Contents
SustainabilityExpress is free, but have limitations
Sustainability Professional Version came with SolidWorks Premium in 2015.
No Add-Ins. Start in Tools - SOLIDWORKS Applications - Sustainability
Matrix:
Functionality:
SustainabilityExpress:
Integrated into the SOLIDWORKS software interface
Analyze parts
Select materials
Find similar materials
Display real-time feedback in Environmental Impact dashboard
Set and import baselines
Generate and send customizable reports
Display detailed comparison panes per environmental impact area
Sustainability (Standard) and also all above:
Define how long a part or assembly will last
Define how long a part or assembly will be used
Specify electricity and natural gas use, and scrap rate for manufacturing process
Analyze assemblies
Use the Assembly Visualization tool with Sustainability
Evaluate configurations
Input Use phase energy consumption values
Specify transportation methods and distances
See updated matrix: https://www.solidworks.com/solutions/what-life-cycle-assessment-lca
How to see if you have Xpress (free) version or full version:
Two products can check the environmental impact of models - SOLIDWORKS® SustainabilityXpress and SOLIDWORKS® Sustainability.
SOLIDWORKS SustainabilityXpress Handles part documents (solid bodies only) and is included in the core software.
SOLIDWORKS Sustainability Handles parts (solid bodies only) and assemblies. Available as a separate product. Other functionality includes configuration support, expanded reporting, and expanded environmental impact options.
Links to the programs
https://www.solidworks.com/product/solidworks-sustainability
https://www.solidworks.com/sustainability/products/frequently-asked-questions.htm
https://www.solidworks.com/sustainability/sustainability-software.htm
https://www.solidworks.com/sustainability/sustainable-design-guide.htm
You can also go to Help in SW under Sustainability
Sustainability report folder: Program Files/SolidWorks 2022/SolidWorks/Lang/English
Standard
Ecodesign is normally understood as the improvement of the sustainability of a single product. The standard EN50598 for ecodesign for power drive systems goes beyond a single motor and requires that you think about the entire motor system. This includes such things as frequency converters, motor starter equipment, gears, etc.
This will allow the Fund’s Partner Institutions to easily assess the eligibility of their projects in the construction sector using the IFC EDGE standard. To achieve the EDGE standard, a building must be at least 20% more efficient compared to the country baseline in three categories: energy, water and embodied energy in materials. These criteria are aligned with the project eligibility criteria of the Fund
In August 2018, the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) published the first standard for carbon footprinting of products: ISO 14067:2018. On the ISO’s anniversary together with Daniele Pernigotti, the convenor of this ISO working group we look back and discuss why the standard is more relevant today than ever.
ISO 14067:2018: Greenhouse gases — Carbon footprint of products — Requirements and guidelines for quantification
Lifestyles ISO 14044:2006 Environmental management — Life cycle assessment — Requirements and guidelines
How to run Sustainability:
Part:
- Load a part into SolidWorks. Assembly is treated a little different.
- Start Sustainability from tab “Evaluate”.
- Add Material (Class and Name). Material can be transferred to part. You can also find similar material. The reason for search for similar material is to find a material with better environmental impact and may be also with better financial impact. You can direct see the Recycled content (under material) on the material you select.
- Select the region where the part will be manufactured.
- Select how long the part will last “Build to last”. Longer down can you select how long the part will be used by the consumer “Duration of use”. So, if the part last 1 year while the consumer will use it in 2 year, then the sustainability impact will be twice, since the consumer must by 2 parts.
- The manufacturing process is predefined, but it might be necessary to adjust it. A bug might do it necessary to change the process from and back again to get a correct result. The bug will increase the use of electricity with a factor on 1000. This is not happening with pars with unit in inches, so SolidWorks is not interested to fix this bug.
- Increase the number of digits after the comma. The result is typically showing 0.00 kWh/gm used in manufacturing process, and you need more digits. Use Options – Document Properties and Basic Units. The Mass/Section Properties digits will NOT have effect on the Sustainability.
- Select region where the part is going to be used. This will influence the environmental impact of the transport. Select type of transport you plan to use.
- Select duration of Use.
Now can you see the impact on Carbon, Energy, Air and Water on the bottom on the task pain. Click on the pie chart and you get the list format. Click on the little house down to left, and you get back to the pie chart again.
On the bottom can you select the Standard to use between CML or TRACI
CML is European standard by university Netherlands Leaden
TRACI is USA University protection
Make a report to DOCX or CVF format
Save as GaBi for export to another environment system.
Set Baseline for comparing.
Load a baseline (from a similar product).
Click on Online Info for more information on Web.
Assembly:
- Load an assembly into SolidWorks.
- Start Sustainability from tab “Evaluate”.
- Select the region where the part will be assembled.
- Select how long the assembly will last “Build to last”.
- Add the energy required for the assembly process.
- Increase the number of digits after the comma. The result is typically showing 0.00 kWh used in assembly process, and you need more digits. Use Options – Document Properties and Basic Units.
- Select region where the assembly is going to be used.
- Select the energy the assembly will need over its lifespan.
- Select transport method.
- Select duration of Use.
- Click on each part or group of part and adjust material and process if necessary.
- Select what is happening with the part at end of life. Adjust, if necessary, the present of Recycled, incinerated (burned) and Landfill. This can be done at part level or at the assembly.
Now can you see the impact on Carbon, Energy, Air and Water on the bottom on the task pain.
The template for the report is located in the path decided by:
System Options – File Location and Sustainability Report Template Folder.
Normally located in: C:\Program Files\SOLIDWORKS 2022\SOLIDWORKS\lang\english with names: sustainability_report.dot and sustainability_assembly_report.dot
Drag these document templates into Microsoft Word and adjust them to your company.
How do GaBi calculate this
It plays a role where the part is manufactured. It means nothing for the material alone. The material can come from anywhere. But for the processing it plays a role where the part is manufactured. The electrical mix, for example, is different in different climates.
Choice of material plays a role.
How the part is produced also plays a role. Choose from the following processes (depend on material):
Custom
Die Cast
Extrusion
Forged
Injection Molded
Machined Sand Casting
Milled
None
Sand Casted
Sheetmetal
Stamped/formed Sheetmetal
Turned
GaBi do not look at the physical shape of the part. It is only the weight that matters. Different parts are more or less complicated to make, and the among of scrap can be different during the process. But GaBi do not go into the part and check this.
End of Life (recycling) is only depending on where the product is used.
SR
S-075583 Some materials have the possible to change the Recycled content
S-075583 'Recycled content'
The ‘Recycled content’ field will only be editable for materials that support a range of values (such as Aluminum Alloys – 356.0-T6 Permanent Mold cast SS). All other materials will be “read-only”.
S-078764 Where can I find information about the GaBi database engine, calculations, standards, materials and other capabilities beyond the functionality of SOLIDWORKS® Sustainability and SustainabilityXpress?
SOLIDWORKS® Sustainability is a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool that fully integrates into SOLIDWORKS. The database and engine behind SOLIDWORKS Sustainability that calculates the environmental impact come from GaBi, developed by Sphera™ (https://sphera.com/). GaBi is one of the world’s leading LCA software solutions (https://sphera.com/life-cycle-assessment-lca-software/).
For general information about GaBi material and process datasets to help understand their construction, see the article and video at:
https://gabi.sphera.com/international/databases/
For more extensive information about specific datasets, see the documentation at:
https://gabi.sphera.com/international/support/gabi/gabi-database-2021-lci-documentation/
Be aware that SOLIDWORKS Sustainability is a small subset of more than 15,000 datasets from GaBi software. Many more datasets are available on demand.
The SOLIDWORKS 2022 Release Notes (https://files.solidworks.com/Supportfiles/Release_Notes/2022/English/relnotes.htm) mention an important change to the method of exporting data to GaBi in SOLIDWORKS Sustainability 2022 and newer versions:
"When you save Sustainability output as a GaBi file, the output file format has changed from .xml to .txt."
Additionally, please be aware that the decimal separator (comma or period) used in the output .txt file depends on the decimal separator in your session of SOLIDWORKS.
If you are interested in expanding your current LCA capabilities, you can contact Sphera directly by sending an email message to: gabi-support@sphera.com.
S-050175 In the transportation and use, there is an option to define the Product lifetime energy use and Type of energy. How is this option used since SOLIDWORKS® Sustainability cannot know what the lifetime period is?
Answer: It is true that SOLIDWORKS® Sustainability cannot guess what type of energy the product uses, and how much in its entire lifetime. That's why it must be specified.
For instance, if you are designing a power drill, and if it uses 1000W when in use, and it you estimate that its average lifetime use will be 200 hours, then you can enter that the total amount of energy used will be 200kWh, and that the type of energy is electricity.
Then, based on the region of use, the program will know how much of the electricity has a nuclear, wind, solar or fossil fuel source, and will apply the corresponding environmental impact.
S-052138 Breakdown of Life Cycle Assessment in SOLIDWORKS® Sustainability
Answer: The life cycle of products is broken down in eleven steps as shown in the list:
- Raw Material Extraction – Impact of mining/collecting raw material (ore, crude oil, timber...).
- Transportation to Material Processing – Impact of transportation of raw material (ore, crude oil, timber...) to plant
- Material Processing - Impact of processing the amount of raw (bulk) material for the part (processing ore into bulk steel for instance).
- Transportation to Part Manufacture –
- Part Manufacture -
- Transportation to Assembly – Impact of shipping parts to assembly plant
- Assembly Process – Impact of making the assembly from the parts
- Transportation to Product Use
- Product use
- Transportation to End of Life
- End of Life - Impact of disposing of the product after use
Powered by: http://www.gabi-software.com/topics/solidworks-sustainability/
LCA = Life Cycle Assessment
S-041201 Can I incorporate SOLIDWORKS® SustainabilityXpress data into a bill of materials (BOM)?
Answer: No. However, you can incorporate data from the full version of SOLIDWORKS® Sustainability into the Assembly Visualization feature. Please see the screenshot 'S-041201- SOLIDWORKS® SustainabilityXpress' in the attachment.
S-062992 Where can I find the Simulation Cleaning Utility to delete SOLIDWORKS® Simulation studies and SOLIDWORKS Flow projects (Simulation, SimulationXpress, Motion, FloXpress and Flow Simulation)?
Answer: 1. In Windows® Explorer, browse to the installation folder of the version of SOLIDWORKS® (e.g. 'C:\Program Files\SOLIDWORKS Corp\SOLIDWORKS') in which you last saved the file that you wish to clean. If there are multiple instances of 'SOLIDWORKS', e.g. 'SOLIDWORKS (2)', be sure to identify the corresponding version of SOLIDWORKS (e.g. SOLIDWORKS 2015).
- In the 'Simulation' sub-folder, go to 'Utilities' folder (e.g. C:\Program Files\SOLIDWORKS Corp\SOLIDWORKS\Simulation\Utilities). Please note that you must have the full version of SOLIDWORKS Simulation installed to access this folder.
- Launch the file 'Simulation Cleaning Utility.exe'.
The Simulation Cleaning Utility is a utility program meant to clean SOLIDWORKS® files of the Simulation data they may contain. In particular, the Simulation Cleaning Utility lets you choose which Simulation data you want to delete among the following packages:
- Simulation
- SimulationXpress
- Motion Simulation and
- Flow Simulation (or FloXpress)
- Sustainability
This utility is helpful when you think the accumulation of Simulation study data in a SOLIDWORKS file has degraded the file quality and if you want to get rid of the study data. It also can prevent the occurrence of instability (crash) caused by corrupt data from simulation products. It can also get rid of corrupted studies to allow you to recreate them properly.
S-056517 Can I create a custom polyurethane material with a different density to be used in SolidWorks Sustainability?
Yes, to appropriately capture the sustainability effects for polyurethane foam of a custom density, all you need to do is to change the physical density of the material. It will accurately scale the sustainability effects.
What you need to do is create a custom material with the density that you want and in the material browser window, link the existing polyurethane foam to your custom material and you will now be able to use your custom material in Sustainability.
S-052453 How do I reregister the SOLIDWORKS® Sustainability Gabi Engine? For instance, when the following message appears upon loading Sustainability: "Unfortunately calculations are not available. Please contact Tech Support for help."
1) Do a search on the hard drive for "gabiswengine.exe"
2) Go to where the file "gabiswengine.exe" is located on your hard drive through the command prompt (DOS window). The folder is normally: C:\Program Files\SolidWorks Corp\SolidWorks
3) Type "gabiswengine.exe /regserver"
The Gabi Engine will now be registered with Microsoft® Windows.
Error message is: "Unfortunately calculations are not available. Please contact Tech Support for help."
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