As a professional CAD designer, the design process is the most crucial process to be familiar and proficient with. A CAD designer must be able to take an idea and bring it through the process and come out with a product on the other side. This blog will be over one of the in-house projects completed at Perception Engineering.

In manufacturing, there are a lot of fluctuating circumstances that need to be monitored in order for a company to be successful and profitable.  Companies need to be constantly working to make sure that the manufacturing side of the business is always operating at max efficiency.

An important variable to keep track of when engineering a part is its multiple mass properties. With varying features and sizes the mass and other linked variables related to the mass can be changed greatly with a simple edit to the design of the given part.

When working with CAD software or in the design field, it is likely you will come across files that will not be in a CAD friendly format. Customers might send over files such as PDF’s or JPEG. These are two very common file types; however, these files cannot be input into any CAD software.

The painstaking task of rearranging an office or a production plant only to realize that the layout wasn’t what you expected is something that happens way too often. That process is changing as technology advances. Now, companies are noticing the benefits of using virtual reality beforehand to place all the items before the actual move.

Here at Perception Engineering, as much of the work we do is on time-based quotes, we meticulously keep track of time spent on any given task. This allows us to give customers an accurate view of how time was spent on their project and what they’re paying for.

You’re working on a project in SolidWorks when you realize you or a project partner has made some unwanted changes and saved over any previous versions. It happens to the best of us. Looks like you’ll have to spend extra time remodeling the part to get it back to the way you wanted, just to spend more time now modeling the changes you wanted to make in the first place.

Have you come across an issue with SolidWorks Visualize where the exact desired appearance isn’t available in their wide variety of selections? Nothing is more satisfying than having what you imagine appear exactly as though in a final render. This blog will help to create inform readers on how to achieve these appearances!

SolidWorks Visualize is a great software for creating realistic renderings of any company’s products quickly. The software is also able to import 20+ different file types from any SolidWorks parts and assemblies to STEP and STL files. This blog will mainly focus on importing options for SolidWorks parts and assemblies.

If you have an idea for a product and possibly even the design ready to go, but you want to be able to have a better idea of what it may look like when it is manufactured, we have the solutions for you. One of those solutions is 3D printed prototyping.

Repetitive tasks in SolidWorks have you down? Do you find yourself making the same design multiple times with small differences in features, size, and properties? DriveWorks is a unique design automation software that may be able to help! The best part about DriveWorks is that if you are already using SolidWorks the most basic version, Xpress is already built in.

With all of the different headset options currently out, and many more upgrades on the way, a single location for some of the more popular virtual reality headsets can be very useful. This blog will hopefully serve many as the go-to location for comparing these headsets!

The Weldments tab/tools allow for quick building and trimming of weldment structures by using a simple sketch. This blog will be over some of the basics of Weldments in SolidWorks.

In this blog, we will be discovering the mass and measuring evaluations within SolidWorks. These tools are useful in determining the size and weight of a particular part or assembly. We will be looking at how to use these tools, as well as some applications in which they may become useful.

Known mainly in the gaming world, virtual reality is making itself more and more noticeable and useful in other applications. One application we’ve been using virtual reality for is its usefulness in the engineering world. This blog will describe some reasons to use virtual reality!

With each package of SolidWorks Visualize there are some things you can and can’t do from one to the next. This blog will focus mainly on one little issue that we’ve run into at Perception Engineering when it comes to the lighting aspect of models and some of the tips and tricks we use to overcome them.

One of the in-house machines that Perception Engineering uses to service its customers is a CO2 laser engraver/cutter. With this CNC laser tool, Perception engineering provides its customers with clean and accurately cut supplies and products.

Reverse engineering is the process of examining and deconstructing a design that is already built and acquiring all the necessary data required to reproduce it. Here at Perception we perform this process for a variety of customers and with each project a unique set of challenges and ingenuity awaits.

This blog will be focusing on virtual reality in Perception Engineering including some benefits and steps we take to view models. It will also act as a summary of the video associated with this blog.

The advanced manufacturing expo made a stop in Grand Rapids recently and I was given the chance to attend it! The point of these expos is to give suppliers the opportunity to show off and sell their newest manufacturing solutions to others and also give attendees the chance to learn about the latest technologies in the industry. I will be covering this expo as someone who has never been to one, and I will be giving my before and after thoughts on my experience!

You’ve been working with SolidWorks PDM and it has worked well for the most part. Lately, you’ve noticed that occasionally the files you’re saving to the vault aren’t showing up. Especially if you’ve been working with step files (.step) or you saved files while working in offline mode. This blog will go over a quick tip that may save you hours of frustration trying to find them or worse, having to recreate them completely.

With another year coming to a close a new and improved version of SolidWorks has been released, SolidWorks 2019. This new SolidWorks version is full of powerful new modeling tools and various other updates to help bring design and manufacturing closer together. These updates and features cover all aspects of SolidWorks including, Assemblies, Routing, Drawings, PDM, Plastics, Simulation, Visualize, and much more.

SolidWorks CAM is a fully integrated, knowledge-based technology that allows you to integrate design and manufacturing processes under one system to evaluate designs earlier in the process to avoid unexpected costs and delays in finishing products on time.

Over the years at Perception Engineering, I have modeled and detailed hundreds of sheet metal parts. Often these sheet metal parts will require specific tooling to match the customer specs. Taking to the internet for help on creating tooling yielded minimal results. Having to do my own research to ensure the customers receive the quality parts they requested; I’ve decided to post my finding to help others out.

A drawing template is one of the main components to any assembly or part drawing. A drawing template allows you to convey all information about a part or assembly in a clean and organized manner. The key features of a drawing template are simplicity and clarity. This blog will demonstrate how to make a simple custom drawing template in SolidWorks! 

Here at Perception Engineering, we reach out to various companies across many industries in the West Michigan area. Among these companies, many different CAD software’s are utilized. Although SolidWorks is our expertise, we have assisted some customers out using other software's such as Inventor and Fusion 360.

With virtual reality technology is growing and growing, there are a wide variety of softwares that can suit a company’s specific needs. Finding the right one for the company is all up to trying different softwares to find that exact fit! At Perception Engineering, we’ve been actively testing different softwares and this blog will cover some that we’ve been using.

Keeping track of part properties in SolidWorks can be a very tedious task. If multiple properties need to be changed from part to part on a project, it can cut into your productivity, taking time away from further refining your design. Luckily, with SolidWorks Product Data Management, we can remove much of this wasted time with the use of data cards.