic parts!

By designing the prospective modeled part as molded and then breaking
it up into solid pieces with hinges that are added, it is possible for
me to mockup a multi-hinge part without elaborate 3rd party software.

Then I have gone one step further:

I have also put the netural axis lenght of a hinge in a formula
determined by the angle of bend and then can alter the angle of bend
and watch the effect of the assembly of a part with two flexible
hinges such that I can prejudge sizing with far greater ability than
trying to do it all by hand calcs.

The only thing SWks does NOT allow is bending a hinge back to
completely flat, as it doesn't like the math, and I haven't looked for
a workaround.

Bo