SOLIDWORKS Costing an in-depth Review Part 8 – Machining Costing

Continuing our look at costing, this time we are dealing with a machined part. Similar to the other aspects of costing we will be using the side bar on the task pane and the property manager on the right.

The task pane area allows us to setup the tool while the property manager side reviews the output from the Costing program.

Method:

Under Method we will be choosing Machining, and the tool pairs us with the Machining templates. Make sure to check out the section on customizing your templates by Bob McGaughey in previously done in Part 4 of the SOLIDWORKS Costing series.

Material:

We will choose material and the stock body size prior to machining. The default is set for the initial size of the part. You can change this value to give additional material blank size. We are also able to take advantage of the SOLIDWORKS material library here as well. The cost is a default value. You may override the value if you know what your stock body will cost to begin with.

Stock Body:

This option allows us to chose a block, plate, cylinder, or specify a custom body type.

**Please note there is a slide bar on the right hand side to get to the rest of the machining options.

We are able to specify Quantity, a custom shop rate, and markup and discounts. These will all be added to the total of the part cost.

Let's take a look at the properties manager now that we have reviewed the tool setup. The property manager works just like the other sections of the costing tool. We will see setups, and operations listed out each with a cost or time displayed as you choose.

SOLIDWORKS Costing views the part and converts the features into operations. In the next few images you will see the holes and fillets being separated out and the machining is listed for each.

Notice there is a Fillet1 listed in the tree with no cost assigned to it. We will have to figure out the cost for that operation on our own as there is no cost assigned for that particular operation in the default template. To do this right click the Fillet 1 feature, choose Apply Cost Override. We will just use $1.00 for this case.

Below you will see that the addition of the cost has also created a third Setup Operation for the fillet and Also a Load and Unload Setup.

We could leave it this way as there is not a cost assigned to the load or operation setup that was created. It just shows up as an addition to the overall cost for the last feature we added cost to and adds $1 to the total.

If it brings up concerns that there is an additional setup listed that has no cost, we can simply remedy this by expanding the Setup Operation and drag the fillet into the Setup Operation 2, where the setup is accounted for already. (or properly set the template prior to running the cost analysis J)

Join us next for MultiBody Costing.

• SOLIDWORKS Costing an in-depth Review Part 1 – Overview (Bryan Pawlak 6/23/15)
• SOLIDWORKS Costing an in-depth Review Part 2 – How Costing Works (John Van Engen 6/24/15)
• SOLIDWORKS Costing an in-depth Review Part 3 – Options (Blake Cokinis 6/25/15)
• SOLIDWORKS Costing an in-depth Review Part 4 – Templates (Bob McGaughey 6/26/15)
• SOLIDWORKS Costing an in-depth Review Part 5 – Task Pane, Manager, & Sensors (Neil Bucalo 6/29/15)
• SOLIDWORKS Costing an in-depth Review Part 6 – Sheet Metal Costing (Bryan Pawlak 7/29/15)
• SOLIDWORKS Costing an in-depth Review Part 7 – Weldment Costing (George Brañes 7/30/15)
• SOLIDWORKS Costing an in-depth Review Part 8 – Machining Costing (John Van Engen 8/3/15)
• SOLIDWORKS Costing an in-depth Review Part 9 – Multi-body Costing (Blake Cokinis  8/4/15)
• SOLIDWORKS Costing an in-depth Review Part 10 – Reports, AddingRemoving Info, Limited Access Templates (Neil Bucalo 8/5/15)

John Van Engen
CATI Sr. Technical Analyst