WHERE IS MY PART ? …………….I NEED MOTION LOADS

As the title describes, you may have often come across a situation where you need to import the motion loads on any one of the component/part and the moment you click on simulation-Import motion loads, you do not see any part mentioned in the “Available Assembly Components”.  This might lead you to think whether – did the motion study go through? or is it a bug in the software ? Well the answer is simple. In Simulation, you have to make sure that the components of interest has to be a single part i.e. child of the main assembly rather than being a part of a sub assembly. Any part  belonging to a subassembly will not show up in the available components list. In Simulation motion, where you have to often deal with mates, redundancies and so on, it is always better to think about the parts of interest in the beginning cause this might lead you to spend long hours in re-creating the mates while trying to dissolve the subassembly.

 

There is another work around for the above problem. This can be done by using the command “Dissolve sub assembly”. All you need to do is right click on the sub-assembly and select “Dissolve sub assembly”. This will help you to break the parts under the sub-assembly and make them the children of the main assembly. Again, as mentioned earlier, care has to be taken before proceeding with the motion study as this might leave you with all of errors in mates.

I hope, this will give you a heads up on how to proceed with a motion study and save you some time and focus more on simulation (motion and FEA) rather than re-creating the assembly mates.

Comments

[Bruno]

I can't import the loads from the motion analisis to my simulation study. I go to the simulation tab - import motion loads, I have no problem in selecting the parts I want to study but when I click Ok nothig happens.
From what I read in the solidworks help a new tab of motion study should appear, but nothig happens.
Am I doing something wrong?
I have solidworks 2009 and I have the simulation and motion adds in.
Thanks

[Ashish Jaiswal]

Bruno,

Did you try to open the part separately on which you had imported the motion loads? You should see a new study defined already for the part with the motion loads.

Ashish.

[Bruno]

I thoght that you could import the motion loads from all the parts of the assembly at once and then make a simulation of all the assembly.
But when I select all the parts, there is no new study.
It is a very simple problem, a fourbar linkage. You are telling me to do one part at a time?
This is the first time I use solidworks I apologise if this isn't what you ment.
Thank you very much for your response in such a short term.
Bruno

[Ashish Jaiswal]

Yes, you can import the loads from motion study on all the parts however, the loads are imported on the parts individually. For example, consider an assembly A with parts B,C and D. After motion study on assembly D, when I import the loads on all the parts A,B and C, each of these parts when opened separately will have a static study assigned with the loads from the motion study. This holds good for 2009 but from 2010, the Motion Analysis has even more options and one can perform static analysis within the motion analysis.

Ashish.

[Bruno]

Thanks for the advice, but I can't make it work. After I go to simulation, import loads, I select the parts, click ok button and the programam appears to charge something, but nothing happens, no new study is opend.
Do I have to do something else, or should a new tab appear automatically whit a new simulation study?.
I have tried with sinlge and multiple frames, but I get no results.

[Ashish Jaiswal]

Did you try opening the part separately in SW? Check for a new simulation study for that part. Make sure, Simulation/Motion addins are turned on.

Ashish.