In order to successfully create a 3D model for you, the customer, certain pieces of information are required. This will generally be worked out at the time a project is started and is highly project dependent. In general this might be one or more of the following:
Many times the information to be provided is determined by the type of job.
In order to successfully perform a finite element analysis (FEA) certain information is required. More often that not the most difficult information to obtain is that called "material properties". While metals are well understood and have many "off the shelf" sources for material data, there may be requirements stating that a material property be obtained by testing. In the case of plastics there is very little "off the shelf" data when it comes down to it. Plastic properties change drastically in temperature ranges in which metals hardly vary at all. A plastic may behave very differently at 0C than at 100C. In addition plastics are frequently compounded for a particular application. Additions of colorants, UV inhibitors and the like can change plastic properties. We may need to perform special tests to acquire time and temperature data if a plastic is going to carry any kind of significant loading. The following list covers some of the information that may be needed to run a simulation:
SolidWorks has a very capable Application Programming Interface (API). Visual Basic, C# and C++ can be utilized to create capabilities that are not already in the base software.
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