News and Tutorials

Case Studies, Tutorials, and News From Our Team

See DiMonte Group’s product development consulting in action. Our case studies walk through real client projects, from defense and medical devices to consumer products, sharing lessons learned from 30 years of product development consulting. Our tutorials offer free SOLIDWORKS presentations and example files from our designers and engineers, many first shared at SOLIDWORKS World.

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Case Studies

Mission Critical Design for Defense & Aviation

Since our founding in 1996, DiMonte Group has partnered with aerospace and defense organizations to develop mission‑critical products for some of the most demanding environments on Earth. Our team’s deep expertise in DFM and electronics packaging enables us to deliver cost-realistic, “like-material” and “like-manufactured” prototypes early in the process — accelerating development and reducing risk.We […]
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Outsourced Product Development: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Contract Manufacturer Design Work

Contract manufacturers (CMs) play a vital role in the product development process, but they aren’t always the best fit for outsourced product development. They offer deep manufacturing expertise and valuable insights that can improve a product’s design for production. At DiMonte Group, we’ve partnered with many CMs to help our clients launch successful products. That […]
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Levels of Sketching: Concept Techniques From a Product Design Consultancy

See how a concept product design consultancy uses sketching, from quick ideation sketches to CAD renderings, to explore ideas and bring new products to life.
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WMS Gaming – Blade Video Slot Machines

DiMonte Group collaborated with WMS Gaming to create their cutting-edge Blade video slot machines. We leaned on our existing slot machine design experience to develop the shared lower core and two different configurations of the upper cabinet, bringing to life the concepts envisioned by WMS’s industrial designers. With our deep expertise in sheet metal and […]
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Soft Close Technology: Mechanical Design Services for Gas Spring Assist

Learn how DiMonte Group’s mechanical design services use gas spring assist to create soft close lids and panels that are safe, balanced, and easy to use.
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WORLD’S BEST COVID-19 PCR TEST SYSTEM

Up until now, you had to make a choice with COVID-19 diagnostic tests: rapid or accurate. But now DiMonte Group is proud to announce we’re playing a major role in the design of a COVID-19 PCR Test System that completes the most accurate form of COVID-19 testing with results in about 15 minutes. Rapid tests […]
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Do You Really Own Your Product Design?

When DiMonte Group completes an engineering project, you get a package that includes not just manufacturing documentation, but also all the source files, allowing you to fully own your product design. Not only can you manufacture the product in your factory, or at your chosen contract manufacturer, you also have what is needed to maintain […]
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Are All The Parts You Need In 2021 Already On Order??

All the parts your products will need for production all the way through December 2021 should be covered by purchase orders now. That’s the advice DiMonte Group is hearing from key semiconductor companies that we rely on in our design work. They have urged us to contact all our clients to encourage them to work […]
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Trying To Describe What We Are

After 22 years in business, we decided we should try to write a formal positioning statement for our company. We thought the exercise would help us learn more about ourselves and our customers, and it did. We also thought it would be easy. It was not. We realized that, over the last 20 years, we […]
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Putting Microcontrollers To Work

Learn how microcontroller implementation enables smarter products. DiMonte Group develops embedded hardware and software for commercial products. Over 75% of Americans now own smartphones, and around 90% of us are online.1 Nearly everyone is familiar with the desktop computers, laptops, smartphones, and tablets that we use everyday to communicate, to search for information, or just […]
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Case Study – TOTs Tricycle

The DiMonte Group is a product design firm that, at its core, believes that giving back to the community is the right thing to do. When we heard about the work of the local charitable foundation Pioneers (TOT Trikes), we instinctively volunteered to help out. We knew they could benefit from our design expertise and […]
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Case Study – North American Communications

Several former DiMonte Group Telecom technology customers joined forces to start a new company, NAC, to develop and produce an original line of “on premise” infrastructure equipment. The following presentation demonstrates the design, development, and execution capabilities DiMonte Group employed to solve design challenges for North American Communications (NAC), to enable them to enter the […]
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Case Study – TV Vision II – Head Mounted Display

With a tight deadline of 6 weeks to design, engineer, and deliver 25+ Pre-Production demonstration models for NASA’s Ames Research Center 75th Anniversary Open House, DiMonte Group built upon knowledge from the TDVisor program to create an ergonomic Head Mounted Display (HMD) with precision mechanisms for optical adjustment. TDVision, a pioneer in the development of […]
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Case Study – TD Vision I – Head Mounted Display

In 2005, TDVision contracted DiMonte Group to design a lightweight 3D Virtual Reality Head Mounted Display, the “TDVisor”, to demonstrate their 3D video technology. TDVision, a pioneer of 3D Virtual Reality technology, developed proprietary software and hardware to provide a complete acquisition, encoding, decoding and visualization platform for true 3D HD video that could be […]
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Case Study – Ideal Ergo Elite

Through field research and a rigorous analysis of the problem, we created a new wire stripper for Ideal Industries. Aircraft wiring harnesses require precision stripping of its insulation. If any of the conductors are nicked by the blade during the wire strip, the entire harness has to be pulled out of the airframe and replaced! […]
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Tutorials

Controlling Isoparms in SOLIDWORKS: Tips From a Product Design Studio

Learn how to control the flow of isoparms in SOLIDWORKS to create smooth surfaces, with tips and example files from DiMonte Group’s product design studio.
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Zen & the Art of SOLIDWORKS Surfacing: An Industrial Design Consulting Tutorial

Learn advanced SOLIDWORKS surfacing techniques from DiMonte Group’s industrial design consulting team, with a free presentation and example files.
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Fantastic Plastic: Injection Molded Part Design at SOLIDWORKS WORLD

Learn injection molded plastic part design in SOLIDWORKS from a product design engineering firm, covering draft, bosses, ribs, and master model workflows.
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SolidWorks World 2017 – Using 3D Scan Data Effectively

You have 3D scan data. Now what? This session first explores the workflows and decisions required to effectively reference a 3D scan in SOLIDWORKS. Then the second part uses the “Tucker Torpedo” case study to explore the root principles and best tools for modeling using the scan as your guide. This session is for anyone […]
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Autodesk University 2016 – A Case Study In Adopting Fusion 360

We’ve owned Fusion 360 software for a year. Projects that come into our company are commercial gigs, so we haven’t been able to justify the learning time involved with using software new to us against a real-world design job’s timeline. So, we just kept plugging along in SOLIDWORKS software. But it kept nagging at us […]
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SolidWorks World 2016 – How Not to be Wrong

This is not a session on how not to make mistakes. Mistakes happen. Not catching mistakes is what is wrong, and not catching and correcting them in a timely fashion can start costing money, or worse, cost people their jobs. SWW2016_HowNotToBeWrong.zip (26MB) Contents: Powerpoint presentation and working SolidWorks files
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SolidWorks World 2016 – Have a Seat

In 1999, TIME magazine hailed the Eames LCW Chair the greatest design of 20th Century. Using this chair and others, I’ll explain SOLIDWORKS modeling techniques that can be used to recreate the most iconic Mid Century Modern furniture designs AND be applied to your everyday design challenges. This presentation covers techniques for how to create […]
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Surfaces and Splines in SOLIDWORKS: Product Design Consultancy Techniques

Learn SOLIDWORKS spline and surfacing techniques our product design consultancy uses to model challenging consumer product shapes, with free example files.
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SolidWorks World 2015 – Filleting Master Class

Have you ever applied a fillet at .23” instead of the required 0.25” just to have it complete? Wondered about the different types of fillets and all their options? Needed to smoothly blend multiple fillets into each other? After this Filleting Master Class, you’ll be a filleting wizard. This presentation discusses the fillet tool and […]
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SolidWorks World 2014 – Make it Shell

When the Shell command works, it is amazing. And when it doesn’t work, that is when you need this session! We will cover why shells fail, how to diagnose the source of the problem, and some simple (and sometimes devious) tricks to always make your part shell. Make-it-Shell_02-17-2014.zip (30MB) Contents: Powerpoint Presentation and working SolidWorks files
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SolidWorks World 2014 – Will it Blend?

Ever applied a fillet at .23″ instead of the required .25″ just to have it complete? Had wonky fillets across the parting line? Wondered how to blend complex shapes into each other? This presentation will discuss techniques that will allow you to smooth pretty much anything in SolidWorks. There is a newer version of the […]
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SolidWorks World 2012 – Gaming the System

This year’s presentation is an exploration of unexpected and devious tricks for editing SolidWorks models, reorganizing history, and reverse Engineering from scans/imported models. Attendees will leave with some really useful techniques employing things like deliberately sabotaging features and creating place-holding geometry as work-arounds for vexing every-day problems. There is also a bunch of stuff about […]
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Fox Valley ASME – 3D Scanning Short Course

3D scanning technology has become a popular tool throughout many industries for use in quality control and reverse engineering projects. The geometry of a scanned part, known as a ” point cloud ” can be surfaced, smoothed, and input into a CAD program such as SolidWorks for the purpose of comparing parts to specification or […]
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SolidWorks World 2011 – Radical Workarounds

Shell, Draft, and Fillet are entirely reliant on the faces of the model they are applied to. This presentation discusses how those features think and why they sometimes deliver surprising results (or no results at all). It discusses how models can be re-structured to better accommodate these applied features. And when that is not possible, it […]
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SolidWorks World 2008 – You Got A Problem With That?

Issues were submitted by users. Phil Sluder and Ed Eaton teamed up to provide answers, often from different perspectives. Topics covered: Modeling techniques to drastically improve performance on parts with large patterns, complex geoemtries, and long feature trees Alternate techniques for Animating springs Suggestions for representing springs in SolidWorks during the design process *I know […]
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SolidWorks World 2007 – Curvy Stuff VI

Every year I try to discuss issues that came up in my design work the previous year that are not covered by any other available materials (either mine or from others). The main issues I ran into this year with customers and coworkers influenced me to break from the previous flow of the ‘Curvy Stuff’ […]
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SolidWorks World 2006 – Curvy Stuff V Part II

Inspiration: The majority of any audience at SolidWorks World are Engineers. Over and over again, Engineers would approach me (an Industrial Designer) and share stories of their frustration with working with Industrial Designers. I, frankly, had similar experiences in the reverse working with Engineers. Working at the DiMonte Group, where Engineers and Industrial Designers work […]
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SolidWorks World 2006 – Curvy Stuff V Part I

SolidWorks World 2005 – Curvy Stuff 301

Inspiration: Each year’s ‘Curvy Stuff’ presentations are inspired by the biggest issue I ran into with SolidWorks the previous year as the DiMonte Group worked with our clients to achieve their design goal. One thing that disturbed me was seeing products that were designed to be convenient for representation in SolidWorks features. This is only […]
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SolidWorks World 2005 – Surfacing For Blockheads

Inspiration: After giving a ‘Curvy Stuff’ presentation, Engineers would approach me and say “great presentation, though I will never use any of it because all I design is ‘blocky” parts'”. The majority of any audience at SolidWorks World are Engineers, and I clearly wasn’t making the connection I was hoping for – that the route […]
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SolidWorks World 2005 – Trees Of Blood

“Out of date” Alert: There is no discussion in this presentation about working through rebuild errors (or possibly introducing design-intent issues) via any of the ‘Xpert’ functions introduced in SolidWorks 2007. Also, some of the glitches explored in the presentation are version specific – that is why it is so important to test everything in […]
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SolidWorks World 2004 – Curvy Stuff 201

Inspiration: Each year’s ‘Curvy Stuff’ presentations are inspired by the biggest issue I ran into with SolidWorks the previous year as the DiMonte Group worked with our clients to achieve their design goal. I kept seeing clients and coworkers stymied by the problem of converting the design in their head (or in the case of […]
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SolidWorks World 2003 – Curvy Stuff 102

“Out of date” alert: Though I tested everything thoroughly at the time this was authored, please note that many items in this presentation have been made out of date by subsequent improvements in SWx (notably ‘modeling overmolds’, which is a LOT easier after the introduction of multi-bodies in SWx 2003. See: Curvy Stuff V – […]
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SolidWorks World 2003 – Curvy Stuff 101

“Out of date” alert: Though I tested everything thoroughly at the time this was authored, please note that many items in this presentation have been made out of date by subsequent improvements in SWx (notably the guide curve stuff and most of the stuff on ‘dome’, though there are others). As with any presentation you […]
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Case Studies, Tutorials, and News From Our Team

Case Studies

Tutorials

DiMonte Group, Inc.