Monday, December 29, 2008

Catia Teaching Part 1



I want to start Catia teaching from this post.
At first, you need to know some phrases which use in Catia:
Plane: This is somewhere which use for drawing 2D.
Sketch: This is 2D shapes which can convert to 3D shapes.
Segment: Each of any part of one sketch
Face: Any surface of one 3D shape.
Edge: Intersection of 2 surfaces
Vertex: Intersection of 2 or more edges
Origin: base point of main axes in a sketch

Now, I want to create a simple 2D sketch in Catia:
Open Catia and click on Part Design as shown on the below fig. (This module used for rigid parts, machinery, molding parts and …..)


Click on plane in the opened module and then click on icon named Sketch on Sketch toolbar. You can choose xy plane which placed in design tree on left up corner of screen. For doing this, click on plane and then click on explained icon.


You see providing new environment for drawing 2D shapes.
I start with a simple shape like circle. For example, I want to draw a circle with 20mm for diameter on the origin.
Click on the circle icon in profile toolbar now we have to identify center of circle. Click on origin, now our center is on 0,0 you can change diameter with moving mouse.



For exacting the diameter, click on Constraint icon on Constraint toolbar and click on circle. The circle become green and its diameter will show. You can double click on the measure and change in to 20mm.
Now you draw a circle with 20mm diameter on origin.





Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Reverse Engineering

I don't intend to discuss about reverse engineering on the classic and academic way. I prefer to talk about it's usage in automotive industry.
At a glance, the main goal of reverse engineering is exact copy of reference part or assembly but it is not all things. My experience says in some cases even after exact copy, especially in assembling parts which each part has movement to others, final product doesn’t satisfy normal function. For example, in Peugeot 405 HVAC Actuator, we could see some disordering in our product function.
If you open this actuator you can see a plastic gear box with an electronic board (PCB).
Here, I have a picture from HVAC Actuator which designed in CATIA. I put it here for shining subject.As you see, two little red metal brushes which exist on the big cream gear, and move on the green PCB. In fact these two brushes adjust shaft start and stop position (park position).
In the next picture you can see PCB. It is clear that the profile on the PCB is very important to getting good park position. After designing and produce, I found out that our product didn’t normal function. CMM report didn't show any important things.
So, where was the main problem?
What was there we didn't see that?
At next post I will draw a new part in CATIA step by step.







Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Introduction

Hi
I will try to show you useful things in Catia Software in this blog which I have earned since 4 years ago till now.
My working field is automotive industry and causes of this reason my topics and examples will be about my working field. And also try to propound the projects which I did them directly, for improving my experiences with your experiences and ideas sharing.
In next post I will introduce Reverse Engineering and add Catia in continuation.