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SolidWorks Secondary Development with Visual Basic 6 for an Automated Modular Fixture Assembly Approach
Uday Hameed Farhan, Simona O'Brien, Majid Tolouei Rad
Pages - 290 - 304     |    Revised - 15-11-2012     |    Published - 31-12-2012
Volume - 6   Issue - 6    |    Publication Date - December 2012  Table of Contents
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KEYWORDS
Modular Fixtures, SolidWorks API, Visual Basic 6, Assembly Simulation
ABSTRACT
Modular fixtures (MFs) play an important role in terms of cost and production time reduction in manufacturing processes. In this paper, the authors illustrate an automated approach for MFs design and assembly. This approach is based on the secondary development of SolidWorks integrating with Visual Basic (VB) 6 programing language. SolidWorks API (Application programming interface) functions were applied in order to control SolidWorks commands and assembly operations. An ActiveX DLL project was created in VB 6 and a plug-in file in .dll format was generated. The outcomes were creating new menus in SolidWorks environment for selecting, inserting, and assembling MFs elements. The approach was applied for a side clamping procedure and for a semi-circular workpiece.
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Mr. Uday Hameed Farhan
Glass and ceramic industry-Iraq - Australia
ufarhan@our.ecu.edu.au
Miss Simona O'Brien
Edith Cowan University - Australia
Mr. Majid Tolouei Rad
Edith Cowan University - Australia


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