Most Important New Thing You Learned w/Swks?

The most unexpected thing for me, even though I had heard about it for years, was being able to order, receive and try out 3 different sets of RP parts all in less than 2 weeks, to nail down a final design on a plastic part assembly.

Mocking up molded plastic parts prior to that was painful and painfully slow.

Bo

I like UNEXPECTED, & the reason is that in engineering and design, it is the UNEXPECTED that reveals the most in new products.

Serendipitity might be said to be what a creative person has to turn the unexpected to good use.

Bo

Another: Simulating flexible hinges in plastic parts!

By designing the prospective modeled part as molded and then breaking it up into solid pieces with hinges that are added, it is possible for me to mockup a multi-hinge part without elaborate 3rd party software.

Then I have gone one step further:

I have also put the netural axis lenght of a hinge in a formula determined by the angle of bend and then can alter the angle of bend and watch the effect of the assembly of a part with two flexible hinges such that I can prejudge sizing with far greater ability than trying to do it all by hand calcs.

The only thing SWks does NOT allow is bending a hinge back to completely flat, as it doesn't like the math, and I haven't looked for a workaround.

Bo