Prototyping Enclosure in SolidWorks

This design activity was a bit more about test driving SolidWorks. We are not industrial designers and in fact didn’t have any previous experience with this CAD system. Well, strictly speaking, it was the second Dmitry’s creation in SolidWorks while the first one was really primitive, made of sheet metal which by its nature doesn’t allow to create anything but boxy shapes. This time there was a need for a conceptual design of an enclosure for a wearable data logger. The case had to be a little more sophisticated than just a round shape and it was meant to provide housing to a PCBA with CR2032 battery. Also the was a requirement to have a lid covering four pins for interfacing with an external sensor. This was the first prototype we came up with, bottom and top shells and a lid:

Bottom Shell

The two halves had internal supports to hold the PCBA tightly inside preventing it from shifting and twisting,

Top Shell

The lid had two lugs and was supposed to be attached to the top half with a pin playing a role of an improvised hinge. Also the lid had two flanges, one to lock it to the housing and one to simplify its opening with a finger:

Lid

This electronics design was done in Altium and the PCBA 3D model was exported to SolidWorks:

PCBA

These two pictures below were rendered in Altium:

PCBA Rendered in Altium, Bottom View

PCBA Rendered in Altium, Top View

The final virtual assembly was done in SolidWorks:

Downloads:

1.Design files in STEP format

PS:
1.The battery holder was actually modelled in FreeCAD;
2.Even though we also did the circuit diagram and PCB layout the designs don’t belong to us so we can’t publish them here;