“Bzzzzzzz!”, it went, and suddenly more ice cream than you could catch in your mouth was falling from the opening, along with horses, butterflies and these convincingly brilliant links.

Ivan Santic – You’ll see once you get to the site. The video on the front page then proceed to the gallery.
Can a Smartphone replace a Laptop? – The referenced article is one thing, then there’s the conversation here. I think you know the answer.
Lunchbots – you need steel. throw out the plastic, not the kids, or the yappy dog. steel, it’s durable.
Pioneer Woman Photoshop Actions – It’s sunny out on the ranch, and these actions created by Pioneer Woman will make your photos just freakin’ pop.
Cost of Living Comparison – It’s hard times. If you’re gonna pick a cheap city, here’s one place to start. via Lifehacker.
Coriander Meatballs -You KNOW you’ve been craving it. Cheaper than a box of vino to go with it, whip up a lil’ mint sauce with it you gourmet.
Cardiovascular Paper – It’s all the rage these days. Sport some at your favorite sporting event or just wear into work.

Bonus! GigaPan Time!

Ant! – This is the closest I want to get to an Ant, any closse and it would be too gross.
Parasitic Wasp! – Why? It just gets worse.
SpiderMite! – Small creatures no longer interest me.

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The Mad Englishman (the title now owned by Al Dean)

Sandpaper Cadillac

High Time We Went

Next week, I return to my alma mater, MiraCosta College, Oceanside, CA, to give a presentation during STEM Camp. STEM, (science, technology, engineering and math) Camp was a huge success last year. I couldn't attend last year, but this year I get to show 9th graders the exciting world of CAD, (computer aided design). Look for a full report next week.

Cheers,
Devon T. Sowell
http://www.3-ddesignsolutions.com

Online blogs are a very good source for information when you need it.  I myself have found information on various topics many times simply by reading technical posting on blogs on a variety of topics.

This weekend someone posted a question about sheet metal functions in SolidWorks:

Now I will be the first to admit that I am no expert when it comes to sheet metal tools in SolidWorks.  As a former mold designer, we simply never used them in out designs.  So I posted the question on twitter and within about 20 minutes or so had a few very good responses:

I also asked a colleague of mine who answered yes to question #1, and in regards to question #2, yes, but only in 2009 and newer versions.

Perhaps if anyone has any further input to the original question they can comment below.  Thanks to the Twitter participants for allowing me to share their responses.

Just like what triggered my post last weekend “rocksolid tutorial: modeling a variable profile helix cut” I was recently asked a question by a member of my user group about how to simulate the stroke of a cylinder in SolidWorks.  So here we go, this is how I would simulate a simple cylinder stroke in SolidWorks.

As you can see in the above picture I have quickly assembled a bottom plate (green) that is housing a gas cylinder (yellow) in a pocket.  I also have a top plate (red) that is mated to the bottom plate with a distance mate called “open/close distance” which we will discuss later.  My gas spring was modeled with a simple single sketch profile revolve as you can see below.

By creating my gas spring as a revolve it is extremely easy for me to add a coincident mate between the top of the edge (which represents the end of the gas spring cylinder) and the bottom edge of the top plate.  You can see that I have both of those entities highlighted in red in the above picture.

Once you I added this relation you can see that the sketch of my gas spring is now fully defined.  You will notice that I also have added a driven dimension on the overall length of the gas spring which I can monitor to make sure that it does not exceed the limits of the stock spring.

Once I have done that you can exit your sketch and stop editing the part in your assembly.  Now you are ready to edit the mate that I mentioned earlier.  I have named this mate “open/close distance” so that I can quickly find which one I need to change.  By editing this mate you can simulate the top plate moving downward towards the bottom plate therefore compressing the gas spring cylinder.  You can see in the above picture that my distance “open” distance is 5.170in.  When I change this value to 4.170in., which is my closed distance (shown below) you can see that my cylinder compressed like I am wanting to see.

This is just a quick and easy way to simulate this cylinder compression.  As is with most things in SolidWorks, there are many ways to accomplish this exact thing.  If you prefer using an extruded boss/base cylinder you can use the “Up to Surface” option which will result in the same results.  If you have another favorite way to do this type of thing please feel free to share.

Have you ever sat at your table staring into a pile of peas wondering just how a multi-touch workflow would work? Would it be practical for editing 3D content or video content?

Oblong Industries (creators of G-speak) and supreme futurist John Underkloffer unveiled TAMPER at Sundance Film Fesitval this year as part of the New Frontier exhibition. But check this out. John recently gave a demonstration to Makingof.com showing exactly how it all works. Video after the break. It’s happening with video, why not with 3D CAD?

Editing Video with multi-touch and Gestures

Yes, it’s happening. They’ve managed to make the difficult task look even more difficult, or even easier, or even more aerobic… depends on how you look at it.

Why not with 3D CAD?

So, now you’ve seen the possibilities of how it’s being done with a relatively complicated task like editing video. Sure, there’s now 3-dimensional object, but I’m pretty sure they exist in video also. What’s really interesting from a 3D geometry perspective is how they are working with 2-dimensional graphic data and it’s 3-dimensional counterpart at the same time, in a heads ups environment. The object also serve as a point of control for what the user is creating.

So, why not with 3D CAD? With device like the Flux Digital Tabletop we’re getting awfully close to having to get up out of our seats a little more often. Good-bye atrophy. Hello tendonitis.

Via Making of

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Last year the company that I work for decided to begin the process of upgrading the engineering department computers to more of a CAD workstation.  Being the CAD Administrator and the IT department I had the privilege (so I thought) of being #1 on the list to receive the first machine that was purchased.  So after some investigation we ordered and received a Dell Precision T3400 desktop workstation, Microsoft Vista 64bit, 8GB RAM, 250GB Hard Drive, nVidia 1700 graphics card, and Microsoft Office 2007.

When I received the new machine I immediately downloaded SolidWorks 2008 and it ran perfect to my delight.  I was extremely happy with my new machine and had no issues, not even with Vista.  Around September or October of 2008 I installed SolidWorks 2009 SP0 and this is when the wheels fell off.  Crashes, crashes and more crashes.  Not with SolidWorks however but with Microsoft Office 2007.  Random crashes would occur which is even worse because it is hard to pinpoint the cause of these.  One thing I did notice however is that I would only experience crashes if SolidWorks 2009 was running or had been running in that session.  Outlook, Word and Excel are almost unusable while SolidWorks is loaded into memory.  This caused and is causing much frustration on my end and also my employers end because of constant rebooting in order to clear the system.

I recently have begun hearing from other users that are experiencing the same problem, which makes me feel a little bit better in a sick and twisted kind of way, because at least it is a known problem and it isn’t just me.  I wanted to let some of you, my readers, know about this as well so that in case you are experiencing this same problem there are some different forums and discussions going on about this.

Here is a list of forum discussions that have been started about this.

http://forum.solidworks.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=14&threadid=21729&highlight_key=y&keyword1=office%20crash

http://forum.solidworks.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=14&threadid=21213&highlight_key=y&keyword1=office%20crash

http://forum.solidworks.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=12&threadid=21048

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.office.misc/browse_thread/thread/00af718c3fac678d/ed05cc6c18ec04da?lnk=raot&pli=1

And also a Knowledge Base SPR# for this same thing.

SPR #484553

So I guess here is my question to SolidWorks.  How can I know that this is not a SPR that is just going to sit idle.  If you are a SolidWorks employee that is working on this or know of one that is I would love to talk to them to get an updated status of this SPR because the status of “Open” in the Knowledge Base does not help me out at all.  If you are a fellow SolidWorks user that is or was experiencing the same thing please leave a comment and let me know what you are doing as a work around for this.

I do not mean for this blog to become a source of this type of posts but I thought that it was important to inform other users that are seeing the same thing and to let SolidWorks know that it is a VERY IMPORTANT issue to get fixed.

I’m excited. Are you excited? The crinkly wrapper is coming off and it’s about dang time. Today, July 1st, after two years (and two months) of tinkering with graphics, plugins and a soupy mixture of html code, we’re launching the all new SolidSmack.

It’s shiny, don’t ya think. But that’s not all there is to it. This is a new day for what’s going on with SolidSmack as well. This is also a testbed of sort. One, to find better ways of sharing cool content with you and two, to make it more a more engaging experience for you. Here’s the details on some of the design and what’s to come.

Why the update?
Frankly, the old site layout, while minimal, was getting a bit blotchy, dated looking and difficult to manage. We just can’t have that now can we. I also wanted an easier way to add content, experiment with different web technologies on the site and yes, slap some ads up in your face to get a little support going.

The theme I’m using, and it’s versatile backend, allows me to do this and really, to do it much easier than before. This makes the site much more dynamic and able to change quickly. Some things you’ll see, some things you won’t. The point being, we’re gonna put the top down, have some fun and see what this site can do. So, you might be wondering what the site is running on.

What’s it running on?
I’m building a whole About section for the site that will give details on everything from the framework to the fonts. For the time being though, here’s some quick facts

• Hosted on Hostgator
• Running on Wordpress
• Rockin’ the Thesis Theme (aff) Framework
• Uses Icons from the free Function Icon Set
• Took over 1 year to design

What you should check out
If you’re seeing this in a feed reader or email you won’t be able to enjoy some of the features in the sidebar and footer area. So, yeah, you should definitely visit the site. There’s a few things you’ll want to come back repeatedly for.

The sidebar
Right now there’s ways to connect with me via Friendfeed. There’s polls! Delicious polls. A new one every week or so. And there’s the Disqus Combo Widget where you can see what being discussed and who’s discussing it.

The Footer
I love this area. It slides back and forth. There’s nine areas that I’ll be adding different content to occasionally. Currently, there’s ways to connect via Google Friend Connect. See some of the top CAD sites and see post by different criteria.

The Archive Page
The Archive page is where you can find posts organized by category and view post based on popularity and randomness.

Some things we’ll be trying out/looking into
Since I hold a high regard for complete randomness and highly useful information for you all, we’ll be trying out a few things.

• Real-time blog posts (Like this one, see below)
• Guest Posts (contact me if you’re interested)
• Cloud Apps
• Broader Content
• Video

As always, please let me know what you think, what’s annoying, what’s cool, what you would like to see and how the site could be better in any way. Thanks for helping SolidSmack go this far. Let’s kick it up a notch or two.

• Wondering what the best 3D MCAD Magazine is? Check out Develop3D - Technology for the Product Lifecycle

Oh no, you not gonna do it are you? please, no, no. YES. Slowly step away from the rotor. Bolt Circles my friends. Large, circular, equally-spaced bolt circles to turn your manufacturing nemesis into someone that buys you cakes on holidays. Manufacturers have a special place in their heart for “B.C.” , and as engineers we want to appreciate the power of creating them easily.

Now, in SolidWorks, you have a few options, but if you’re a square plate with no circular edge to be seen, using the plain old Circular Pattern feature just won’t cut it, but there’s a tool that will.

Have a look at the image below. That’s a heckuvalotta holes huh. It’s easy to create that equally-spaced circle of holes using a circular pattern because you have that circular edge for it to follow. Now let’s look at how to do it when you don’t have a circular edge.

Bolt Circles with Circular Pattern are easy, but what do you do when you don't have a circular edge to select?

What to use when you don’t have a Circular Edge
The fastest way to get a bolt circle without using a circular pattern is to use a Curve-Driven Pattern. But there’s also a quick way to create the curve you want to use.

Step 1 – Create a reference
Using the Hole Wizard (Insert, Features, Hole, Wizard…), select your Hole Size and using the Position Tab in the Property Manager

Step 2 – Create a Curve Driven Pattern
Create a Curve Driven Pattern (Insert, Pattern/Mirror, Curve Driven Pattern…) and select the feature to pattern (the hole) and the reference circle. Note: You’ll have to right-click on the Hole Feature sketch and select Show to be able to select it.

So there ya go. A beautiful Bolt Circle to make any classy machinist have a happy day on the Drill Press.
Image via Flickr – Beige Alert

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I’m not saying that one day robots will eat and digest you for energy, but I am saying. Especially given the state of two minds that are creating carnivorous robots that run on the juices extracted from various pests and their materials.

This one grabs flies, mice or other small creatures, scrapes them into a microbial fuel cell vat of bacteria that breaks down the biological material into pure robot-loving energy. No word on if the vat removes the fibrous material or if it’s dishwasher safe.

Enjoy your dreams of being slowly digested. The ‘Matrix’ scenario is sounding better all the time.

They can gain energy by chomping on flies and mice…The pests are lured in and digested by an internal microbial fuel cell. – _{New Scientist}

Although they currently rely on a main power source, is likely the could extract enough energy to be fully powered by their captured prey. Ya gotta human ingenuity.

Via Hack a Day

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To use these methods you need a simple plate with a Slot of any size, a cylindrical, rectangular or square part with diameter/width equal to or less than slot width. In this chapter I’m going to use the cylindrical part (pin). I will be covering another discussion on same topic with a square part too.

Start you assembly with the plate inserted as the base part and fixed. You can also use mating techniques to position your plate. Now insert you pin which you want to mate with the slot.

Method 1: With your assembly opened and both the part inserted, select the back face of the plate and bottom face of the pin. Add a coincident mate between them. You can select front and top faces too. This is to set the initial position. Now show on the temporary axis (View > Temporary axis) to display the temporary axis of the pin. Select the side face of the plate and the temporary axis of the pin and give a distance mate. Repeat this with the bottom face. Your pin is now in to the required position.

Method 2: Using the same technique as described in method 1, use the planes instead of the temporary axis of pin to give distance mates with the side and bottom faces of the plate. Your planes may vary from the one shown in the picture.

The difference in the above two methods is that in Method 1 the part is not fully define and its free to revolve on its axis whereas in Method 2, the part gets fully defined.

Method 3: This is a combination of above 2 methods. Add a distance mate using the side face of the plate with the corresponding plane of the pin. Now show up the temporary axis if they are not on. Select either of the temporary axes of the slot and corresponding plane of the pin. Add a coincident mate.

Method 4: If your slot width and diameter of the pin and equal then you can use this method. Add a tangent mate between the side face of the slot and the cylindrical face of the second part. Then add a distance mate with the bottom/side face depending upon the location of your slot with the corresponding plane/temporary axis of the pin.

or

Method 5: In this method, RMB on the edge of the plate and select “Midpoint”. Then select the corresponding plane of the pin and add a coincident mate. Then add a distance mate with the bottom/side face depending upon the location of your slot with the corresponding plane of the pin.

Method 6: This is tricky method and I prefer to use this method most of the time. Open the plate and edit the slot sketch. Add these two construction lines to your slot sketch. Now in assembly, select to show the slot sketch. Use the planes of the pin and mate them with the corresponding construction line

These are few of the methods which I use for mating with a slot. I would be interesting to hear if you more methods or any other method that you use for mating with the slot.

How many ways do you think there are to share content online? hundreds? thousands? Who cares, cause we’ve boiled it down to four. Exactly four sites that are changing how people post content and interact online?

Not only are these the coolest places to be online nowadays, they’re the quickest and most versatile ways to put up your thoughts, consolidate your social activity and post just about any kind of media you want people to know about. So, get your amazing food mold photos and thoughts on abolishing insect repellent together, you’re about to go post.

Why the four?
There’s a lot of ways to put crapalicious meaningful content online. However, there’s only a few really good ways to enjoy doing it while having it all make sense. Whether you’re just wondering about posting content online or consolidating how you already do it, these are bound to interest you.

I’d also like to add, there’s a direction content distribution on the web seems to be drifting mindlessly toward. There are types of real-time aspects creeping in, but this is just one feature of what browsers and web apps will apply toward the continuous streams of online content generated each day. These are four that are showing the types of features being added to applications development and content distribution. They’re not perfect, but they’re ones to get familiar with.

These four below would currently be considered blog or micro-blogging sites or platforms, but in actuality, they’re more like thought-streaming or content-streaming apps. They allow you to put content online in different ways, and likewise share it in different ways. Here’s the crew of them. While they’re separate apps, you’ll notice when you get into them, that they have features which allow them to work together.

FriendFeed

FriendFeed is real-time content being delivered as fast as you can create it. You can see the content streaming in real-time on the public discussion page. This seems a bit noisy , I agree, but the value is on the people you connect with and the other features like consolidating all your social site activity, posting via email, document attachment, groups, threaded comments, and great bookmarklet, widgets and other tools.

Posterous

Posterous is making it extremely easy to post content online as well as consolidate your activity. The great features Posterous has are being able to auto-post to your other social sites, like Twitter, Facebook, etc., post via email and have as many Posterous sites as you like on one account. You can also subscribe to other Posterous users.

Tumblr

Tumblr is a lot like Posterous with not as much a focus on distributing your content to other sites. They have an incredibly easy interface to use, a lot of tools, widgets and a third-party developer site which allows you to extend the ways you use Tumblr. You can also follow people and create as many blogs as you like on one account.

Wordpress.com

Wordpress is one more will be familiar with. It’s a full blog platform that allows you to quickly customize the site and post content. The integration doesn’t work quite the same, but since it uses RSS you can link it to other sites. Wordpress has an extremely strong community, lots of development and many ways to customize.

Which is best?
These are all the range of web apps currently out that are pushing web technology in the area of content distribution. They don’t create or organize the media for you, they’re simply an outlet for all the stuff you want to get off your head. The best for this is a tough call between the two, FriendFeed and Posterous. Freindfeed allows quick posting via web and email and allows file attachment. Posterous takes away the boundaries typically associated with blogging while keeping the whole process familiar. It’s dead easy and would be the preferred way to learn how all this social media works together. For this reason, I’d pick Posterous with a strong suggestion to also check out Friendfeed, in order to discover how a stream of information is displayed and used online.

How these Apps Will Advance CAD/PLM
Currently, CAD and PLM is a static, somewhat disconnected way of designing and tracking information. It mirrors, to an extent, what typical blogs are today. Content is created, published (released) and consumed (built). The comments come in and splashes of collaboration happen here and there. In an environment similar to what Freindfeed and Posterous are CAD and PLM apps would be feed information from devices and applications able to connect and feed information to the model and designer/engineer/manufacturing. The programs could then immediately feed production systems real-time model data and information based on conditional notifications.

That’s all great for copying what web technology is doing, but CAD/PLM apps can advance beyond this by very simply integrating adaptive processes and more semantic features/search. We all want a better way to find the junk out there about what programs we use, the models we create in them and the discussions going on around them. Not only within the applications themselves, but also within web technologies where collaboration and issue resolutions are happening. I mention this, because there’s people out there thinking about this – people thinking about how we create/use 3D data, how we can automatically generate 3D geometry based on purpose and environment while manufacturing is automatically aware of what is coming and adapts accordingly. Most likely we’ll see a more relevant future web, and I’d like to think we’ll see more relevant future CAD/PLM systems.

Allright, dang, that was deep and all serious and way to long. This wasn’t meant to be an article, but you got me going, so enjoy the added commentary and thought about where we’re all going with CAD/PLM and this crazy web world we’re living in.

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The viewing tool I’m talking about is the Roll View option.  It is available in the Right Mouse button menu in the graphics area.  It allows you to roll the model about an axis pointing normal to the viewing plane.  (The axis is coming out of your screen.)  Here’s a short video showing it off.

Alright folks, fess up!  If you have never noticed this viewing tool before, leave me a comment.  I’ll bet I’m not the only one!

I’ve got some other stuff in the works and will be picking up a USB microphone this week so I can start posting videos with voice again to the site.  My next “series” of posts will be about SolidWorks Routing.  This is something I have wanted to do for the site for quite some time and I’m looking forward to sharing some tips with you that will hopefully simplify the mystique that seems to surround that product at times.

SolidWorks 2010 Beta testing is going well.  As soon as the NDA is lifted I’ll have some videos ready to roll out that show off the new functionality.

Stay tuned…more to come!

This week I was sent an email from a member of my user group with a modeling challenge.  They needed to model a helix cut that had different widths at the start point and end point.  I first thought that this could get pretty involved with different sketches and profiles but after playing with it for a few minutes I realized that it is actually quite simple to accomplish this.  Here are the steps I took to get this variable profile helix cut.

I started the model by creating a simple shaft with a chamfer on the top.  I then offset a new plane off of the top plane that I want to use as the beginning (or ending depending on which way you think) of the helix cut.  You can see these first couple steps in the above screenshot.

Next I created the 2 sketches that I want to use for my beginning profile (shown in red above) and my ending profile (shown in yellow above).

Then I created the helix that I want to follow by starting it on my helix start plane and telling it to do 1 revolution in the distance to the bottom of the shaft.  The helix I created is shown in blue in the above screen shot.

The next step is where I actually create the cut.  I used the “Lofted Cut” command.  For my 2 profiles I used the 2 sketches that I created earlier.  Now 1 thing to keep in mind when doing this is that we you select the sketches SolidWorks puts a green point at the closest end point of the sketch.  You will want to make sure that those end points are at the corresponding points on both sketches.  You can simply drag and drop the points to to the correct location if SolidWorks misinterprets where to put them.  Next, I used the helix that I created as the Centerline Parameters of my loft.  This allowed my loft to rotate around the part like I wanted.

Voila, it worked and I achieved the desired variable profile helix cut that I wanted.  If you have another way to accomplish this same profile please feel free to share.

Two weeks ago, I heard SolidWorks Corp. CEO Jeff Ray talk about Mac computers. He said he uses nothing but Macs in his house, his Wife loves them. Mr. Ray said there are about "40 - 50 Macs at SolidWorks HQ running SolidWorks". He thought they used Bootcamp to run SolidWorks. He said SolidWorks couldn't support the use of Macs and SolidWorks because "we (SolidWorks) get no help from Apple".

Here is SolidWorks' Rick Chin showing Sustainability Xpress. Is this a Mac? I don't have a Mac, so I'm asking.

It rose right up I tells ya, a creature as wily as a hairless mouse with ten arms and no visible face. It did have a nice name though, Clarence Witherspoon, and presented these link calmly while drinking marbles and buttered hate.

20 Impressive 3D Graffiti Artworks – and you thought 3D was just for movies and designing products. Get your spraypaint on.
Google Voice – Google just got a million numbers. They’re about to send invites. Get one or be left behind.
The Sake Education Show – Get your edumecation on about Japanese alcohol. Sayonara. Part 1 and Part 2
Robot Voice Modulator How-to – You could use your normal voice, but what fun is that when you can creep people out with a robot voice.
TrailerFreaks – Just watching trailers is so 2009, get hip and start downloading your favs right here.
The Personal Finance Chore List – But is it really a chore. C’mon, it’s soooo fun I’m gonna make TWO lists. But seriously, get on it.
How Star Wars, Star Trek, The Matrix, and Harry Potter are Actually the Same Movie – I knew it. jerks.

Bonus!! Sound in 3D Videos
Drone – It sounds nice.
Sync – I like cubes.
Rhythm – It’s got a nice beat.

• Wondering what the best 3D MCAD Magazine is? Check out Develop3D - Technology for the Product Lifecycle

We’re reaching deep in our pool of unusual uses for 3D CAD today and pulling out something extra shiny for ya. If you’re into graphic design or making pretty 3D icons and graphics for your website, you’ll want to adjust your seat.

You never would have thought it, but SolidWorks is extremely useful for creating 3-dimensional graphics for web and print design. Frank Parenteau has been doing it for years and SolidWorks is right there on the shelf to Photoshop. There’s even a trick you can use to get pixel perfect sizes in SolidWorks. Here’s how Frank makes it happen.

The process
Frank starts out with concept sketches to get the basic layout of the logo, site or whatever he is creating. From there, he scans the images and proceeds to model it using SolidWorks. Depending on what kind of look he’s trying to get, he’ll take it into PhotoWorks for some quick rendering and works with the camera angle/perspective to get an angle. This is particularly useful for logos and icons.

After he gets the 3D effect he likes, he saves out a .PSD file from SolidWorks and opens it with Photoshop. He’ll make image adjustments and add filters to the graphic, test out text and layout for the image. If it’s an entire site layout, he’ll add slices which allows him to crop the views and have them line up correctly online. Finally, he saves it out each graphic for use on the web. Here’s the steps.

1. When starting any kind of design work, i aways start with sketches. First by drawing pretty much anything that comes to mind, then focusing on the ideas i like and refining them.
2. For a website, i usually start out with a blank Photoshop file, and just position the basic elements, width, header height, content area dimensions, where the logo will be, etc.
3. I will then import that image in a Solidworks sketch, and basically draw the elements i want, exactly where they would be, as i would in Illustrator for exemple.
4. Then comes the rendering part, it’s really a case by case scenario, but it always involves trial and error, finding the right texture file, the perfect lighting, and making sure it doesn’t look “3D”.
5. I render to file at a much higher resolution, then scale it back in my initial Photoshop layout.
6. Lather, rince and repeat for any other element.

Why did Frank choose SolidWorks?

I am a big Solidworks user and believer, and i always try to push the limits of the software, especially the rendering engine. I quickly found out it was way much easier for me to draw shapes and layouts using the Solidworks sketch features, than it would of taken me to figure it out in Illustrator. Add the fact that you have an exact pixel to mm ratio, and you have the perfect tool for a graphic artist.

The SolidWorks Graphic Design pixel trick

The pixel to mm ratio is really helpful, as i can start a layout in Photoshop, get my overall dimensioning (in px), and when i do my stuff in SolidWorks, i know that after I re-scale my render, it will fit exactly where I wanted. A 10mm radius will equal a 10px corner.

Graphic Design Examples

The Fallen

Jazz Media

Nymoda
Here’s another example from a new site he is working on http://www.nymoda.ca/. The embossed white circle is actually a photoworks render.

The SolidSmack logo just so happens to be created using SolidWorks. Have you ever used SolidWorks or 3D CAD to produce 3D graphics for web or print?

• Wondering what the best 3D MCAD Magazine is? Check out Develop3D - Technology for the Product Lifecycle

So today I was browsing around on Twitter and read that Chris Serran was sitting in on a webinar given by Greg Jankowski about a new and improved SolidWorks Forums site that will be launched sometime soon.

This is all it took to wet my appetite to see exactly what some of the SolidWorks employees have been working on lately to enhance the user experience of the forums.  Unfortunately I jumped in about 15 minutes after the start but was still able to catch some awesome enhancements that I am looking forward to seeing and using in the new forums.  I did notice some other bloggers also in the webinar and maybe they can drop some comments here about some of the things I missed.

When I hopped on the webinar train Greg was talking about some of the My Profile changes that you will see.  Some of the highlights were you will now be able to have “friends” inside the forums which will allow you to easily follow what some users are posting and also a “similar people” function which will automatically be populated with other forum members that are posting similar questions as you are.  This will definitely increase the ability to network with people that are working with similar tools that you are, which will be a huge benefit in case you run into something that stumps the living tar out of you.  You will also be able to subscribe to “groups” inside the forums.

Another thing that is being revamped is file uploading.  It used to be a tedious process of uploading files to your topic but now it takes a matter of seconds and about 2 clicks.  A very welcome and much needed change.  Other things that have been changed to the posting process is the ability to add a video, bookmark & tag topics along with the ability to easily mark the correct answer to your question.  The feature that I have been wanting for some time now will also finally be available, message threading.  It will now be easier to track a discussion in the forum as opposed to having just a running list of this and that and not having a clue as to what questions people are answering.

In the new forum there will be 3 levels of members (similar to what is there now).  The 3 levels will be member, contributor, and MVP.  You will be able to move through these levels by a point system.  It sounds as if points will be awarded for posting topics, responding to topics and having the correct answer.   Another new feature that I am looking forward to seeing develop is a blog section.  SolidWorks employees will be writing these blog posts about various topics like Jim Wilkinson in the UI arena and Greg Jankowski in the CAD Admin and Forums arena.

All in all I am really looking forward to seeing this new forum in action and actually being able to use it.  Now don’t fret, all of your current information will automatically get transferred to the new forum except for your signature.  So unless you spent 3 1/2 years making your signature for the current forum you will not lose anything major.  Supposedly there will be some sort of an announcement made some time early next week about the new and improved forums so definitely stay tuned.

If you would like to follow along with some of the conversation about this you can check out the thread in the current forums by clicking here.

Put down the oil can you’re dumping into the river and rev your electric motor Mr. Clean, we’re gettin’ sustainable and Xpress-ive up in this design. Yes, you could single-handed prevent further disintegration of the atmosphere and taxpayer burden by properly analyzing your design and applying a material that reduces those nasty carbon molecules causing the sun to cook everyone’s brainpan.

SolidWorks has released the beta version of SustainabilityXpress on the SolidWorks Labs site. We’ve got the eco-friendly, low calorie review.

So, prepare yourself to become the sustainable designer or engineer you’ve always dreamed of becoming. And since this post is generating a carbon footprint larger than a 7MPG truck without a muffler in a developing country, you’ll have to work that much harder on optimizing your design… just sayin’.

Brief Review
SolidWorks has partnered with, PE International to use their Life Cycle Assessment data which analyzes the ecological impact of different materials along the life of the material as it is used in manufactured products.

SustainabilityXpress is easy to get started with – just make sure you have it selected to start-up in the add-ins (tools, add-ins.) A tab will appear in the Taskbar on the right-hand side of your screen. If you have a material set using the SolidWorks material database it, unfortunately won’t recognize those yet. You’ll need to select the material from the pull-down and select set material. This is actually quicker than setting the material through the database and allows you to quickly select different materials to see the havoc they will reek on the environment. In addition, you can set which country you want to toss into unbridled environmental panic by selecting them in the location area below the material selection. Currently, only North America, Europe and Asia are represented. (The other countries may follow if they get their act together and start recycling a bit more.)

From there, you’ll see SustanabilityXpress start doing it’s thing in the pie/bar charts at the bottom. You’ll see current impact and previous impact in the four relevant sections. (Sorry, happiness and burn rate are not in this version.) Now, these charts are fairly obscure, except for being able to tell if the material is better (green) or worse (red) than a previously selected material or manufacturing/use location. You can get a more detailed bar chart view of each section by clicking on one or using the arrow at the very bottom to cycle through. Again, a lot of obscure numbers. I attempted to find a better explanation for what they meant or how they were calculated, but failed. With all your data set, you can now auto-generate a report (.doc format) to totally impress the people that wrote the Kyoto Protocol or get confused phone calls from manufacturing when you tell them to switch materials.

What’s very useful, even from a non-impact scenario, is the ability to find similar materials using the ‘Find Similar’ Tool in the Materials section.

Find Similar allows you to quickly find similar materials based on material properties.

It brings in the properties of the material you have selected. Then, you can very quickly select different materials or change properties of the existing material to find other options. After hitting the Find Similarbutton a list of materials appear according to what you have selected. When double-clicking on any of them, the environmental impact section will update instantly.

Pretty much, this tool allows you to create a nice graphical representation of what materials or manufacturing locations would be better or worse. While it doesn’t explain the numbers, you do get a better idea on what materials are going to ruin or improve everyone’s life if you use them. I’d use it more often to look for other materials that manufacturing could use when the lead times and options are not feasible on a current project. If it keeps the atmosphere from collapsing, all the better.

A final note, if this program in any way makes you feel guilty because you can’t use Balsa wood instead of Cast Iron, run immediately to a sink and throw cold water on your face, we’ll probably make it.

Some other things to note

• SustainabilityXpress currently only supports parts, not assembly
• If you have the add-in loaded, it may not appear on the Taskbar at first (go to Tools, SustainabilityXpress)
• It doesn’t currently recognize materials you’ve set using SolidWorks Material database
• The report needs some tweaking. The template is located in C:\Program Files\Dassault SolidWorks Corporation\SustainabilityXpress\lang\English

Here’s Director of Product Innovation Rick Chin giving you some more insight to the product.

• Wondering what the best 3D MCAD Magazine is? Check out Develop3D - Technology for the Product Lifecycle

There’s a wave of particularly large significance in the world of parametric, history-based modeling these warm summer days. A wave directed straight at your inability to manipulate 3D geometry any which way you want. Many a company has taken on the task of harnessing more ways to fiddle with your solids. Now, it’s Autdesk’s turn.

At the 2008 Autodesk University, Inventor Fusion was introduced to show just how serious Autodesk was about providing the option for CAD users to choose between history-based or history-free modeling, mixing them together, mashing them around and coming back to either whenever the need be. Today, they release it on the masses.

One more approach to History-free modeling please. Thank you.
You may or may not know, but what’s being called history-free, direct or explicit modeling is causing a big stir in the whole CAD/PLM industry. PTC, makers of Pro/E have Wildfire5 (with CoCreate direct editing funtionality), SpaceClaim leaves history in the dust, and Siemens has the buzz with Sychronous Technology in SolidEdge and NX. In the CAD circles, let’s just say that a couple horses have been pulverized and another is on backorder.

The new Inventor?
This isn’t being booked as the new Inventor. Yet. This release is called a Technology Preview, being made available through Autodesk Labs. That means you get to try it all out, let them know what sucks and doesn’t suck to get all the buggy issues worked out. But yeah, ‘Inventor’ is in the name, History-free modeling is the wave of the future, so pretty much my guess, it’s the new Inventor.

Why it’s cool? or is it?
I use a couple 3D CAD programs, mostly SolidWorks (history-based parametric) and SpaceClaim (history-free explicit). This is interesting to me because it combines (what I would call) the best of both, although my opinion, from a user standpoint having limited use with the current version of Inventor, would be SolidWorks and SpaceClaim already do those two things the best. But, I haven’t tried Fusion or seen actual assembly/drawing/production capabilities, which always get left out in the fancy push/pull demos. But if it does allow someone to intermingle modeling methods which make design quicker, that is gonna be cool.

Besides all of that mumble-jumble above, Fusion has an interesting looking set of functionality, which you’ll see below in some short video examples. Particular items to note are the circular context menu (marking menu) that can be be accessed via right-click and gestures. The Flexible Product Structure is also an interesting take on being able to manipulate components as quickly as you can drag, drop and create a folder like structure on the screen. Now, all they need is a good logo.

So, here are the videos. First have a look at Kenneth Wong, contruting editor of Desktop Engineering Magazine, actually using and having conflicts with the product. Then check out the Autodesk Lab videos. Will it be all it’s cracked up to be? Tell us what you think.

To view more, check out the Labs Youtube channel.

Via Yahoo Finance

• Wondering what the best 3D MCAD Magazine is? Check out Develop3D - Technology for the Product Lifecycle

After a few rounds of email tag over the last few weeks, I am pleased to bring you this dialogue on the day that SolidWorks Labs has released SustainabilityXpress.  I hope you find it informative!

Rick Chin:  I’m a 23 year veteran of the CAD space. I’ve worked for UG, PTC, Pratt & Whitney (as in-house CAD expert), SolidWorks, and Xpress3D (my own startup). Jon Hirschtick hired me in 1995, and I left in 2001 to start Xpress3D. I returned in 2005 when SolidWorks acquired the FeatureXpert technology from me. eDrawings has been one of the most notable achievements I have been involved with. Currently, I am working with the team that is developing our new SolidWorks Sustainability product.

CF:  How did you become involved with SolidWorks?

RC:  Prior to joining SolidWorks, I was a demo jock and product manager for PTC. I left PTC in 1994 with the hope of one day starting a company focused on creating a MS Windows version of Pro/E. I soon learned about a startup that was already developing that product. The company was venture capital funded and had rock stars like Jon Hirschtick and Mike Payne (who I had worked with at PTC). I realized that there was no way to beat them, so I decided to join them. This was one of the best career moves of my life.

CF:  At SolidWorks World 2009 in Orlando earlier this year, Jeff Ray mentioned an upcoming tool called Sage to help SolidWorks users create designs that have lower environmental impacts, or sustainable design. What exactly is “sustainable design”, and how is it implemented?

RC:  From our perspective, all design will soon be “sustainable design”. This is all about minimizing the total environmental of the products designed by our customers. To accomplish this, design professionals must be able to measure those impacts, and then proactively work to reduce them. Ideally, it should be a natural part of the design process.

We have equipped our customers to do this by building Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) right into SolidWorks. LCA is a very comprehensive way of looking at a product’s production, use, and final disposal; and the environmental impacts that result. The environmental impacts we measure are: carbon footprint, total energy consumed, effects on air, and effects on water.

We have taken this very sophisticated analysis and made it “SolidWorks simple”. We accomplish this by limiting the number of inputs, and providing real-time results in an easy to understand dashboard.

By the way, “Sage” was the code name for our project. The official product names are SolidWorks Sustainability and SustainabilityXpress. SustainabilityXpress allows our users to analyze individual parts. The full Sustainability product allows them to analyze assemblies, compare configurations, and works with our new Assembly Visualization tool (very cool!).

CF:  Who is the target audience for Sage?

RC:  Our target audience for SolidWorks Sustainability and SustainabilityXpress is just about anyone who is using SolidWorks to design product. SolidWorks SustainabilityXpress will be available to all SolidWorks users, and is a great way to easily try out sustainable design. SolidWorks Sustainability is for our users who are interested in understanding and improving the environmental impact of the complete products they are designing.

CF:  Jeff Ray mentioned that a version of Sage will be rolled out prior to the release of SolidWorks 2010. Can you give any details of that?

RC:  Yes, we are providing a preview of the SustainabilityXpress product. It is going to be available THIS WEEK on our SolidWorks Labs website. It is an add-in to SolidWorks 2009 and is available to all SolidWorks users who are running that version of the software. That also includes students who are using our educational products. The product isn’t perfect yet, but we are looking forward to getting feedback from our users on it.

CF:  What is the timeframe for the product release?

RC:  SolidWorks SustainabilityXpress will be available this week on Labs and in the 2010 Beta. Full SolidWorks Sustainability will be available in a later Beta build around August. Both levels of the product will be completed and released with SolidWorks 2010 this fall.

CF:  What level of SolidWorks will be required to have access to the full Sage tool?

RC:  Great news … SolidWorks SustainabilityXpress will be built into every seat of SolidWorks 2010 for no additional charge. Every SolidWorks user will be able to make sustainable design a part of their every day process.

SolidWorks Sustainability is an add-in to SolidWorks that will be sold separately for a price that we will announce later this summer. Please note that it is NOT a part of the Professional or Premium bundles. It is a separately packaged product with its own price.

CF:  How will utilizing the Sage tool impact a user’s workflow?

RC:  We are designing the product so that it can be effortlessly included in today’s design flow. Material choice is an important consideration for all design professionals. It is also an important influencer in the environmental impact of products. We built a very cool “Find Similar Material” tool into the Sustainability products. I think everyone will find it useful, whether you are interested in sustainable design or not. As you use the tool to help you find the material for the job, you will see the magnitude of your part’s environmental impact change in real-time. As you evaluate materials for their mechanical properties, you will simultaneously see their impacts. No extra work or time required.

CF:  How dedicated is SolidWorks to continuing to work to develop Sage?

RC:  Like I mentioned above, we feel that all design will soon be sustainable design. Slowly, more and more of our customers are asking for this. And their customers are starting to demand it. We see the SolidWorks Sustainability product as the first of many products we hope to develop in the near future.

The add-in enables users to perform an environmental impact study of designs by means of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).  The LCA considers all aspects of a products life cycle from drawing board to end-of-life.

The Environmental Dashboard enables tracking of four data points: Carbon Footprint, Total Energy Consumed, Effect on Air, and Effect on Water.  As changes are made to the design, the user can see the potential environment impacts in real-time.

SustainabilityXpress includes a Find Similar Material tool that will enable users to quickly find a similar materials from the built-in SolidWorks material library and see the results.  There is also a publishing feature than enables users to create customized reports to document the LCA.

SolidWorks 2009 is required to run SustainabilityXpress.  I am disappointed that only 32-bit is supported (as of this writing).

I am intrigued by this tool, and am all for lessening the environmental impact of designs.  In my industry, with quick turn-around times sometimes required, the mantra is often, “When in doubt, make it stout!”  I am curious to see if this tool will help.

Do you think that this tool will have a significant impact on your designs?  Will you use it to try to design “greener”?  Let us know in the comments!

UPDATE: SolidWorks SustainabilityXpress allows analysis of parts only.  The full Sustainability add-in will be required to analyze assemblies and compare configurations.  The full product will also work with the new Assembly Visualization tool.  The full SolidWorks Sustainability product will not be included in a SolidWorks bundle; it will be sold separately at a price to be announced later this summer.

Last edited on 06/24/2009 @ 2:28PM CDT.

The submitter must be the author of the file they submit. 

Contestants may email their entry to me at my email address by the end of July 6, 2009 PDT.

The prize is one CSWP test of your choice (CSWA, CSWP, CSWP Sheetmetal, CSWSP FEA, etc).   

Past winners of the Legion Contest are eligible.  In the event of a tie, tie breaker will be in the form of email roshambo.

Best of luck to everyone!

ASME Y14.5M-1994 paragraph 1.8.10 and figure 1-35 provide three methods for the dimensioning of slots, with no stipulation regarding which is preferred for particular scenarios.   (Note: all three methods require the insertion of a non-dimensioned “2X R” note pointing at one of the slot’s end radii.)

In one fashion or another, SolidWorks 2009 supports all three methods, though it does have a default for both simple slots and arc slots.  For brevity, this article will only cover simple slots.

The first method (a) provides the width and the distance between the end radii center points.

Method (a)

The second method (b) is the easiest and simplest to dimension.  Simply state width and overall length, and use an arrow to point to the slot’s object line.  Though originally reserved for punching operations, ASME Y14.5M-1994 allows for the use of this method on any simple slot.  When using hole wizard to dimension a slot in SolidWorks 2009 or higher, this is the type of dimension that is inserted.  (A future article will address how to simulate this method in SolidWorks 2008 or previous.)

Method (b)

The third method (c)  provides the width and overall length of the slot in linear dimensions.  This method is preferred if the slot has positional tolerances that use the boundary method (see ASME Y14.5M-1994 figure 5-47).

Method (c)

Side note: of the three choices, the ASME board almost left out (a) and (b).  The original release draft of ASME Y14.5M-(1994) only shows method (c) in figure 1-35.

This is my first attempt at video in quite a while, and I was impressed with the results!  Sorry about the audio, but I don’t think it’s too bad.

Like it/hate it?  Let me know what you think in the comments!

Use Empty Views as quick Zoom to selection locations

OK, let’s say that one empty view each represents the title block, revision block and drawing notes.  How does one quickly move about the drawing to view these areas?  There are several methods available in SolidWorks.  The following method is likely less common, but is perhaps quicker can more common methods.

First, assign a shortcut to Zoom to selection function.  Zoom to selection is found under View pulldown>Modify>Zoom to selection.

To add the shortcut (for much quicker access to this function), goto Tools pulldown>Customize…>Keyboard tab> and then search for “zoom to selection”.  From there, simply add a keystroke as the shortcut for Zoom to selection and choose OK to save.

Now here is how to use this shortcut with Empty Views.  With the drawing open and with no views selected, look over in the FeatureManager.  Select any one of the Empty Views (or any view for that matter).

As this point, simply hit your shortcut keystroke for Zoom to selection.  The viewport will immediately zoom to the area identified by the Empty View.

Choose another view from the FeatureManager and hit your shortcut for Zoom to section again.  Each time, the viewport will immediately zoom to the area defined by the selected view.

Using Empty Views for PDF bookmarking

As an added bonus, any views created on the drawing (including Empty Views) will become bookmarks if you save that drawing as a PDF.  This adds greatly to the navigability of PDF files for everyone who uses them.  Within PDF Reader, the bookmarks will appear to the left (similar to the FeatureManager in SolidWorks).  Simply LMB click on the desired view, and PDF Reader will jump to that location.

There are some pitfalls with saving a drawing as PDF, so if your company is experiencing those, then it is not recommended that drawings be saved as PDF.  In those cases, print to PDF works better.  Unfortunately, bookmarks are not created when printing a drawing to PDF.

Conclusion

The one thing that frustrates me about SolidWorks Empty Views is that SolidWorks Corp reduced their functionality (as discussed in Part 2).  However, with a simple hack, they can be used as drawing bookmarks, to contain drawing notes,  and to add functionality to PDF files.  Additionally, they are always useful for containing sketches, as noted in Part 1 of this series.

The upcoming release of Service Pack 4.0 for SolidWorks 2009 will include a few pieces of new functionality including:

Ability to dimension the length of an arc in a 3D sketch:

Ability to rename driven dimensions:

And the ability to delete faces from multiple bodies at the same time:

The early visibility release of Service Pack 4.0 has been available for about a week, and the full production release should be ready in the next few weeks.

Here is what Jeff Ray had to say about SolidWorks at the two recent SWUG Meetings in SoCal:

• Open Catia files in SolidWorks and SolidWorks files in Catia, this will happen.

• Release cycles; currently every 12 months, they may become sooner, like every 8 - 10 months. Look for more functionality additions and changes in future SolidWorks Service Packs.

• SolidWorks & SaaS (Software as a service (SaaS, typically pronounced 'sass') is a model of software deployment where an application is hosted as a service provided); this is coming.

• Once SolidWorks is "on the cloud" (SaaS), your designs will be "live" and "on" all the time. No need for File Open, no need for Check In and Check Out. Just like video game environments.
  

• Service Based Charges; when SolidWorks is hosted SaaS, SolidWorks is considering working towards Service Based Charges, for example; pay a fee, based on time, to use a SolidWorks application.

• Real Time Simulation; access analysis results as you model a new part.

• Social Networks such as Facebook and twitter are looked at by SolidWorks and will play an important part in the SolidWorks application.

• SolidWorks looks at sales figures daily.

• Last year SolidWorks had $405 million in revenue and was profitable. This year will show less revenue but they will show a profit.

• SolidWorks position in Dassault Systemes; SolidWorks has 10% of the headcount, 24% of revenue, and 40% of the profit.

• SolidWorks is betting big on R & D.

Well the first result of the polls is that I really dislike the polling site memedex.com.  I wish wp-polls would work, but it does not right now for my blog.  Oh well.

Ok, with regards to the second poll first, the question was “If you have a 3DConnexion 3D mouse, did you…?”

• …buy it yourself (55 votes)
• …get it through your company (49 votes)
• …win it in a contest (14 votes)
• …receive it as a gift from 3DConnexion (8 votes)
• …steal it (3 votes)

So, it looks like most users either buy own 3d mouse, or their company bought it for them to use.  I am surprized at the number of people who have bought these devices for themselves.  I guess that says something about the usefulness of such devices.

Something that isn’t really a surprize, but worthy of mention is that 3 people actually admitted to stealing or otherwise obtaining one through some nefarious means.  I added this option to the poll almost as a joke, but I knew someone would come forward, so it was a legit option.  You 3 thieves!  ::shakes fist:: 

“Do you use a 3D mouse with your 3D CAD application?“  The answers to this poll are skewed.  By a wide margin, responders stated they used 3d mice. This was kinda expected since the title of the article naturally drew in such users and likely precluded many of those not interested in 3D mice.  Regardless, here are the results.

• Yes, everytime I use 3D CAD. (75 votes)
• No, but I want to. (26 votes)
• I have one, but I rarely use it, if at all. (21 votes)
• No, and I don’t want to. (17 votes)
• Yes, often or sometimes. (12 votes)
• No, what’s a 3D mouse? (9 votes)

I think I know what the next poll will be.  I use my SpacePilot PRO with SolidWorks (and Google Earth).  With what applications are other people using their devices?

This coming Tuesday and Wednesday, I'll have the pleasure of attending two SolidWorks User Group Meetings. First, the June 16th meeting in Orange County. This will be a combined meeting with the Los Angeles, CA group. At this meeting, I'll be presenting the newest version of my 2009 SolidWorks Weldments Tips and Tricks.

Wednesday night, June 17th, I'll attend the San Diego SolidWorks User Group Meeting. Phil Sluder, leader of this outstanding group, celebrates the 150th meeting. Congratulations Phil.

I'll have copies of my 2009 SolidWorks PDM books at both meetings.

The added bonus at these two meetings is that SolidWorks CEO, Jeff Ray will be in attendance. I hope to see you at these meetings.

Cheers,
Devon T. Sowell
http://www.3-ddesignsolutions.com
http://www.pdmsolution.com

Unless you are completely new to SolidWorks, you have more then likely used the Coincident mate. It is probably the most common mate used when building assemblies. Today, we are going to look more into using the coincident mate to limit the degrees of freedom in your assemblies. If you are familiar with the Coincident mate, stick around… I am going to discuss another approach to adding the mate you might not of heard of before.

The Coincident Mate

One of the hardest parts about writing articles about SolidWorks is coming up with models that would best illustrate the points. After many failed attempts, I finally settled on using a model of a brick wall to show how the Coincident mate can be used. In the following steps, I will be showing you a couple of different ways you can apply the coincident mate to a brick to define its location on the wall. The use of the coincident mate will come pretty close to how mortar would be used on a real brick wall except for some minor differences. 

If you are not familiar with the Coincident mate, it is used to ensure that two planes, faces, edges or points (or any combination of these types) are in constant contact between two components. In all cases, just one mate will not be sufficient to limit the degrees of freedom for the part. For example, in our brick wall example if we just added a Coincident mate between to faces of two bricks. The part can still be moved in the assembly as long as the two selected faces share the same plane. The faces do not even need to touch. I think it will all make more sense when you see the example, so let us go ahead and jump right into it.

Adding The Coincident Mate

After inserting a component into an assembly, you will see in the FeatureManager that its location is under defined with the minus (-) that is shown next to the model name. We will need to limit the part Degrees of Freedom before the symbol is removed.

1.   Click S on your keyboard and select Mates from the Shortcut Toolbar.

2.   Select the front face of the brick by clicking and releasing the left mouse button.

3.  Select that face on the select part that will be mated. This part should, in most cases depending on your design, already have its position fully defined.

Mate Pop-up Toolbar

After releasing the left mouse button after selecting the second part, a Mate Pop-up Toolbar will be shown near the mouse pointer. The mate that is most appropriate based on the selections made in the Graphics Area will already be selected in the toolbar. If you need to select a different mate, you can make that selection in the toolbar rather then the Mate PropertyManager. If no other options need to be set, clicking the green checkmark in the toolbar would apply the mate and allow you to move onto another selection.

Mate PropertyManager

There maybe times when you need to set options that affect how your mate acts.In addition to setting options for the selected mate, you can also change the mate type in the Mate PropertyManager. Honestly, out of habit, I will confirm my mate selections in the PropertyManager instead of the Mate Pop-up Toolbar but this is something I am trying to address. 

Mate Alignment

Near the bottom of the Standard Mates section in the Mate PropertyManager, the alignment of the mate can be adjusted with two buttons. The first button, Aligned, is usually the default when using a Coincident mate but it depends on the selection and the orientation of the parts prior to mating.

Aligned

The Aligned option orientates the moveable component so that both of the selected faces are pointing in the same direction.

The view below shows how the two selected faces are pointing in the same direction when the Aligned option is selected in the Mate PropertyManager.

Anti-Aligned

The Anti-Aligned options orients the moveable part so that the two selected faces are facing each other.

The view below shows how the brick is rotated to have the selected faces opposing each other when the Anti-Align option is selected in the Mate PropertyManager.

 After selecting the appropriate faces, edges, points or planes and the options have been set in the PropertyManager, clicking the green checkmark in the PropertyManager will apply the mate and you can move on to the next mate. If you are done applying mates, clicking the green checkmark or hitting ESC will exit the Mate PropertyManager.

Using SmartMates

As promised, here is a great way to apply mates that you might not have head about before. SmartMates are used to apply the most commonly used mates without the need of the Mate PropertyManager. Throughout future posts, we will explore SmartMates with different mate types but today lets just look at how the Coincident mate can be quickly and easily applied.

1.  Instead of initiating the mate command, if you hold the ALT key and select the desired face of the part and drag the part to to the target part. The mouse pointer will update to include a small paper clip icon.

NOTE: If you hold the CTRL key instead of the ALT key, the part will be copied and used to mate to the target part. 

2.  When the mouse pointer is directly over another surface, the mouse pointer will update to include a symbol describing the type of mate being applied. In this case, the pointer shows that two planar faces are being mated.

Changing the Alignment when Using SmartMates

Even though the Mate PropertyManager is not being used with SmartMates, the alignment can still be specified. While still holding down the left mouse button, release the ALT key and press the TAB key to flip between the two aligment options.

Accepting the Mate

 To accept the mate, first release the left mouse button and then click the green checkmark in the Mate Pop-up Toolbar. Once the mate is applied, there is no need to close out of anything unlike when using the Mate PropertyManager. You can move on to another operation in your assembly or you can apply another mate using SmartMates. This is the reason why I prefer using SmartMates whenever possible.

NOTE: Even though they are not considered mates that are applied using SmartMates, you can change your mate type to any of the ones shown in the toolbar and still have no need to use the Mate PropertyManager.

Conclusion…

Once you finished defining the position of the part in your assembly, the minus (-) in the FeatureManager is no longer present. The part cannot be moved unless you delete the mates applied….but is a different post altogether.

I hope that even the more experienced SolidWorks users found today’s post helpful. Next time we will be going over the Parallel Mate, so keep on the look out for that one. Hopefully, it will be be posted soon. I promise

Related posts:

1. Mating in SolidWorks: Introduction After a long break from writing, I have decided...
2. Buried Treasures Buried deep in the advanced mates lies a hidden treasure....
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For his efforts, Deepak wins a CSWSP-FEA test.  From the SolidWorks website,

“The Certified SolidWorks Professional Simulation Specialist exam is designed to test an individual’s complete understanding of Simulation tools inside SolidWorks. Candidates who successfully pass this certification exam have demonstrated the ability to set up, run, and examine the results of various types of Simulation scenarios. They also have demonstrated the ability to interpret the various results available to them in SolidWorks Simulation.”

Best of luck to you, Deepak.  I’ll send you the info for taking your test by the end of the week.  I hope you pass with flying colors! 

Honorable mention goes to Frank Dijkstra.

The June Contest will be announced next week. Best of luck to everyone!

It looks as if there has been a lot of activity at the SolidWorks headquarters today as the official SolidWorks 2010 Beta page went live today and also SolidWorks 2009 SP4.0 Early Visibility is also live.

If you are at all interested in shaping the next release of SolidWorks it is highly recommended that you participate in the beta program.  Matt Lombard did a blog post about beta testing earlier this week that gave some tips for those of you that are interested in doing some testing for SolidWorks.  You can check out that blog post here.  In order to sign up for the program and be advised of information regarding to it you will need to activate it in Customer Portal profile.  To do this 1.) log into the Customer Portal 2.) Click My Profile 3.) check Notify me for Beta Programs.  Simple, huh?  So there you have it, sign up now and get ready to help make the next version of SolidWorks the best ever.

The 2nd big item from SolidWorks today was the release of SolidWorks 2009 SP4.0 Early Visibility to the Downloads page of the Customer Portal.  I am not seeing any information in the Fixed SPR’s section yet about this release but I am sure that will be coming in the near future.  So if you are on the cutting edge and want the latest version of SolidWorks on your machine go ahead and download it today and see what kinds of new or fixed stuff it includes.  I am personally planning on downloading it tonight overnight.  Please feel free to leave any comments here if you find an important patch or fix while running this version.  I would love to hear and see what you discover.

Good luck and have fun with these 2 releases!

Hardware reviews is not something I have done much on this site, but when I mentioned sharing my thoughts once my new Dell M6400 came in, I got some comments and even some e-mails asking me to post my thoughts.  So…here goes!

First, a little background.  I was running a Dell M90 that was a little over two years old.  In mid April, my system suddenly refused to boot up.  After some diagnostics run by our hard working IT department, it was determined that the video card was bad.  Dell had no replacement video cards in stock at the time, so they offered to replace my M90 with a brand new M6400.  I jumped at the chance and after about 10 days, my new system arrived!

Since it was a replacement system, I didn’t have much control over the specifications.  They were picked out by Dell to be “equivalent or better” to my M90 system.  Here are the specs:

Intel® Core^TM 2 Duo P8700 (2.53GHz 3M L2 Cache, 1066MHz) Dual Core
Windows XP Professional 32bit
17″ UltraSharp^TM WUXGA (1920×1200) LCD Display
NVIDIA Quadro FX 2700M, 512MB Discrete
4.0GB, DDR3-1066MHz SDRAM, 2 DIMMS
160GB Hard Drive, 7200RPM with Free Fall Sensor
8X DVD with Cyberlink Power DVD^TM
9 Cell Battery
Intel® WiFi Link 5100 802.11a/g/n Draft Mini Card
Internal English Backlit Keyboard

Now if I was setting the specs, I would have gone for a faster processor, 8GB of RAM, the FX3700 video card, and a larger hard drive.  I wasn’t going to complain though.  :-)  I was getting a pretty good deal here.  One upgrade that I had IT do was swap out the 160GB hard drive for a 320 GB drive.  Having lots of space is nice!

When we received the system our IT group put our “standard enterprise” software package on it which included MS Office 2007, Norton Endpoint virus protection, and a few other odds and ends.  I picked up the system and of course immediately installed SolidWorks.  I had to hit the ground running ASAP.

There were three major features that I immediately fell in love with on this system.  The first is the Numeral Pad on the keyboard.  Yeah, it’s a BIG laptop…but that is what you are going to have to live with if you truly want a mobile workstation.  Having a FULL keyboard is nice when I’m on the go.  The second feature is the backlit keyboard.  I never thought about how handy of a feature that would be, but I absolutely love it!  If you are in a dark room it is a must.  Dell did a very nice job in that it immediately comes on when it senses any action around the keyboard.  The third thing is probably the most surprising - the display.  I had the same WUXGA 1900×1200 on my M90, but I swear to you this one seems brighter and more crisp that what I had before.  (Yes..I knew where the brightness and contrast settings were on the previous system.)

We left Windows XP 32 bit on the system and I was off to the races.  Performance was good.  Everything seemed faster than my M90 as it should be.  Since I didn’t get a chance to run any benchmarks with the old system I don’t really have anything to compare to.  The graphics performance was good.  Not what I would call the best, but good.  I experienced a few glitches here and there, even with the latest SolidWorks certified drivers.  Before I really had much time to tune or troubleshoot the graphics issues, I ran into a slightly larger problem.  This problem really didn’t have anything to do with the system.  The current project I am working on is a large and complex assembly that had been pushing our machines to the limits of 32 bit operating system.  We turned on the 3GB switch and I had some SERIOUS stability issues.  Graphics performance was slow and unpredictable.  There were other “weird” issues that started popping up.  I almost immediately disabled it and everything returned to its previous state.  Looking back, I’m not quite sure why I started out with 32 bit, but after a few weeks, it was apparent that I was going to need a 64 bit OS very soon.

So, after running the system for a few weeks with Windows XP 32 bit.  The M6400 “headed back to the shop” (IT) for a re-format to Vista 64bit.  Why Vista 64 over XP 64?  Well, I relied on some of the best resources around.  My fellow users of the SolidWorks Community.  After polling many of my fellow SolidWorks users across the land, all were consistently saying I should go to Vista 64 bit.  Not only has it proved to run FASTER than XP 64 bit in several benchmarks, it seems to have less bugs, which if you think about it really makes sense.  Do you think Microsoft will be tripping over itself to fix bugs in Win XP 64 bit?  I didn’t think so either.  (A big thanks to Anna Wood, Devon Sowell, and Lou Gallo for their valued advice!)

Since I am in the middle of a “BIG” project (that is probably an understatement), we decided to purchase another 320 GB hard drive and put Vista 64 bit on it.  (They are only about $130.00 right now).  This way, if I had some show stopper issues with Vista 64, I could swap out the drives and be back up and running in Win XP 32bit almost immediately.  Also as part of this “upgrade” we added an additional 4 GB of RAM to the system.  Total cost for the RAM was not far off the price of the new hard drive.

This was my first full-time experience with Windows Vista.  I must say overall, I really like the new user interface.  Yeah, it is overkill in some areas and Vista  is a resource hog, but when you have 8 GB or RAM and no 2GB limit, suddenly that really isn’t all that big of a deal.  One thing I learned quickly is that the Certified video driver from SolidWorks requires that the Windows Aero interface be enabled.  During setup, our IT group had disabled it and I didn’t notice right away.  Props to Anna Wood and Ron Bates on the SolidWorks Forum for reminding me of this.

Outside of having to go out and find some new printer drivers and a few issues with Adobe CS3, the transition to 64 bit has been smooth.  You can run 32bit or 64bit browsers which comes in handy since Adobe Flash is not yet supported for 64 bit browsers.  (Come on, seriously, what is up with that Adobe!!)  Not having to worry about running out of virtual memory has been REALLY nice!  A few months back I was hoping to hold off on going to 64bit until Windows 7.  But since my work required it, I have become quite comfortable with Vista.  One of the things I REALLY like is the fact that you can setup your own shortcuts in the left side bar of your “My Computer” windows.  Another nice feature in Vista is that you can open multiple windows using Windows Photo Gallery.  This has come in handy for some Technical Editing I am doing for an upcoming book on SolidWorks by Alex Ruiz.

There were some posts on the SolidWorks Forum where users were having issues with the system when it goes into hibernate mode.  This was supposed to be addressed with a new BIOS from Dell.  I always turn hibernate mode off and shut down my system at night, so I can’t say for sure that all has been fixed there.  It appears that many folks that were having the issue before are no longer experiencing the same problems.  I’ve also heard of a few issues with the FX3700M video card.  Since I don’t have one in my system, I can’t really comment on that.  If you are considering getting one with that card, I would check out the SolidWorks Forums.  All of the recent comments seem to indicate there are less problems with that now with the BIOS revisions and some new Certified SolidWorks Video Drivers.

I hope some of this information is helpful to those interested in purchasing an M6400.  So far I am REALLY happy with the system and would recommend it to anyone looking for a good mobile workstation.  If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments and I’ll answer them if I can.

Stay tuned…more to come!

So as some of you may have noticed, I have been silent on here for almost a month now.  In a way this is a good thing but also it is not a good thing.  The absence has mainly been due to trying to get 50 hours of work done in a 40 hour work week and also because of some computer glitches that I have had on my personal computer.  However, Mike Puckett posted a little sneak peak at something yesterday that I could not help but pass on to everyone else that hadn’t seen it yet.

Every year at SolidWorks WORLD there is a special event that is usually on Monday night that is for CSWP’s only.  I have only been to SolidWorks WORLD 2 times but each of those events were off the chart.  In San Diego at SolidWorks WORLD 2008 the CSWP event was held at Wavehouse and involved some awesome events that included some local surfers riding the wave machine.  It was an absolute blast.

Not to be outdone, SolidWorks WORLD 2009 in Orlando definitely did not disappoint but it had a different feel to the evening.  This time there were toys galore around as the main event of the evening was to set up the coolest and best roller coaster using the iCoaster product from Megabrands.  There were a lot of cool designs around and again it was a great event.

So you may be wondering, what is in store for SolidWorks WORLD 2010 in Anaheim, California?  Well, here is where Mike gives us a little teaser about what you can think about for the next 6 months.  Check this video out!

So the question is, are you a CSWP?  If not you better become one before SolidWorks WORLD 2010 because it looks like this is an event you will not want to be on the outside looking in.  Here is where I can possibly help you.  If you are not a CSWP yet and would like to become one (which will not only get you into this event but will boost your resume) I have 5 vouchers available for the first 5 people to leave a comment on this post that say “I WANT TO BE A CSWP!”  Don’t forget that I will need your email address so that I can contact you and send you your voucher code.  For this contest I am only offering CSWP codes, no other certifications.

The time is almost upon us for SolidWorks 2010 Beta testing.  A few months back I received some information regarding target dates for some of the Beta releases and it turns out that they were pretty close.  I am hearing that SolidWorks 2010 Beta 1 is about a week away from posting to the Beta website at the Customer Portal.  Make sure you check out this post on my site or the recent post on Mike Puckett’s site for details on how to sign up.

I sent out some e-mails and a few Tweets via Twitter a few days ago asking if maybe the What’s New in SolidWorks 2010 Document could be uploaded at least a few days prior to the Beta 1 download.  I haven’t heard anything back from SolidWorks yet but did get quite a few enthusiastic “seconds” to that idea from some in the user community.  This would be a great way for Beta Testers to “study up” a bit prior to the download.

I have seen a few of the SolidWorks 2010 features a few months back but of course there is an NDA that is still in place until late in the Beta program.  All I can say is I REALLY liked what I saw.  Don’t forget that some of the new features of SolidWorks 2010 were revealed at SolidWorks World 2009.  Check out this post for a list of what has been revealed to the public.

I’ll post updates here as more details on the release time are revealed.

Stay tuned…much more to come!

UPDATE - 6-9-09: I’ve gotten a response back from Matt West on Twitter and a few e-mails as well.  SolidWorks is looking into the possibility of releasing the What’s New early and will get back to me.  I’ll post more as I get updates.

Thinking about going to SolidWorks World 2010?  Are you a CSWP? 

If you answered yes to those, here is a video to get you excited about SolidWorks World 2010 including a sneak peek at what the CSWP Event will be all about.  If your not a CSWP, well then watching this video may make you want to think about that especially if your going to Anaheim next year.  While SolidWorks World is mainly a learning event, we still know how to have fun at night.

This is my current favorite radio station. Based in Los Angeles, CA (100.3), they play the best mix of new and old, rock, pop, 60's-2009, good stuff, check it out.

http://thesoundla.com/

Cheers,
Devon Sowell

Please note that you will need to have access to the SolidWorks Customer Portal in order to participate.  This is your chance to see what’s new in the upcoming version, get a jump start on any migration issues, and to help SolidWorks by reporting any issues that you may have.

Are you going to be participating in the Beta Program?  Let us know!

To take advantage of this offer, please visit this page.  For information on the latest version of SnagIt 9.1, visit their What’s New page.

Via mCADForums.

The beta testing for SolidWorks 2010 is just around the corner and once again SolidWorks is looking for your input.  Each year lot's of new features are built into the new release of SolidWorks and most of them are based off user requested enhancements.  While these enhancements have spent months undergoing lots of internal testing and debugging processes, the beta period is the final leg of the process to insure that they can perform as intended on the almost unlimited hardware configurations that SolidWorks users have around the World.  It's also a chance for last minute input by beta testers to tweak new functions to make them work better.  Last year there were several changes to newly added features that came directly from user feedback during the beta period.

So if you have the time and resources to participate in the beta process this year, you can get notified when the program is launched.  Simply follow the instructions found at the SolidWorks Beta Program Page.  The first beta version is set to launch within the next two weeks, and if you don't have the time to participate, well then you will have to wait for the full release early this fall to see all the new features that will ship with SolidWorks 2010!

I promised to do a tutorial on the weld tool to someone who left a comment a few weeks back, so here is the first installment of weld tools in SolidWorks.

Here is a simple strap that will get welded:

The weld tool is available to use in a part file, but the edge or joint you are going to weld need to be separate bodies.  In this part you can see there are three separate bodies.  The weld tool is found under the weldments tools and toolbar:

Clicking on this brings up the Fillet Bead tool with the following property manager:

By clicking the different face sets you will end up with a virtual edge as shown above.  Here is the resulting weld bead:

Now lets play with some of the settings in the Weld Bead tool.  Aside from simply changing the width of the bead, you can also create a staggered bead:

Once you put the part into a drawing you can then call out the weld bead by inserting a weld symbol:

This is just a small portion of the weld tools available in SolidWorks.  Next time we'll cover weld beads in an assembly.

I’ve got some REALLY exciting stuff in the works for the site.  We are rapidly approaching SolidWorks 2010 Beta 1 release.  I’ll have some specific updates on that hopefully later this week.  You can bet as soon as the NDA is lifted you’ll be able to catch highlights of LOTS of new features here!

I’ve gotten some really nice comments and e-mails about the posted What’s New Guides.  I’m glad that many folks are finding the information useful.  I really didn’t know what the reaction would.  I’m pleasantly surprised to see that many folks think that having them ALL available for download from one site is as good of an idea as I thought it would be.

The work I am doing nowdays has taken me FAR away from the complex curvy parts I’ve grown accustomed to doing but has really opened my eyes to some areas of SolidWorks that I haven’t utilized lately.  With this I’ve got some new posts in mind to share some of my latest experiences with the software.

I’ve gotten my new Dell M6400 and am really pleased so far.  It came loaded with Windows XP pro 32 bit but NOW has Windows Vista 64 bit loaded!  I’ll share more about that saga later on.  I’ll just say this…I LOVE not having to worry about running out of memory anymore!! 

Stay tuned….more to come!

Last year, at this time, there'd be 10-20 SolidWorks jobs in San Diego, CA listed here. Slim pickings now.

How about in your area?

Devon T. Sowell
http://www.3-ddesignsolutions.com
http://www.pdmsolution.com

The Derived Sketch is a cool tool; it creates a copy of a sketch that is tied back to the original. After deriving a sketch, it’s only a matter of orienting and positioning it in its new location.

Take the leg brace weldment shown above for example. A Derived Sketch will allow you to keep your design intent by ensuring that the two end flange plates are always the same shape and size. Let’s look at how it works.

First, you create one of the plates as you normally would:

Then, you select the original sketch and the face or plane you wish to position the new sketch on and choose Insert|Derived Sketch:

Now it’s just a matter of orienting and positioning the new sketch.  Any changes to the original sketch will be reflected in this sketch as well.

To finish things off and make sure that the full design intent is there, you can link the thicknesses of each plate:

So there you have it!  A couple of things to note is that you cannot add any additional geometry to the Derived Sketch, and in this example I had trouble getting some of the constraints to work out like I wanted. Also, any new geometry added to the original sketch will be propagated to the Derived Sketch.

In the image to the left, a square cutout was added to the lower base bracket, and you can see that it was propagated to the upper bracket.

Do you have any special tips or tricks you use to make working with SolidWorks faster or easier? Email them to us at tips@cadfanatic.com and it may be featured on a future CADFanatic’s Tips & Tricks Tuesday!

Is the code for SolidWorks really 14+ years old? Is it bloated and possibly prone to issues (they prefer to call them issues, not bugs :-) Are they changing functionality in Service Packs because of bloated code prone to issues? For example, the coming and going of Print Selection and Link Display States to Configurations? Why are Service Pack files so dang big? (1.2GB+)

Does the code need to be rewritten? Will SolidWorks continue to pay license fees to D-Cubed and Parasolid? Can SolidWorks be rewritten to use the Catia kernel? Will it cost a big bundle to rewrite the code? Will the current economy effect if and when the code will be rewritten?

What's your opinion?

Marie Planchard of SolidWorks has created a series of very usefull videos about stuyding and taking the CSWA exam.  You can access the YouTube Videos at this LINK.

A couple of years back one of the enhancements to SolidWorks was the thumb wheel that appears underneath the dimension in the modify box that appears as shown above.  If you are not familiar with this feature and just thought it was a cute and cuddly graphic that they added you need to know what this does first and foremost.  By simply clicking on the thumb wheel you can drag it either left or right to increase of decrease your dimension, pretty nifty huh?

Changing Your Increments

Now depending on what you use SolidWorks for you may want change the increments that the wheel changes your dimension.  Piece of cake!  All you need to do is go to Tools > Options > System Options > Spin Box Increments.  Here is where you get some different options.  There is 2 different length increments that you can preset, English units and Metric Units.  Then you have the ability to change Angle increments as well.  If you are working on more precise designs you may want to set these increments smaller but if you are working with wide open tolerances you may want these larger.  Totally up to you as long as your mom, dad, wife/husband, kids and the creepy neighbor down the street approve or your decision.

Changing on the Fly

You thought we were done already didn’t ya?  Not so fast!  There are always those times when you want to tighten or loosen up what you set your thumb wheel increments to.  Instead of having to go in each time and change these you can sort of kind of do this on the fly.  By holding down the Ctrl key while spinning the thumb wheel it will increase your set increments times 10.  So lets say you have your increments at 0.10in (as shown above), by holding down the Ctrl key your increments will now be 1.0in until you stop spinning and release the key.  Likewise, if you hold the Alt key while spinning it will decrease your set increments divided by 10.  So in the previous example your increments would be 0.01in.  Nice and simple!

Source of the Information

This is a tip & trick that I learned from Mark Biasotti at the West Michigan SolidWorks User Group meeting that was held on Tuesday, May 12.  This is the awesome kind of stuff that you learn at user group meetings and the best thing about it is that his presentation was on surfacing, but even if that topic is not your forte you can still pick up great tips and tricks like this one.  So if you are not an active or regular member of a user group in your area you need to become one.  If there is not a group in your area, let me know and I will get you the contact information of someone that can hopefully help you start one.

Follow Mark Biasotti at the West Michigan SolidWorks User Group.  All you need to do is Click Here!

A few weeks back there was a lot of buzz about SolidWorks selling its 1,000,000th license which is a huge milestone in my opinion.  I did some further investigating as to how exactly these licenses were broke down between educational and commercial mainly thanks to a comment that was left on my initial post about this topic.  Here is what the breakdown is.

On Monday I wrote about Configuring Dimensions.  Today I will show you how to configure features.  Lets use an updated version of our familiar bracket:

As you can see we now have a mounting hole, and a strengthening rib.  Our intention is to have three configurations of this part.  One will be without the rib, the second will be with the rib, but without the mount, the third will be without either, and the fourth will be with both which will be the default configuration for this part.

So now you may be thinking its time to start suppressing features and creating configurations and then making sure they all rebuild correctly.  Well here is an easier way.  First Right-Control-Select the rib feature, and the mount feature in the tree and select configure features:

We get the Modify Configurations window:

You will notice that you can click to suppress features instead of typing in dimensions.  Now its time to add in the configuration names and select the features to be suppressed for each one:

You can see that its basically just selecting which features to suppress to get the resulting configurations you want.  That where the time savings really comes in for using this tool.  The final step is to select the rebuild all configurations button, the click ok:

Of course if you had any rebuild errors, the configuration would show up in red.  Here are the resulting configurations:

So next time you have some configurations you want to create, think about giving this tool a shot.  I have been using it since I discovered it at a SolidWorks User Group Meeting, and its a definite time saver for me.

There are a number of handy tools that get under utilized, but can be huge time savers.  Configuring dimensions is one of them.  If your creating parts with multiple configurations this will be a great tip for you to try out.

Lets use this bracket as an example:

What were going to do is create a few different configurations of this part.  We want to create different configurations that have different lengths of the L shaped feature.  By clicking on the face of the L bracket, we can see the linked dimensions that drive the feature:

The next step is to control-right-click the two 3 inch dimensions and choose configure dimension:

Clicking that will bring up the Modify Configurations Manager window:

The next step is to create a couple of configurations using the information below:

What that allowed me to do was to create three additional configurations, and to give them each a different value for the two dimensions I originally clicked to configure.  The next step is one of the best features of this tool because it allows me rebuild all the configurations at once instead of having to rebuild them independently.  You click the pull-down menu on the rebuild icon and select rebuild all configurations:

Imagine if you had lots of configurations, this is one easy way to rebuild them all.  Another great part of this tool is that it will instantly tell you if one of the configurations has an error in it:

As you can see the 1 and 2 inch configurations are now red.  SolidWorks is telling me that those two configurations have rebuild errors.  I can now adjust those dimensions until they rebuild without errors.

So this tool gives you a quick way to not only create configurations, but to also check them without having to manually rebuild every one.  Is there another way to configure things in SolidWorks?  Stay tuned!

I have been accused in the past of being sort of any organizational freak.  I am one of those people that usually does not like stacks of papers on my desk and have more labeled hanging file folders than you can shake a dead squirrel at.  This is why I have become a huge fan of using folders in the FeatureTree to organize.  Folders can be quickly added inside your part and assembly files by RMB clicking multiple features, parts, or subassemblies and selecting “Add to New Folder”.  Why would you want to do this you might be asking?  Well, that is a perfectly legitimate question that I am hoping to answer for you in this post.

Why?

As I stated above the answer is simple, organize and clean.  When you are working on the 500+ feature part or that 750+ part assembly wouldn’t you want to keep your FeatureTree as short as possible so you can easily find features or parts as you go.  I am never a big fan of scrolling, then scrolling some more, then even scrolling some more to find that one feature that I needed to quickly modify.  By having folders you can shorten up that tree and eliminate all of that time wasting scrolling.

4 Quick & Simple Uses

Move Subassemblies – Move a solo or group of subassemblies inside your master assembly.  If you are like me and use subassemblies from time to time you might have noticed that it can be a pain to move that subassembly up or down your FeatureTree.  By adding it/them to a folder you can move the whole folder, then delete the folder and your FeatureTree will be organized like you are hoping for.  Tip – another way to accomplish this is by holding down ALT while dragging a subassembly to relocate.

Group Common Parts – Do you have a whole pile of nuts and bolts scattered in your FeatureTree or maybe a mole hill of springs and pins.  Well if you have more than 1 of the same component in your assembly FeatureTree I would highly suggest throwing all of the common items in a folder and label the folder whatever you please.  I usually create a folder with all the components I drag in from our Design Library because these are non editable, no drawing files that need to be in the design.

Group Common Features – Just like the common part use this is a nice and easy way to quickly group all of your chamfers, radii or even reference geometry into a folder so that you don’t have to stare at its boringness during your entire design process.

Move Multiple Features at the Same Time – You may have seen this warning before about dragging multiple features all at one time.

Well by dropping them all in a folder you can move all of these features at one time with out having to move each one individually.  Can you say…time saving!

Closing Remarks

This option gives me that warm and fuzzy feeling when I finished up a model because I know my FeatureTree is nice and orderly.  Well on second thought, maybe that feeling is the burrito I had for lunch.

So do you use folders and if you do how do you use them?  Please drop me a comment and share what your experiences are with folders.

UPDATE:  Thanks to Brian from CADFanatic for pointing out a misprint of mine.  To move a subassembly in the FeatureTree without dropping it into another subassembly you need to hold down ALT to drag NOT Ctrl.  Sorry for the mistake.

Have you ever wished that you could turn back time and look at what previous versions of SolidWorks looked like?  Perhaps you have a customer who is a few versions back and you can’t quite remember if they have access to one of the newer features.  Perhaps you are just plain curious and would like to see how far the software has come.  Nevertheless, until today, I have been unable to find a single website where you can download legacy documentation for ALL versions of SolidWorks.  I’m happy to announce that I’ve added a new page to the site which allows you to take as step back in time.  The What’s New Guides page contains ALL of the available SolidWorks What’s New Guides!   This is something that I’ve been wanting to do for quite some time and thanks to some help from SolidWorks Corp. and my good buddy Rich Hall, this idea is now a reality.  I turns out that the What’s New Guides only date back to SolidWorks 98Plus (in electronic form).  To cover the first couple of versions of SolidWorks, I have provided the User Guides.  (Some of which were not available in electronic form, so the data was taken directly from the Help files.)

Now, is this page going to increase your productivity at work?  No..probably not.  That is unless you are on a REALLY old version of SolidWorks and you catch a whiff of some of the new features in some of the latest What’s New Guides.  The main intention of this is to provide a little history for ALL SolidWorks users (new and old).  If you are a CAD History Buff…you are really gonna love this.  Check it out and let me know what you think!

Stay tuned….more to come!

The Heart of a 3D Mouse

If you are like me and you have never used a 3D mouse before then you are missing out. Over the years of using SolidWorks, I have become very proficient at manipulating the view in the Graphics Area by using the scroll wheel on the mouse. With nothing to compare it to, I thought the a regular mouse was more then sufficient for rotating, panning and zooming. But just 10 minutes after using the SpacePilot PRO, I know I will never go back to just using a regular mouse in SolidWorks.

Looking beyond all the buttons and displays, the Controller Cap is the heart of the SpacePilot Pro. The Controller Cap allows you to quickly and easily move in all 6 degrees of freedom simultaneously. With the scroll wheel on your mouse you can rotate the view, zoom and pan but not at the same time but with the SpacePilot…. It is so easy to manipulate your view. And it is not as hard as you may think, I am a complete novice and I was able to become very comfortable within a couple of minutes. After installing the mouse, I actually spent an hour playing in Google Earth using the SpacePilot. I felt like Superman flying around the planet effortlessly. If you ever get a chance to do it, I highly recommend it.

The Color LCD Workflow Assistant

The SpacePilot PRO brings the addition of a new color LCD screen called the Workflow Assistant. This screen gives you a “at-a-glance” access to your MS Outlook e-mail, calender and task lists. It also displays the commands that are mapped to each of the function keys depending on what program is currently active. There is also a RSS Feed functions that provides you with a list of recent articles that are posted for the sites you subscribe to.

Setting up your email, calendar and task list is beyond easy. Nothing has to been done in the software, all you need to do is open Outlook and you will instantly be able to view everything on the screen. The RSS feed took me some time to figure out, I couldn’t find anything in the documentation on how to set up RSS feeds but after a few minutes of digging through the control panel I was able to add all the feeds I wanted.

I know that the LCD screen was one of the top selling points with the mouse but I must be honest, I very rarely looked at it except to view which commands were mapped to the function keys. I was also a little disappointed to learn that there was no notification of new emails or scheduled meetings. In fact, the only way to see if you have new emails or scheduled meetings is to open Outlook Mail or Outlook Calendar on the screen. I guess I have been spoiled by on-screen notifications.

With that being said, I think there is still a huge potential for the Workflow Assistant. 3Dconnexion did the right thing by creating a open software architecture for the mouse. This will allow developers to create some compelling software applications for the Workflow Assistant. The first person to develop a decent Twitter app for the SpacePilot PRO will forever be my personal hero.

Navigation Keys

The Navigation Keys are conveniently located to the right of the Controller Cap. It is the perfect location because you can quickly switch between all of the standard views with your thumb. After a while I was able to switch through all 32 standard views with out even looking. This allowed me to concentrate on what I was doing on the screen. You might be thinking, “32 views from 5 keys… really?” Well, three of the buttons give you the Front, Back, Left, Right, Top and Bottom views. The middle button gives you two isometric views and the rest of the views are achieved by the last button on the top left. This button rotates the view by a preset increment, the increments and the standard views add up to 32.  Each button has two views associate with it. quickly clicking the button gives you the first view and clicking and holding the button will give you the second view. Once you get used to it, it is extremely easy.

Intelligent Function Keys

On the left side of the Controller Cap are the Intelligent Function Keys. These 5 keys are fully customizable to allow you to quickly intiate up to 10 commands. So what makes them intelligent? Well, the SpacePilot PRO automatically detects which application is active and if it is a supported program, the keys will remap to the functions for that program. If you have been a long time reader of the blog, you should know how much I love the Shortcut Toolbar. To be honest, I only need one function key in this group and it wasn’t available by default; so the first thing I did was remap the center button to the Shortcut Toolbar and I couldn’t be happier.

Conclusion

I am in total love with the SpacePilot PRO and it is not because I got mine for free. In fact, I am considering moving so 3Dconnexion won’t be able to find me when it is time for me to return the unit. If you are a professional designer or 3D modeler you would find the SpacePilot PRO extremely helpful. The list price ($499) may seem a little high but your company will make that money back in time saved. I think that as developers begin creating killer apps for the Workflow Assistant, it will be extremely difficult to ignore the SpacePilot PRO.

Specifications

The SpacePilot PRO is back by a three-year warranty, and is currently available at a suggested retail price of $499. More information can be found on the manufacturers website at http://www.3dconnexion.com/spp/index.php.

- Operating Systems:

• Windows XP and Windows Vista
• Sun Solaris 8 (SPARC); Sun Solaris 10 (x86)
• Linux

- Processor:

• PC – Intel Pentium 4/III or AMD/Athlon processor based system

- Disk Space:

• Windows – 250 megabytes

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There has been quite a bit going on lately which has resulted in a lack of posts here on the site.  I’m still here…just working on some “new” things.

The biggest news for me personally is that I am in the process of moving to a new home.  I don’t have to tell many of you how big of a job that can be.  This weekend will be filled with packing and sorting.  I’m moving to a house that has almost twice the square footage of our current home, so this will be a BIG move for my family.  With the move, I will finally have the Home Office I have dreamed of for quite some time!

Another “change” of sorts started late last week when my Dell M90 laptop ceased to function due to a failed video card.  It has been a good laptop overall in the 2+ years that I have had it.  The unusual thing about this hardware failure is that due to a shortage of replacement cards, Dell is replacing the ENTIRE system.  Not having my laptop which is my primary machine has no doubt thrown quite a kink into my work schedule and resulted in a few missed deadlines.  Thanks to our IT department, I have been able to keep working by getting a workstation on loan from another department.

I should receive a brand new M6400 system next week to replace my M90.  I didn’t lose any hard drive data (which is VERY GOOD).  So overall I should come out just fine aside from the missed deadlines.  I’ll be sure to post some reviews on the M6400 once I receive it and get some time with it. (Probably after I finish moving!)

If you read the SolidWorks Forums, there have been a few users who have had some issues with M6400 laptops.  Most of these laptops have had the Quadro M3700 video card which has a whopping 1 GB of on-board memory.  The common failures so far have been centered around overheating of the video card which has resulted in failed boards & motherboards.  My M6400, since it is an “equivalent” replacement, will have the Quadro M2700 video card which contains 512 Mb of on-board memory.  I must admit that I feel a little more at ease with this card at this point.  Time will tell.  One of the things I’m looking forward to the most with the M6400 is that the keyboard has dedicated number pad!

I’m also working on a new page for the site which hopefully will be ready next week.  It will offer some content that I think SolidWorks users (both new and old) will REALLY enjoy.  I can safely say that I haven’t seen any other site on the web that has offered this content.

That’s all for now… I’ve got some packing to do.  Stay tuned…MORE to come!

If you didn’t get to attend SolidWorks World this year, the Technical Summits are the next best thing!  I liken it to a massive user group meeting.

The structure is similar to one day at SolidWorks World, but on a smaller scale; and they are bringing it to you!  There will be representatives of local user groups, VAR’s, and SolidWorks in attendance and presenting at all of these events, as well as user presentations.

What’s In It For You?

There is typically a continental-style breakfast served, followed by a short orientation session.  There are usually two training tracts running simultaneously through two breakout sessions in the morning and three in the afternoon.  Lunch is provided (in my experience, usually a 3- or 4-course meal) during the break between morning and afternoon sessions, and Richard Doyle gives a Tips & Tricks session along with relevant news and information and some nice door prizes.

And the cost for this entire day’s worth of training?  A mere $40.  Now I know in this current economic climate, funds are scarce…  But I think that $40 is a real deal, considering the amount of training and networking to be had.

As of this writing, the 2009 schedule is as follows (please visit the SWUGN Technical Summit page for full details, session schedules, and any changes/updates):

Orlando, FL – 04/28
Atlanta, GA – 05/19
Happy Valley, PA – 06/16
Columbus, OH – 07/21
Vancouver, BC – 08/11
Minneapolis, MN – 08/18
Denver, CO – 09/15
San Antonio, TX – 11/10
San Jose, CA – 12/08

The North Alabama SolidWorks User Group (NASWUG) (my local user group) should be well-represented at the Atlanta, GA Technical Summit.  Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend this year due to a new baby arriving on the scene around that date.  But I hope that you will take advantage of this opportunity to learn something new and meet some new friends!

There are three Beta releases of SolidWorks 2010 currently scheduled.  The tentative schedule is as follows:
SolidWorks 2010 Beta 1:  06/08/09 - 07/03/09
SolidWorks 2010 Beta 2:  07/06/09 - 07/24/09
SolidWorks 2010 Beta 3:  07/27/09 - 08/14/09

As with previous Beta programs, SolidWorks is looking for customers that span many industry sectors which include:

• Machine Design
• Consumer Product Design
• Sheet Metal Design
• Routed Systems

Remember that you DO NOT need to be an “expert” user to participate!  Feedback is always welcome from ALL users.  If you want to read about some of the enhancements to SolidWorks 2010 that have already been made public, click HERE.

The priorities of the SolidWorks 2010 Beta Program are:

• To Find/Fix customer critical stability/performance/UI bugs not found internally or incorrectly prioritized
• Increase bandwith of testing permutations that cannot practically be covered internally

If you want a sneak peek of the new features coming in SolidWorks 2010 this is a GREAT opportunity to test drive the software and provide feedback which can at times be implemented prior to the release of SolidWorks 2010.  Many discussions during last year’s Beta Program directly led to changes in some of the new features of SolidWorks 2009.

No details of the contest prizes or point system have been released yet.  As soon as that information is made available, I’ll post it.

I can’t confirm for certain, but I believe the SolidWorks 2010 Beta Program will be managed through the Customer Portal just as it was last year.  To be eligible for the Beta program last year, you had to be on an active subscription contract.  I have not heard whether or not that will be a requirement for this year’s program, but I suspect it will.  To sign up for the Beta Program log into your Customer Portal Account and look for the “My Profile” icon as shown below.

On your Profile Page set the option for “Notify me for Beta Programs”.

I’m sure more details will be released as we inch closer to the first Beta period.  As with past programs, a special forum will be available for users to discuss the new features while still under the NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement).

Stay tuned….more to come!

What are Mates?

I know a lot of my readers are fully aware of what mates are but there maybe a couple newcomers to SolidWorks who have only briefly heard about mates. Mates are relationships between parts in an assembly that often represent how parts in an assembly are put together when manufactured. Parts floating in 3D space have six degrees of freedom that mates are then used to constrain.

To better understand the 6 degrees of freedom, look at the Reference Triad above. Each unconstrained part can freely move along any of the 3 axes: X,Y and Z. The translation along these axes count for 3 of the degrees of freedom while rotation about the three axes account for the other three. When a part in assembly cannot translate or rotate on any of thee axes then the part is part is fully constrained.

There are a number of mates available in a SolidWorks assembly that are used to fully constrain a part. The most common mates used in SolidWorks can be found in the Standard Mates section and they include Coincident, Parallel, Perpendicular, Tangent, Concentric, Lock, Distance and Angle. These mates are so common, many users can go their entire time using SolidWorks without using any of the more advanced mates. By the end of this series, hopefully you won’t be one of them.

Good Practices & Resolving Errors

In the SolidWorks Help, there are some great pages that provide you with a  list of best practices when using mates not to mention some of the articles that can be found online. And rather then reinvent the wheel, I just want to hit a couple of points to consider when applying mates. These are just somethings I run into when I am dealing with users at my day job and I feel that they are often overlooked.

• When you have mate errors in your assembly, don’t ignore them. The extra couple of minutes you take trying to solve a mate issue when it happens is a lot better then trying to debug an assembly with 5, 10 or 500 mate errors.
• When you have a mate error, look to see what components are being mated. Sometimes, a mate error is cause by a component being suppressed or deleted.
• If both of the components are resolved and you still get an error, trying rebuilding the assembly by pressing CTRL-Q on your keyboard. CTRL-Q rebuilds the entire assembly and this will sometimes resolve your error.
• If after rebuilding the assembly you still have an error, try dragging the component. Believe it or not, sometimes this will clear up the error.
• Another trick that sometimes work to resolve mate errors, is to suppress then unsuppress the mate. This is another one of those weird things that will sometimes cause SolidWorks to reevaluate the mate and resolve the issue.
• If all else fails, delete the mate from the Mates folder and re apply it. It is better to add a new mate then spend valuable time trying to debug a mate error….but that is just my opinion.
• Don’t be lazy. Don’t just lock the position of your component in an assembly. Yes, it saves you 2 minutes when creating the assembly but imagine the poor guy that has to make a revision to your assembly later.
• Try moving a part after mating it to see if it is indeed fully constrained. Sometimes, especially on more complex assemblies, it is easy to miss a mate or miss an issue with a mate.
• I cannot stress this last one enough…. Fully constrain your assembly. Making sure that your assembly is fully constrained will prevent issues later, especially when revising components in your assembly. At the very least constrain the parts as required to fulfill your design intent. One mate I often over look because it does not affect design intent is constraining the rotation of screws in holes and shafts that are design to move linearly.

Way More To Come…

This was meant to be just a quick introduction to the mating series and later posts will be more detailed. I will also be sure to point out more best practices as they become releavent to the discussion. If you have any best practices or tips to fix mate errors, I would love to hear them and I am sure everybody will find them helpful.

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Publicly unveiled in late March, OnLive bills itself as “the world’s highest performance Games on Demand service.”  They purportedly have the technology to stream games, including the latest high-end game titles (such as Crysis Warhead and BioShock) to broadband users.  (For a full list of supported games, click here.)

The service will run through the OnLive Microconsole and play on a user’s TV, or can be run directly on a Mac or PC.  The founder, Steve Perlman (of WebTV and Apple’s QuickTime), says, “The first patents expire in 2022, so we have at least 11 years to establish our business before there is a clone.“  Understandably, there has been much skepticism about the claims OnLive is making, but with the support of major game powerhouses such as Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, and Atari, and even NVIDIA, it’s clear that this is a serious venture.

So What Does This Have To Do With SolidWorks?

Well, it stands to reason that if OnLive can get games running in such a way that users will no longer have to purchase the software (or specialty hardware to run them), then who’s to say that the same can’t be done for SolidWorks, or any other app for that matter? Jon Hirschtick even talked about this application as one of his future technology trends in the Tuesday General Session of SolidWorks World 2009 in Orlando, FL, this past February.

If OnLive can get a hardware-intensive game, such as Crysis, up and running online, how hard could it be to get a 3D CAD app, such as SolidWorks, “in the cloud”?  I think this is a very exciting time and this will bring “cloud computing” to a whole new level!  What do you think?

OnLive is currently taking applications for Beta testers (I’ve already signed up!) and is scheduled to go live in Winter 2009.

I know it has been a long time since I have written a post. The new SolidWorks book has been taking up all my free time but I am hoping that I will be able to write again real soon. That does bring me to the reason for this article. I have been considering, for quite sometime, changing the purpose of the site. Since all my free time has been used writing about SolidWorks, I wanted to break up my day a little and write about something non-SolidWorks related. My biggest fear is that I will burn myself out and I would no longer be able to gain enjoyment from writing about SolidWorks. Starting today, I am repurposing the site. The URL will remain the same since the new blog topic fits well with the URL. The new site will now be known as The Star Wars Geek. I am extremely excited about this change and I am interested in finding out what all of you think. Please comment on this new site topic.

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And I responded:

Well, after applying Service Pack 3 yesterday to my SolidWorks 2009 x64 install, I happened to want to control the visibility of some new parts in a new Display State that I had created, and the Option dropdown is gone! (Compare the image to the left to the original image from when I commented.)

I surely hope that this is just an oversight! Are other folks seeing this?

Here’s a GREAT SolidWorks Tip that was brought to my attention on the latest project I am working on.  When you work in the commercial design world, you don’t often run across the need for the use of Heli-Coil inserts.  As I have learned recently, they are used quite a bit in military and space hardware design.  For those of you that aren’t familar with Heli-Coil inserts, you can learn more about them HERE.

Now…..the SolidWorks Tip.  Helicoil Tap Drill sizes are available in the Hole Wizard inside of SolidWorks.  If you set the Hole Type to “Hole” as shown in the image above.  “Helicoil Tap Drills” is available in the “Type” pull down.  You can set the “Size” to the thread size needed and the hole size is automatically set!  You might still have to tweak the hole size a bit depending on your material, but if the material you are putting the Heli-Coil in is Aluminum, the size is correct.  You also have the option to assign a near side countersink, which is recommended in most cases when you use Heli-Coils.  The only thing you’ll need to watch is that the default angle that comes up with the near side countersink option is 0 degrees.  In most cases you want this value to be 120 degrees.  Once you get the settings tweaked to your liking, I HIGHLY recommend you save it to your Hole Favorites so that you can reuse the settings again.

Here is the completed example part which shows how SolidWorks names the Hole Wizard Feature.

Special Thanks goes out to my co-worker Chris Harris for pointing this out to me.  Chris is a veteran CAD user who is learning to use SolidWorks for the first time on our current project and is doing a GREAT job!

Stay tuned….more to come!

My blog has moved. Please go to www.jeffmirisola.com for all my latest news and posts! If you've subscribed to this blog, please be sure to subscribe to my new one. Also, due to spam problems, I've closed comments on this blog. All the posts here are available on my new blog.

Thanks!

After talking with Bill there and later through email concerning another article, I wished to learn a little more about SolidWorks Labs and share it with you. Bill graciously agreed to an email interview, and I learned a lot. I hope you find it informative!

Bill Doll: Hi Brian, it was a pleasure meeting you at SWW also. I am really looking forward to building a stronger connection between SolidWorks Labs and the community.

CF: Can you please tell us a little bit about yourself?

BD: I have been involved with CAD in one form or another for over 25 years. The first half of my career was spent as a Mechanical Designer using many CAD systems including CADDS3/4/4X/5, Cadra, Pro/Engineer and SolidWorks. Later on I was responsible for CAD Operations at Polaroid, including administration, customization and implementation of all CAD and PDM related products. Throughout my career in CAD I have always had at least one foot in software development. I learned early on the power of customizing a CAD environment to suit one’s specific needs. With data management becoming a popular topic, I cofounded DesignSource Technology with the goal of creating the easiest to use PDM system to work with the easiest to use CAD system, SolidWorks. Our product, PDMWorks, quickly became the standard for small companies looking to manage their data without all the overhead of traditional PDM systems.

CF: How did you become involved with SolidWorks/SolidWorks Labs?

BD: I have been a user of SolidWorks since the software was released in 1995. Over the years I also wrote many utilities for customizing SolidWorks. In 2002 SolidWorks acquired my company, DesignSource Technology, and I became an employee of SolidWorks. From 2002 through 2007 I was responsible for overseeing the development of PDMWorks Workgroup. It was not until the first quarter of 2008 that I took over the Labs group.

CF: What is the purpose of SolidWorks Labs?

BD: As an extension of R&D, SolidWorks Labs provides a great way for us to test out new functionality and new product ideas. Because we are a small, agile team and don’t follow the standard release schedule, we are able to release new products and ideas more quickly. A primary goal for Labs is to get timely user feedback on these ideas and technologies and evaluate how we can enhance our core product to better suit our customers’ needs.

CF: How many people make up the SolidWorks Labs team?

BD: SolidWorks Labs consists of around nine people. This includes developers and QA. That number can fluctuate somewhat as people move though Labs on temporary assignment. When starting a product that may make it into core SolidWorks, we will solicit one or more people from R&D to work on the project with us. This ensures that the product knowledge travels back with the product into core when it graduates from Labs.

CF: After a quiet spell over the last year or so, there have been several new additions to SolidWorks Labs in the past few months; is there any particular reason for the increased activity?

BD: There are a couple of reasons. First, we spent some time conducting surveys to learn what users thought about Labs and what we could do to improve. SolidWorks Labs is still a relatively new group after all. Next we developed a plan from that feedback and identified some key tasks to better focus our efforts. Once we had the plan in place it was a matter of execution, which I believe my team did a terrific job on. We were able to quickly roll out a new suite of “focused” products and a completely redesigned website providing better organization and a way for users to rate and comment directly on products. Because we do not follow a standard release schedule, Labs will most likely always have its peaks and valleys when it comes to new product announcements; some products just take longer to develop than others. But we will always strive to keep the content fresh and exciting for our users.

CF: You mentioned at SolidWorks World that there was an update to the SolidWorks Labs project, Treehouse. What drove the changes?

BD: User feedback. Treehouse was received very well by the community. It seems like almost everyone has been waiting for a product like this. Because so many people tried out Treehouse, we were able to get some great user feedback and good ideas for a follow on release. I expect users will be quite pleased with the next version of Treehouse.

CF: How important is user feedback to SolidWorks Labs?

BD: User feedback is extremely important to us. That is why we put the effort in last year to enhance our website creating a mechanism for users to rate and comment on all of our products. We read every comment, every day, and respond back into the discussions area when appropriate. But we don’t just check our own site for comments and ratings. We are constantly searching the web (blogs, forums, twitter, etc.) for feedback on our products. These comments, suggestions and ratings are taken into consideration when developing new products and enhancing existing ones. User feedback should also prove to be valuable to other users visiting the site as they can get an idea of a products strengths and weaknesses before they download.

CF: If a user wished to see a new app or feature, what is the best way to go about submitting that idea?

BD: Currently the best way to let us know what you would like to see in the way of something new is to use the Feedback link at the top of the Labs website. Very soon we will have a new app online that will allow users to post their ideas and let others vote on those ideas. This app should be very useful for us to see what users are most interested in.

CF: Does SolidWorks Labs take any ideas from enhancement requests submitted through the SolidWorks Customer Portal?

BD: SolidWorks Labs sifts though ideas from many different channels. We talk directly with customers, review enhancement requests, and keep in close contact with core R&D, Product Definition, Product Management, Marketing and Technical Support. Communications are fairly strong within SolidWorks.

CF: Are there any new products or features that you care to discuss?

BD: Typically we do not announce products ahead of them appearing on the SolidWorks Labs website. But I would suggest keeping a close eye on Labs as we have several very exciting things in the works!

And be sure to stay on the lookout here, as I’m sure there are many more interesting and wonderful things on the horizon at SolidWorks Labs!

In a recent project we have been tasked to import some files from Pro/ENGINEER into SolidWorks.  To complicate things a bit, some of the Pro/E files are still undergoing some “minor” changes.  How do you deal with situations like this?  Well, I’m happy to say that you CAN effectively UPDATE imported models and if the changes are minor and you use a consistent process in how you import your data, the assembly mates and sketch relations you have built to the imported part will remain unharmed.  The video below shows it all.  You will see me show an Assembly in SolidWorks that has a imported model in it from Pro/E.  I’ll then update the model in Pro/E and show how you can update your imported geometry in SolidWorks!  This is actually an old school trick that I first saw MANY years ago in a Rhino tutorial that talked about how to update Rhino surface data in SolidWorks.  So sit back and enjoy.  My microphone is still broken…so I had to use callouts in this one.  Hopefully the next video post will include voice again.

UPDATED 3-22-09: You can now download this video for local viewing HERE! You will need install the TSCC Codec to view the file.  This feature is new to the site and currently in testing.  Please drop a comment and let me know how it worked for you!

Stay tuned…more to come!

Ok…without elaborating too much, it has been a stressful week for me so far.  Lots of things going on which IS  good thing.  As I was reading my Twitter feed tonight, I came across a tweet from SolidWorks founder and former CEO Jon Hirschtick talking about a new marketing video series that was just released by SolidWorks.  Maybe it’s just my twisted sense of humor, but I laughed like crazy watching the three released episodes of 3 Dudes Gone 3D.

The series puts 3 guys working together in an overflow trailer while their offices are under construction.  Stephen, Bob, and Kish talk about developing refrigeration products with SolidWorks amongst other things in this REALLY funny series of videos.  Don’t take my word for it….check it out for yourself!

Stephen is the young Mechanical Engineer.  Bob is the “old timer” of the group and is VP of Product Developement.  Kish is the eccentric Senior Designer in the group and I would say is the most entertaining of the three.

My good buddy Josh over at SolidSmack posted about this today and has some interesting background information on the series.

My favorite Kish quote so far is:  “You really are philistines aren’t you?  And I……I am the Davinci of portable refrigeration.  Hey Bob,  You worked with Davinci didn’t you?”

Priceless.  I highly recommeded the site folks…so check it out when you can!

You can also check out previews of upcoming episodes HERE.

Stay tuned…more to come!

Periodically, we run into an interesting story that helps you realize how small the world can actually be.  I recently ran across this story at SolidWorks World 2009 in Orlando, Florida. I will start by setting up the “chance” meeting so you can understand how I heard about this story, first hand.

At SolidWorks World 2005 in Orlando, Florida, I met Mike Baljak from Automation Tooling Systems.  The both of us were joining some people from the EngTips forum for breakfast or lunch.

I met Matthew Cummins of Tacton Systems, a few years ago at a regional SolidWorks User Group Meeting in Racine Wisconsin. 

Each user group meeting, regional conference or SolidWorks World I go to, I usually run into, one or both of these people either in the vendor pavilion or in the halls between sessions, but never at the same time.  When we see each other, we always take the time to talk to each other to see how each of us are doing.  The recent SolidWorks World 2009 in Orlando, Florida was just a bit different and provided the basis for this interesting story.

Prior to Sunday’s Welcome Reception, I was in the hall talking to Mike Baljak and we were catching up on what had been happening in the past year.  During this discussion, I saw Matthew Cummins heading for the partner pavilion and asked him to join our discussion.  After some short introductions, Matthew’s first comments were “Yeah, he’s just the guy who, unwittingly, has had perhaps the single greatest impact on my present career path.”   This needs further explaination!

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Here’s the story:

The first SolidWorks World that was attended by Matthew Cummins was in 2006 in Las Vegas.  At that time Matthew was working for a retail design firm looking for ways to create assembly models and Bills of Materials (BOM’s) more efficiently.  His company had a 300 page catalog of stock components, but no two assemblies were ever the same. 

On the first day of the event, Matthew had the good fortune of meeting Gopal Shenoy, then Manager of Product Definition at SolidWorks.  As they discussed assembly automation, Gopal asked if Matthew knew Mike Baljak from ATS and recommended that Matthew attend a break-out session that Mike was giving later that week.  (Matthew still has the conference program with his talk circled)

Using SolidWorks Effectively in a Machine Design Environment, Mike Baljak, Automation Tooling Systems

Abstract:  By examining a particular automation machine, this presentation reviews the design challenges faced by Automation Tooling Systems and the SolidWorks functionality used to overcome them.  You will learn ways to design, manufacture, and integrate components faster, so you can save time and money while working under tight schedules.

Before attending Mike’s talk, Matthew thought he would learn about some pretty clever ways to speed up the design process with SolidWorks.  Mike’s demonstrations that day turned Matthew’s whole SolidWorks world upside down.  (Forgive the pun).  It was the first time that Matthew had seen truly high level design automation in SolidWorks.  Matthew remembered one example in particular.  For certain machine components, instead of relying on a library of pre-built parts, an engineer could enter his or her component requirements into a custom form.  Their automated system would then scan a database of vendor catalog information until it found a matching component.  Seamlessly, it would read in the corresponding dimensional data, generating a new SolidWorks component on the fly, complete with vendor item number, description, etc.  It all made perfect sense as Mike laid it out, but Matthew remembers being stunned nonetheless.

Matthew has spent the last few years studying and presenting on design automation techniques, now with TactonWorks. 

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Matthew had to leave the discussion early to meet up with some customers during the Welcome Reception.  I looked at mike and said “How cool is that?”  I think Mike was speachless.

Every engineer wants to make a positive difference in someone else’s life, whether it be in the products we develop, or the information we exchange at meetings or conferences, or in the presentations we give at such conferences.  We don’t always hear of these positive effects we have on other people, but we do believe they are happening.  It always feels good to hear of such positive influences we have on other people.

Simply another example of the SolidWorks community in action.

Some of you may have noticed that I have been posting with less frequency over the past few months but I have been working a new project. Those who follow me on twitter (http://twitter.com/swgeek) already know about my new project but I thought it would be good to share it with my readers. Last week I received confirmation from Wiley, http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/, that I will be writing a new SolidWorks book due out shortly after the release of SolidWorks 2010. The new book will be called SolidWorks 2010 – No Experience Required. This is an existing series that includes titles for AutoCad, Revit and Microsoft Frontpage and this will be the first book in the series that covers SolidWorks.

I am extremely excited about his awesome opportunity, to say the least. I am very passionate about sharing knowledge and I feel this will spread the gospel of SolidWorks even further. When I started writing The SolidWorks Geek, I had hoped that the site would become a great resource to new users of SolidWorks and based on the wonderful emails I receive from all of you, it has seems to be working. Now with this new project, I will be able to reach users who aren’t even aware of this great community that lives on the web.

If you are an avid reader of The SolidWorks Geek, do not despair…I will continue to write and share some great tips and tricks but a little less frequent. From time to time, I will also share with you my experiences while writing the book and maybe pose some questions to the reader. So please stay tuned and wish me luck!

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A warning: This post will have absolutely nothing to do with SolidWorks, or CAD for that matter.

Why do people feel that part numbers need to represent anything? Too often I've seen "smart" part numbers end up being so convoluted that you need a PhD in cryptography to understand anything. What's bringing this on? I'm ashamed to admit it, but there is such a part numbering system here. It's not as ugly as some I've seen, but it's frustrating nonetheless. Naturally, I tried to get the powers-that-be to see the error of their ways but, in the end, I had to concede. (Today is only my third day, I don't want it to be my last.)

What so many people fail to realize is that a part number is just a placeholder in the MRP system (or whatever inventory control system you're using). The part description is the important part. Yes, I know there are those who are screaming "blasphemer" at me, I don't care. The minute you implement a "smart" part numbering system, you're setting up for future failure. At some point you're going to have a new part that is really similar to an existing part so you'll add some sort of suffix or prefix to its number so you can differentiate between the two. Next thing you know, you've got a third one that's similar to the other two. Another suffix, perhaps? Oops, look, here's a fourth one. Ok, we'll just create another classification, slide the first three over and now we're good. Right? Crap, what to do with the old numbers? Hey look, this part is sort of like the first four, but it's also sort of like these ones over here...
It's enough for me to want to pull my hair out.

Everyone, for the most part, has heard of the KISS principle, right? Keep it simple stupid. A part number should be just that, a stupid number. Whether it's 4-, 5- or 6-digits really depends on your company's needs. How many parts are you dealing with? Let the description take care of telling you what it is: Screw, HHC, 1/4-20 x 1, GR5; Cable, Red, 4 GA; Number, Part, Stupid.

Think about it, no more having to train newbies on how your part numbering system is deciphered. No more having to come up with new codes. Need a new part number, just take the next available one. The world is already confusing enough. Let's not make it worse with "smart" part numbers, ok?

</end rant>

I have mentioned this story to many people who said I should put it in my blog.  With recent and continuing downturn in the economy, and after a recent announcement from SolidWorks Corporation, I believe this is a great time to share my story with others.

The story!

In 1990, I was laid off from work due to cut backs after the company was recently purchased by another company.  During this time of unemployment (about 5 months) and searching for a new job, I noticed a trend in decreasing drawing board based drafting/design jobs, and an increase in 2D CAD drafting/design jobs.  Up until this time, all of my drafting and design experience has been with pushing the pencil on a drafting board.  With this trend, I was seeing fewer opportunities for returning to work.  I knew I needed to get training and experience on a CAD system to change my situation and improve my.  But how can I get the training when I am not working, and where?

For a few weeks, I had noticed an advertisement in the newspaper “Learn 2D CAD in a week”.  I wondered, “How someone can learn a CAD system in just one week?”  I took the time to check it out.  The course was offered by a local Engineering Consulting firm, and the training program was based on a self paced training manual with an instructor that was available to answer any questions you may have, and help you get past stumbling blocks in learning 2D CAD.  No lectures, it was all hands-on training.  I felt this was a good place to start.

My wife objected to my spending the money to take this class.  Her objection was based on the statement “We cannot afford to spend any money on something that does not provide an immediate benefit for us.”  My response was simply “I cannot afford to pass up an opportunity that could get me back to work and advance my career”.

To back up my stand on the issue, I had “3 Aces” in my back pocket.

1. Back in 1981, while I was in college, I did take a 2D CAD course on a DataGrid III CAD system that the college received only 6 months earlier.  Some years later, I also took a course at a local technical college that was based on a CAD system for the Apple IIe computer.  With these earlier courses I had a good understanding in the concepts of CAD.  Now I needed training on the CAD system that employers were using.
2. As a hobby, I had been using computers for about 7 years prior to this period of unemployment.  This experience has primarily been in getting comfortable with using the computer and in programming the computer to do tasks for me.  At this point, learning how to use a computer was not an issue.
3. The majority of the money I needed for this course came from winning a lottery pool just a few weeks after I was laid off.  This drastically reduced the amount of money I needed to take out of the limited family budget.

It was off to training I go!  I sat down in front of the computer and started going thru the training manual.  I actually completed everything in the training manual in only 3 days.  Because I completed everything so quickly, the instructor took the manual away and gave me a few test drawings to complete, to see how much I learned from the course.  The drawings only took me a few hours to complete.  After taking the training, I hung around to see what else I could learn and experience, and help the instructor out a bit.

Shortly after I took the training class, the instructor decided to leave the engineering firm for “bigger and better” things.  The instructor then recommended me to be the new instructor for the CAD training classes.  Here I was, I just learned how to use 2D CAD, and now I am helping others learn how to use 2D CAD.  I definitely had to add this one to my resume and redistribute it to potential employers.  For a few months, I carried on with providing a training environment so other individuals can learn how to use 2D CAD.

My resume was sent from an engineering contracting form and sent to a local manufacturing firm, who was looking for someone who was experienced in 2D CAD.  The Engineering Manager was impressed to see that I was teaching other people how to use 2D CAD, shortly after I myself just learned how to use 2D CAD.  I was called in for an interview and I was offered a job the contracting agency.  This came at a good time because the consulting firm was phasing out the 2D CAD training.  The 6 month contract job lasted for 9 months before the budget ran out. At this point, the Engineering Manager at the manufacturing firm already contacted the contracting agency, who lined up another contracting job for me.  This was done so I would not have to experience any period of unemployment.

In 1992, after working 5 months on the second contracting job, I received a call from the first manufacturing firm.  I was asked to come in for an interview with the Senior Engineer so he could get re-acquainted with who I was.  I was then offered a full-time direct-hire job with the manufacturing firm.  I notified the contracting agency and the Engineering Manager at the second contracting job, that I intended on leaving for the direct-hire job.  The next day, I received a second offer for a full-time direct-hire position with the second contracting job.  Here I was, about 1.5 years after learning 2D CAD, I had 2 direct-hire job offers.

Of course, I accepted one of the offers and have been employed with that company since.   In 1998, the company implemented SolidWorks and 3D modeling as it’s primary design and engineering tool.  While at this new position, I kept learning more about 2D CAD, other engineering applications, and I soon became the “go to” guy for questions that came up dealing with 2D CAD or 3D Modeling.  This eventually led to me becoming the CAD Administrator and the PDM Administrator for the engineering departmen