PhotoView 360 2010 - fast tutorial

Ok guys I know I said that I will do an assembly tutorial but one of my READERS asked me to do a PhotoView 360 tutorial (I wrote readers with capital letters because I'm excited that someone is interested in my blog). So I will do a fast tutorial and by fast i mean that I will not go deep in to details. Ok here we go. Before a month ago one of my best friends gave me a key so one day I was so bored and I made a model in SolidWorks. The key looks like this:

Now when you have a model that you want to use you open your PhotoView 360. Above the work area you have a tool bar that looks like this:

In the first row you have:
Open File - here you open your SolidWorks part that you will use in PhotoView 360
Appearances - here you choose the appearance of your part (you add textures and colors)
Environments - here you select the environment for you  part (background and scenes)
Settings - the main thing that you have to do here is to input the dimensions of the picture that you will make
Final Render - when you select this PhotoView 360 will start to render your picture
Gallery - opens an online gallery
Help - opens the help menu

In the second row on the left you can select where on the SolidWorks part you want to apply the appearances (Face, Body, Part, Assembly). And on the right in the second row you have navigation and manipulation commands.

Ok, now that I explained the basics you open your part and go to Appearances and select the appearance that you would like to use. You just select the appearance and drag and drop it on the part or on a face.

Now you go to Environments and select an environment that works for you. You just drag and drop the environment to the work area.

Ok, when you did this you go to Settings to input your picture dimension.

When you have finished with the preparation of the part you select Final Render and PhotoView 360 will start with the rendering of your picture. This may take some time (it depends of your computer configuration, your picture dimensions and the complexity of the part/assembly.

When PhotoView 360 finishes with the rendering you just select Save Image and you decide where you want to save the picture and select the format in which you want to save the picture.

You get a picture like above.

Sponsored by toolshop Alatnica D-plast from Osijek. You can look up them on the folowing link:
www.d-plast.hr

Guys write to me, whether in comments below or by email (goran.sostarko@gmail.com). If you have some questions, wishes for future tutorial etc.

SolidWorks sheet metal basics tutorial

Hello again. In this tutorial I will show you the basics of sheet metal in SolidWorks. I decided to create an U bracket for this tutorial . First you go to the Insert/Sheet Metal/Base Flange... Then you have to pick a plane in which you want to draw the sketch. I picked up the front plane. Now you draw a sketch of the bracket and you get something like this:

You have your sketch and now you want to add the third dimension to get a 3D model. You go to Features tab and you use the Extrude Boss/Base command. The width of my bracket is 20 mm. When you have your 3D model you will want to create some fillets on the ends of the bracket. To do this you go to Features tab and you use the Fillet command. Also you will want to create two holes on the ends od the bracket so you could mount your bracket to something. Now you will have something like this:

Now you want to make this model a sheet metal part. To do this you will go to Insert/Sheet Metal/Convert To Sheet Metal... For the fixed entity you will select a face that will be fixed and for the bend edges you will select all the other faces. Now you have your sheet metal part. On the left side of the screen in the design tree you unsuppress the last feature (Flatt-Pattern) and you get your bracket flattened like this:

You can download this U bracket on the link below:

http://www.filefactory.com/file/ce9f32e/n/Obujmica.SLDPRT

In my next tutorial I will show you the basics of assembly in SolidWorks. I will use my U bracket and a few other parts.

Sponsored by toolshop Alatnica D-plast from Osijek. You can look up them on the folowing link:
www.d-plast.hr

SolidWorks basic commands (part 1)

First of all excuse me for my bad English, I'm from Croatia :). Ok, this is my first post and I decided to do a little tutorial on basic commands in SolidWorks. So i took my Engineering manual ( "Strojarski priručnik" by Bojan Kraut - it is like a Bible for mechanical engineers in Balkan countries) and I found an steel I profile table:

I took the profile with the mark 20 (marked in the photo above).

So to get started you open SolidWorks and in the left upper corner you go to File/New, and then you press Part and OK. Now on the left side you pick your plain in which you will sketch your model (I picked the front plane). Now you use the basic commands to shetch a shape like in the picture below (using the measurements from the table above), so you get something like this:



In this firs step you use basic sketch commands (Line, Centerline, Sketch Fillet and Smart Dimensions).
The next step is very simple, you use the Mirror Entities command. On the left side Mirror command window appears, and in the first field (Entities to mirror) you mark all the lines except the centerlines, and in the second field (Mirror about) you mark the vertical centerline (The Copy option must be checked). Now you get the cross section of the profile:



Now we have a 2D sketch, we now want to make a 3D model and we will accomplish this with the Extrude Boss/Base command. In this first tutorial we will just focus on the Depth field. The standard length in JUS standard for I profile (and other profiles and pipes too) is from 4 - 15 meters (in most cases the lengh of the profiles is 6 or 12 meters. So in the Depth field you enter 6000 mm (like in the picture below):



You pres OK and you get a 3D model of an I profile like this:



You have all sorts of profiles in the toolbox, but I took this profile to explain the basic commands.

You can also download this part on the link below:

http://www.filefactory.com/file/ce89157/n/I_profil.SLDPRT

Sponsored by toolshop Alatnica D-plast from Osijek. You can look up them on the folowing link:
www.d-plast.hr