This was the first, I think, real design problem that I was faced with in Engineering for that reason alone it is very important. Compared to the way that I now solve design problems, the Truss Bridge design is a complete embarrassment. Every group was given the same problem - to design a truss bridge that would be able to support a certain weight and span a certain width. I met with my group and we put almost no thought into what the shape of the bridge would be, or how many components it would have. We decided it was a truss bridge and so we would build it as the simplest truss bridge that we could. Perhaps there was a bit of laziness involved in that decision as well as naivety. So we drew it out and calculated the load and how much it would be able to stand and we found out that it would be able to solve the problem. We didn't think of any other designs of bridges we could have built at all. It came as a shock during presentation then, when the other groups talked about how they had "calculated the optimal bridge design" and "looked at 10 or 12 different designs before choosing this one" when we had simply stuck to the first design that we had thought of - the most simple and intuitive design. I'm not saying that's wrong, but for my first design experience, it certainly was. This opened my eyes to the possibilities and the amount of work necessary to go into any engineering design process. It made me understand the importance of considering many designs before selecting one that you have determined to solve the problem in the best way possible and the importance of brainstorming creatively and not just choosing the easiest or the most intuitive solution - something that has become very important in my personal engineering design process.
Above is a sketch of our solution for the truss bridge problem. As is easily seen, we simply connected the span with the nearest to equilateral triangles that we could.
Above is a sheet showing the types of HSS bars we eventually chose to design our truss using, as well as some of the force calculations on the side.
I can't speak for the others, but at SolidWorks, we don't offer a free version. If you're a student, you can try working through your engineering department to get a copy. . . I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're just looking for a trial version and not talking about downloading over torrent networks and the like. As I'm sure you're aware, that constitutes stealing, and is no different than walking into a store and shoving something under your jacket and walking out of the door without paying.
ReplyDeleteSolidworks 2012