For engineers who already know the math—but still lose projects. For the last few years, I’ve been sharing technical guides here on Mechanical Design Handbook —how to size a motor, how to calculate fits, and (as you recently read) how to choose between timing belts and ball screws. But after 25 years in industrial automation, I realized something uncomfortable: Projects rarely fail because the math was wrong. They fail because: The client changed the scope three times in one week. A critical vendor lied about a shipping date (and no one verified it). The installation technician couldn’t fit a wrench into the gap we designed. University taught us the physics. It didn’t teach us the reality. That gap is why I wrote my new book, The Sheet Mechanic . This is not a textbook. It is a field manual for the messy, political, and chaotic space between the CAD model and the factory floor. It captures the systems I’ve used to survive industrial projec...
Solid Edge features a very useful application called " Motion " which allows users to simulate the movement of mechanical parts. This enables machine designers to test and ensure that the movement of their mechanism is exactly as expected before manufacturing parts. This helps save a lot of money. Advertisement However, instead of using the " Motion " application, I would like to show you how to simulate the motion of mechanical parts using a sketch in Solid Edge together with Microsoft Excel . Why? Most of the time, I start my mechanical design with the concept and layout using sketches. If we could simulate the motion of mechanical parts in a sketch, it would help me a lot. I got this idea when I was playing with sketches and constraints in Solid Edge . Solid Edge allows us to change the dimensions easily by just rotating the mouse wheel. Figure 1: The Concept — Using VBA to "push" dimension values from E...