SolidWorks DVD case tutorial

Overview
This tutorial will show you:
-

How to create a DVD case in SolidWorks;

Simulate DVDs loading on the case using simplified force assumptions in
SimulationXpress;
How to visualise key simulation results.

Creating solid geometry

To start with, we will create a solid geometry with rough dimensions
corresponding to the DVD case.
1. Open SolidWorks. Select New document, select Part, click ok.
2. To change the default unit system in SolidWorks, Click Options

on the
standard toolbar, On the Document Properties tab, select Units, choose CGS (centimeter,
gram, second). We will use centimetre in this exercise.

3. First, create the external of the DVD case. Select Front plane. Select the
sketch tab. Under the rectangle icon select the Centre rectangle
option. Click on the origin and drag the rectangle out. You can see the x
and y coordinates as you drag the rectangle. Make it any size to start with.
4. Adjust the dimension by clicking Smart dimension. Click on each side.
Click to place the dimension away from the line. A pop-up box will appear
named Modify. Click in the space where dimension is displayed and
change to the desired values: x=20cm, y=60cm. Click the green tick
button to confirm. You should see a rectangle as shown below.

5. Whilst still in your sketch, right click in empty space, choose Select. Click
Features tab, select Extruded Boss/base. In the Boss-Extrude panel,

select extrude through Mid Plane, and enter a depth of 25cm, as shown
below. Click green tick to confirm.

Creating feature
After creating the solid geometry of the DVD case, we will now add some
features to make it look more like a piece of furniture. This section will illustrate
the use of Shell, Fillet, and Extrude.
1. Clicking Shell option, tick Show preview, enter 1cm under the
Parameters option. Select the front face. You can see in the display that
it will give you a thickness of 1cm all around on the front and sides. But we
are going to cancel this for now by clicking the red cross. Instead, we will
go through a quick tip of how to create fillet using the Fillet and Shell
options.
2. We will add a 2cm fillet to the edges of the DVD case. Select Fillet option.
Under the Fillet panel, enter 2cm for Fillet Parameters. Click to select
one edge. Two green boxes will appear, select the first green box that says
Connected to start face. This will pattern the fillet all the way round as
shown below (right). Click green tick to confirm.

3. Return to the Shell option. You should still have 1cm in the parameter box.
If you click Show preview, select the front face. You can now see that the
internal edges have been filleted as well. (Because the 2cm fillet is greater
than the 1cm shell, it will force the commands to put a filet on the inside
of the shelf.) Click the green tick to confirm. You should now have a hollow
DVD case frame as below (right).

4. The next step is to create some shelves in the DVD case. Go to normal
view and select the front face. Click Sketch, select Centre rectangle.
Make sure you have the snap to the centre line as shown below (left), and
draw a rectangle that drags out to the edge. Draw 2 of these rectangles,
one on the top and one at the bottom as shown below (right). Right click
and choose Select when you are done.

5. Use Smart dimension to define the thickness of these shelves. Select the
top and bottom line of the shelf, click to place the dimension away from
the lines. Enter 2cm in the box. Using the same method to set the distance
between the 2 shelves, so that they divide the DVD case into 3 equal
compartments of 20cm apart. Results are shown below:

6. Make the shelf fully defined by clicking and dragging one side of the edge
to coincide with the internal edge of the DVD case. To do this, hover the
mouse over the edge of the shelf. An orange circle will appear on top of
the line (circled in red below). Click and drag this circle. The colour of the
circle will change to blue. When this is done for both shelves, the display
will read fully defined in the lower RHS corner.

7. Giving the shelves their depth by selecting Extruded Boss/Base. You can
see it is facing the wrong way. Click the offset
button to reverse the
extruding direction towards the inside of the DVD case. Change the end
condition to Up to Next (see below). This will prevent the shelves from
penetrating the back panel of the DVD case. Click the green tick button to
confirm.

8. We will add some legs to the DVD case. First, select the bottom face of the
model. Select Sketch tab. Click Sketch, and click Offset Entities. In the
Offset Entities panel, tick Reverse, and enter a value of 1cm. You should
see a yellow box as shown below. Click green tick to confirm.

9. Select one of the lines in the offset box, right click and Select Chain. In
the Properties tab, tick For construction. Click green tick to confirm.
10.Click the Cricle
button in the Sketch tab. Draw circles in the 4 corners
of the box by placing the pen at the corner, click and drag the mouse to
draw the circle. The size of the circles will be defined later.

11.Select all 4 circles using Shift+Click. In the Properties tab, select Equal
under Add Relations section. This command will force all 4 circles to
have equal size.
12.Pick one circle, use Smart Dimension to define a diameter of 1.5cm.
Confirm using green tick. This will create 4 circles with an equal diameter
of 1.5cm.

13.Extrude the circles using Extruded Boss/Base, enter 2cm under

Direction. Click green tick to confirm. You should now have a DVD case as
shown below:

Using SimulationXpress
We will use SimulationXpress in SolidWorks to simulate loading of a few dozen
DVDs on the case. Please note that the version you have access to only has
the simplified features compare to the full version.
1. Click Evaluate, then click SimulationXpress Analysis Wizard. This
opens the task pane for the wizard on the RHS. Click Next to progress.
2. Fixtures: This section allows you to apply displacement constraints to the
model. Here we will assume that the legs do not move. To do this, select
Add a Fixture, and select the bottom face of the 4 legs as shown below.
Click green button to confirm. Click Next.

3. Loads: This allows you to apply force or pressure boundary constraints to

the model. Here we will apply a force of 1000N to the top shelf. To do this,
select Add a force, select the top surface of the top shelf, enter 1000N in
the Force panel. Click green button to confirm. Then Next.

4. Material: This allows you to specify the material properties of the model.
Click Choose Material, a pop-up window will appear containing a list of
common materials already stored in SolidWorks. For this exercise, we will
use Steel Stainless Steel. Click Apply, and Close. Click Next.

5. Run: This allows you to specify how you would like the model to be solved.
Here we will use the default setting, click Run Simulation to run until it
stops. It will produce an animated and exaggerated deformation. You can
stop it or just proceed by pressing Yes, Continue.

Now we will examine the deformation caused by the DVDs by looking at the
stress and displacement of the deformed case.
1.

Click Show von Mises stress to display stress in the deformed model.
Similarly, click Show displacement to display the amount of
displacement. The results are provided below. Note the spectrum
corresponds to the values of stress or displacement. You will notice that
the visual effect is very misleading compared to the actual values shown
in the spectrum!