Let me ask you a question. Do you design the same thing, but with just sizes and options changing each time? Is it starting to feel like Groundhog Day in your office when all you seem to do is open the same files and make things longer, shorter, taller, or keep adding or removing the same features over and over again. Well, there's a tool to help you with that, and its DriveWorks Xpress and like all the Xpress products, it is included in every version of SolidWorks. DriveWorks can help you automate your designs, saving time, money, and your sanity on repeatable projects. So let's look at our example model the simple flight of industrial stairs. The most important part in this design is the stringers. These components really control what happens to our staircase. Most importantly, the overall height and the location of the treads. The treads themselves need to be captured as they control the overall width of our staircase. And finally, we have a handrail assembly. You will find the DriveWorks Xpress option on the evaluate bar. Now if this is the first time using this Xpress product, then you will need to activate it. Simply follow the onscreen instructions or watch the video How to activate your Xpress products. We start by creating a new DriveWorks project. Industrial staircase, for example. And then we need to start capturing the model by clicking on the captured assembly structure. We can now decide which parts we need to modify and what components remain the same. In this case, it is the tread top tread, both stringers, handrail assembly and the handrail itself that is going to change. All other components are standard nuts, bolts, washers, etc. and therefore remain the same. We now want to capture the individual details from these parts. I'll start by double clicking the tread, which then opens that components up and the captured dimension feature command. At the same time, from there I can select what we need to control. In this case the tread width and the depth dimensions. Now it's back to the captured model list to repeat this operation for the stringers. If we take a look at this sketch, you can see how I have laid out the first two steps to control the overall angle of the stringer, and then a final dimension to control the overall height. These three dimensions need to be captured and named accordingly. There's one other dimension I need, and that is the number of treads. And I'll get that from the tread pattern feature. Finally, we need to control the size of the handrail. So back into the captured models and double click on the handrail. If we look at this design you should recognize this sketch. It is the exact same one I used for the stringer, and I designed my handrail to fit around that sketch. So all we need to do is capture the same details as the stringer, the rise, tread depth, and the overall height with the models and details captured. We can now build the form that is going to control our design. Our first detail is going to be the quote number, something that we can use to rename our components as they get modified and rebuilt later on. The next will be our step height or rise to give it its proper name. This will be a numerical textbox, and that means we can give it a range for our designers to choose from. So how do I decide on that range? Well, here in the UK, the government tells us how staircases should be designed. And once you've worked your way through all the minor details, it comes down to this. The rise can be between 100 and 50 mil and 220 mil, and the going the tread depth is between 220 and 400 mil, depending on the application. So let's add those details to the minimum and maximum values of the rise and create a numerical textbox for the going with the appropriate values. Again, we'll continue to add more inputs to our form. The overall height and width of our staircase, and a selection box for. If we need a handrail that is our form complete. So now to build the rules we need to build rules for anything that we have captured. Let's create a rule for the main staircase assembly. The first part of this rule is going to be star, but put inside a set of speech marks. Now this is a special rule that deletes the existing SolidWorks file name. So I could build something entirely from scratch. We're then going to add the ampersand sign short for and and that is exactly what it does. It adds something to this rule. In this case, the input for our quote number directly from the form. I'm going to add another ampersand and then add a bit of text contained within speech marks. In this case, speech marks, dash, staircase assembly and obviously remember to close off the speech marks. Now you might have noticed that the box we are typing in has been glowing red. And that shows you have a mistake in our rule. But it goes clear once again after I add that second speech mark at the end of the text. So this rule is complete. Now most of the other file names we're going to use will be very similar. So let's copy this rule. Let's use control C on the keyboard and use it to build the rules for other components. Simply pasting that rule into the rule building box and then modifying the text string to something more appropriate. In this case, tread instead of staircase assembly. And then we're going to do the same thing for the right hand stringer, the left hand stringer, etc.. Now I left the handrail assembly to last for a reason, as we want to either rename this subassembly or delete it from the main assembly, depending on what option is ticked in our form. It is the file name that controls whether something is renamed, suppressed or deleted. So this is the logic and we can find the if statement under the logic rules. In this case, if the handrail required option in the input form equals true as it has been ticked, then give it the same file name as the others. So in other words, quote number dash handrail assembly, otherwise delete. And that's all the file name rules complete. Now we can attack the dimensional rules. Some of these are really simple, such as the tread depth which links directly to the going on our for the tread with is also fairly simple, as it two links to the width from the form, but I also know it has to fit between the two stringers and as our width from our form is for the total width for the staircase, then I need to subtract the thickness of both stringers for millimeters in this case. Now we're going to get more interesting. We need to calculate the number of treads. So this is going to be the overall height divided by the rise. So this dimension is the quantity for my stringer pattern. But I actually need it to be one less than the total amount of treads. So I add a pair of brackets to the first part of the formula and subtract one. My next problem is the rise in the stringers. Now it's not going to be the rise value from the form. You need to think of that value more as a guide rather than the actual size. It is the overall height and the number of steps that controls the actual rise. So instead, this rule is going to be the overall height divided by the actual number of steps, something we just calculated and I sneakily copied from the previous rule. However, in this case we do want the total number of steps. So I delete the minus one. Now that completes all the various rules are. We just need to copy and paste them into all of our captured features and dimensions. To save a little time, I'm going to just skip to something I created earlier. This is the exciting part where we can see all of our hard work coming together, and we can finally run our project. Now, when we are filling out our form, this is going to generate a new variation of stairs for us. When we hit create, DriveWorks is going to open our master model. It's going to rename the files change dimensions. And in this completed example even update drawings as it goes along. Now I’ve speeded this all up, but all of this happened in less than a minute. And then we can review our new design. Okay, let's try another one. Again I've accelerated this video, but it's still under a new minute, and I have a completed product ready to send to the shop floor. So if this has got you interested, then I recommend trying the built in DriveWorks Xpress tutorial. You'll find it under the help menu. It will walk you through the various steps of automating this crane frame. And remember, if you're a supported customer, then you can contact us to help you along the way at any time. DriveWorks Xpress is just the start of automating your designs. With the full DriveWorks suite, you can create a web based interface for your designs that can automatically link to your CAD and other software to fully automate a design process. Please visit the DriveWorksLive.com website to have a try of some of their examples. Remember, we are here to help. If you have any questions then please do not hesitate to get in touch.