How to turn on Freeze in SolidWorks 2012:

1. Click Options  (Standard toolbar) or Tools > Options.
2. On the System Options tab, click General and select Enable Freeze bar.
3. Click OK.

The yellow freeze bar appears near the top of the Feature Manager design tree, under the part name.

The freeze bar controls the point at which a part’s Feature Manager design tree rebuilds. Features above the freeze bar are frozen – you cannot edit them, and they are excluded from rebuilds of the model. Freezing a portion of a model can be useful if you work with complex models with many features. Freezing the features helps to:

• Reduce rebuild time
• Prevent unintentional changes to the model

Feature Freeze prevents the geometry of frozen features from being rebuilt. However, you might still experience long rebuild times due to other processes that are not addressed by Feature Freeze. Examples of potentially time-consuming processes not addressed by Feature Freeze:

• Updating display appearances, especially on very large patterns
• Updating complex DimXpert dimension and tolerance schemes
• Updating the graphics (tessellation data) of very large, complex parts

To freeze features:

1. Move the pointer over the freeze bar. The pointer changes to . 
   
2. Drag the freeze bar down below the last feature you want to freeze. When the freeze bar is at the top of the tree, you can also right-click a feature and click Freeze to freeze that feature and all features above it in the Feature Manager design tree. 
   
   Features above the freeze bar are frozen – you cannot edit them, and they are excluded from rebuilds of the model. Frozen features are indicated by a lock icon  and gray text.

The freeze bar shortcut menu provides commands for moving the freeze bar, controlling rebuilds, and controlling part rebuild indicators. Right-click the freeze bar to access these commands:

Roll to End (Freeze All)	(Available when the freeze bar is at the top of the tree.) Moves the freeze bar to the bottom of the tree, freezing all features.
Roll to Top (Unfreeze All)	(Available when some or all features are frozen.) Moves the freeze bar to the top of the tree, unfreezing all features.
Update Frozen Features	(Available if one or more frozen features are out of date.) Rebuilds out-of-date frozen features and their dependent features and returns them to the frozen state. Also rebuilds active features if deemed necessary by the SolidWorks application.
Update All Configurations	Rebuilds all configurations regardless of any other settings.
Always Update All Configurations	(Available in parts with multiple configurations.) When selected, rebuilds all configurations when you click Update Frozen Features. When cleared, rebuilds only the active configuration when you click Update Frozen Features.
Hide Part Rebuild Indicators	Stops the rebuild indicator  for out-of-date frozen features from propagating up the Feature Manager design tree when the part is a component of an assembly. In the assembly tree, the indicator appears on the out-of-date frozen feature, but not on the part level or assembly level.

The example used for this test was an injection mold. As you can see the rebuilt time saved was ~1 minute and 20 seconds. Multiply that by the number of changes and/or features added per day needed to complete this project. The settings for the Freeze bar are recognized by the Statistics option to give you a good indication of where you stand.

There are times when certain changes might cause frozen features to become out of date. There are safe guards against this causing problems with your design. Examples:

• Changes to external geometry that is referenced by the frozen feature, such as features in another part in an assembly.
• Changes to equations that subsequently affect a frozen feature.
• Changes to a design table that affect a frozen feature.
• Changes to an assembly feature that drives a frozen feature in the part, such as a hole created in the assembly that is propagated to the parts in the assembly.
• Changes to an external base part that is used to create geometry in the part containing the frozen features.

Rebuild Indicator
Out-of-date frozen features are flagged with a rebuild indicator . When the part is a component of an assembly, you can control whether thebrebuild indicator propagates up the FeatureManager design tree. In the part containing the frozen features, right-click the freeze bar and click:

Hide Part Rebuild Indicators

Stops the rebuild indicator  for out-of-date frozen features from propagating up the FeatureManager design tree when the part is a component of an assembly. In the assembly tree, the indicator appears on the out-of-date frozen feature, but not on the part level or assembly level.

Update Frozen Features
To update out-of-date frozen features, right-click the freeze bar and click:

If the part containing the frozen features has multiple configurations, you can control whether all configurations or only the active configuration are updated. Right-click the freeze bar and click:

So don’t waste your time waiting for rebuilds on items you’re not working with. Let SolidWorks “Freeze” them.

***

This post is courtesy of Jerald Staley. Jerald is an Elite Application Engineer and a Certified SolidWorks Expert at DASI Solutions, a SolidWorks Value Added Reseller with locations throughout Michigan and Indiana. He is a regular contributor to the DASI Solutions Blog.

The most recent footprints on the moon are 40 years old, and the next artificial mark on the lunar surface will probably be made by a robot’s wheels rather than human soles.

Many space scientists, engineers and politicians argue that this is a good thing. Most astronomers will tell you that virtually anything a human can do on another planet, a robot can do, only cheaper and without the risk of losing a life. But the battle between humans and robots for the starring role in the next chapter of space exploration is not yet settled.

“In what was really only a few days on the lunar surface, the Apollo astronauts produced a tremendous scientific legacy,” said planetary scientist Ian Crawford of Birkbeck College in London, author of a paperin the April issue of Astronomy and Geophysics. “Robotic exploration of the moon and Mars pales in comparison.”

Robots have done all the recent planetary exploration in the solar system. In past decades, rovers, landers, and orbiters have visited the moon, asteroids and comets, every planet in the solar system and many of their moons as well. But how does their work compare to that of human astronauts?

In terms of sheer scientific output, manned exploration of outer space has a good track record. More than 2,000 papers have been published over the last four decades using data collected during the manned Apollo missions, and the rate of new papers is still rising. In comparison, the Soviet robotic Luna explorers and NASA’s Mars Exploration rover program — Mars Pathfinder, Spirit, and Opportunity — have each generated around 400 publications.

Humans hold a number of advantages over robots. They can make quick decisions in response to changing conditions or new discoveries, rather than waiting for time-delayed instructions from Earth. They are more mobile than current robot explorers: The Apollo 17 astronauts covered more than 22 miles in three days, a distance that has taken the Mars Opportunity rover eight years to match. Humans can drill for samples deep underground and deploy large-scale geologic instruments, something that no rover has achieved on another body.

Despite these qualities, many experts are skeptical of Crawford’s argument.

“I strongly disagree with his conclusions,” wrote engineer Adrian Stoica, who supervises the Advanced Robotic Controls group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in an email to Wired. He notes that Crawford’s paper seems to focus on cost in terms of scientific output achieved.

The Apollo program was incredibly expensive — about $175 billion in today’s money — though it was not solely a scientific mission. It was mainly a geopolitical stunt during the Cold War to show American technological superiority over Russia, with science piggybacking on the ride.

The total amount spent on science over the Apollo missions, Crawford estimates, comes to about $2.09 billion in today’s dollars, making it comparable to or even cheaper than the recent $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory.

But contrasting manned lunar missions with robotic Mars missions is not the right way to go, wrote Stoica. A better analysis would use the potential cost of a manned Mars mission, which NASA estimates to be at least hundreds of billions of dollars.

Crawford counters that cost is not the biggest impetus behind his analysis. Instead, he wanted to bring attention to the sheer efficiency and legacy that the Apollo program achieved during its short time. If space exploration continues to focus on sending robots to other planets, “we will learn less about the solar system in the next 100 years than we will if we engage in an ambitious program of human exploration,” he said.

Of course, humans and robots each have their own advantages for exploration of outer space.

“There isn’t a battle between robots and humans — that’s comparing apples and oranges,” said James Garvin, chief scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “We send the robots as our pathfinders and scouts, and they open the frontiers so that we can decide where and when to send the people.”

Humans and robots already work together on Earth and in space. There are schemes that offer the advantages of human exploration without incurring as high of a cost.

“What makes robots at a distance inferior to humans is one thing only: latency,” said astronomer Dan Lester of the University of Texas at Austin.

The time it takes for a signal to travel from a robot back to mission control on Earth is a major stumbling block. Commands sent to a Mars rover take between 5 and 15 minutes. Light travel time to the moon is around 2.6 seconds.

“It takes 10 minutes to tie a knot with the Earth-moon latency,” said Lester. “But if we could bring that down to about 100 milliseconds, the robots themselves are very capable.” Teleoperated robots on the surface of another planet would have greater strength, endurance, and precision than human explorers, he added.

Teleoperation has been considered in the past for space exploration. During the Apollo era, the technology was not well developed but in the last decade, it has taken off. On Earth, surgeons in Baltimore now perform operations in Indonesia while officers in Nevada covertly spy on nuclear sites in Iran.

Lester envisions a future where astronauts camp out on Mars’ moons Phobos and Deimos and order remote-controlled robots to drive long distances over the planet’s surface, set up geologic instruments, and collect samples for analysis. He estimates this could greatly reduce costs because roughly half the price tag of a manned mission is spent on getting people down and back up the deep gravity well of a planet.

Crawford agrees such a plan would be a step beyond simply sending a robot, though perhaps less efficient than putting people on a planet’s surface.

“I think it will be strange to spend all the money to go all that way and then not land,” he said.

Image: NASA’s Robonaut 2 squares off with a human astronaut. NASA

Simply start typing a common name in the Search Commands field and you will be immediately presented with possible matching commands.  Not only that, if you click on the eye-glasses next to the command name, SolidWorks will automatically take you on a step-by-step path to the location of the command within the menu or toolbar interface.

But there’s more.

When searching for a command:

1. Click and hold on command from dropdown.
2. Drag the command to any visible toolbar or CommandManager.
3. Release mouse button to drop command at that location.

That’s right, Search Commands allows you to quickly add a found command to any toolbar within your user interface so you can keep at a favorite location for future use.

The customization doesn’t stop there.   Multiple-letter shortcuts can be added to Search Commands!  This can be done at Tools pulldown>Customize…>Keyboard tab in the Search Shortcut column.

As a bonus to even all of that, Search Commands is automatically accessible when the you strike the “S” key to bring up the Shortcut Bar.  Whenever the Shortcut Bar is up, you can just start typing!  Your entry appears in the Search Commands field and automatically initiates your command search.

This new tool helps new and occasional users find commands that they may never have used before or may have forgotten about because they don’t use the SolidWorks every day.  Additionally, it can help experience users find commands on unfamiliar workstations, since many users like to customize toolbar layouts.

By way of saying thanks, this special issue highlights the best content from 2011 that I feel deserves special recognition for its importance and relevance to you, our readers. Watch for more exciting tips, news, and offers in the coming year.

Wishing you a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year!

Sincerely, Amy Green, Editor

View the Best of 2011 Now >>>

By incorporating SolidWorks Flow Simulation and SolidWorks Simulation Premiumto its existing SolidWorks package, Donkervoort created a single CAD environment for the redesign of its D8 GTO model, ensuring total integration of the design and simulation process. Donkervoort focuses on sports cars that are hand built, lightweight, high performance and perform like Formula One racecars, even though they look like classic roadsters.

Redesigning the engine to develop power resulted in added weight in the D8 GTO, causing Donkervoort to rework the body. The company turned to SolidWorks 3D Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and advanced structural simulation solutions to ensure performance while staying on budget and delivering the car on schedule.

The story about how Donkervoort used SolidWorks Simulation to develop the D8 GTO was posted on Discovery.com. The article, “Donkervoort D8 GTO Supercar Does Zero-60 in 3 Seconds, First ‘Test Drives’ Done in Computer Simulations,” can be found here. For some background information, Discovery has 86,336,000 subscribers.

Read more >>>

• Optimize material and manufacturing processes for maximum fatigue life.

• Set service intervals to ensure extended product life.

• Reduce the lifetime cost of the product while ensuring on-time delivery.

Discover SolidWorks Fatigue Simulation and see how it can be incorporated in design to improve a product’s fatigue resistance.

Stephen Endersby is the Simulation Project Manager at DS SolidWorks Corp. With his wide exposure to many industry problems and expensive education including a PhD in Analysis and a MSc in Aerodynamics Stephen, he is well versed in the application of simulation to solve real life problems.

Date: 27^th Jan 2012 | Time: 11 AM SST/GMT + 8hrs.

Webinar will be recorded and you will be able to view the recorded video on demand.