Monthly Archives: November 2008

Nov 26 2008

What A Great Day!

Yesterday I took the show on the road and had an absolute GREAT day! I left cold West Michigan around 7:45 am and started my trek to Evanston, Illinois which is just north of Chicago. After an uneventful travel I arrived in warmer (not warm but warmer than West Michigan) around 10:45 am West Michigan time which is 9:45 am Chicago time.

I spent the day meeting and training with Matthew Cummins from TactonWorks. For those of you who are not familiar with TactonWorks, it is a Certified SolidWorks Gold Partner design automation software that includes its own solver engine. This solver engine is what sets it apart from the majority of the other design automation add-ins that SolidWorks has partnered with. Our company has purchased TactonWorks and I am currently in the process of setting it up to work with our products and design techniques. I am having a lot of fun with it and I am hoping to follow my implementation of TactonWorks right here at RockSolid Perspective. If you are at all interested in finding out more about the software check out their web site here or drop me a comment or email and I will get you in contact with Matthew Cummins.

After a great day of training Matthew and we headed out to the Chicago SolidWorks User Group (CSUG) meeting which was held at the Des Plaines campus of Oakton Community College. This was my first time attending a CSUG meeting and Denny Bahl was a gracious host. Denny and Steven Slowik did a great job of putting this meeting together. It was attended by roughly 30-35 users and they were all treated to a great presentation by Rick Chin (SolidWorks Corporation) on the history and abilities of FeatureXpert. He did a tremendous job of tying in a multitude of ideas that all led to the realization and development of FeatureXpert. Along with meeting Rick for the first time I also had the pleasure of meeting Ed Eaton for the first time in person. It was great to finally introduce myself and get to talk to Ed. All in all this meeting was great; it was well run, well attended and included some great discussions and networking. Denny is doing a tremendous job with this group and I highly encourage you if you are within a reasonable driving distance of Chicago to attend the next meeting that the CSUG offers. You can check out their schedule on their website here.

After the user group meeting I headed back to West Michigan arriving home around 1:00 am. It was well worth my travels and I hope to make that trip again sometime in the hopefully not too distant future. Thanks to everyone who made this day worth the trip to Chicago.

Nov 21 2008

Engineering & Sales Communication…3D PDF

As most engineers know there is need for an easy communication method between the engineering department and the sales department and in turn the customer. When you are using a 3D modeling program, such as SolidWorks, you have to make a decision whether a 2D document will be good enough or is 3D a necessity in order to get the most out of your design ideas. A program like eDrawings which SolidWorks offers is a great tool for communicating internally at your company and to your customers but it always has the drawback that whoever you are sending the file to needs to have some sort of a viewer installed in order to see it. This may not be a big deal but it can be to some people. eDrawings is a tool that we use quite frequently at my company but every now and then you run into a situation while using it that hinders the paths of communication.

Over the past couple of months there has been some buzz in the SolidWorks community about a SolidWorks Labs product called Presentation Studio. I have briefly played around with this SolidWorks add on and it looks great but again you need to install additional software and so on. However, this finished project is really nice and it will make your “presentation” stand out from the rest. If you haven’t already tried it, play around with it and see what you think. I personally think that the people in the SolidWorks labs are on to something great here. To see some great reviews of the product check out these links by various members of the “SolidWorks Blog Squad”.

There is also an easy way to create a 3D PDF of you model without installing any additional software and the only prerequisite that the recipient of your file needs in Adobe Reader 8 or newer (I believe Adobe 8 is the cutoff). Most companies have this program already installed on their computer for viewing 2D PDF’s so it won’t be an issue 99% of the time. Now understand, this 3D PDF that you create will be about as plain as they come but it will get your design across. It also includes some hidden functionality that is very nice by using the RMB when viewing the file. Here is what you need to do to create this simple communication file.

1. Open the SolidWorks model that you need to send someone in 3D.

2. Go to File > Save As…

3. In the “Save as type” dropdown you need to select Adobe Portable Document Format (*.pdf). Once this is selected you will have checkbox that appears that says “Save as 3D PDF”. Make sure this is checked otherwise you will get a 2D PDF of your SolidWorks model.

4. Simple as that…you now have a 3D PDF of your model. By looking at the picture below you would think that it is just a 2D picture but you can rotate it around by holding the LMB. To pan in and out you need to hold down the RMB.

You now have a 3D PDF that you can send to your sales department or to a customer to portray your ideas. But the functionality doesn’t end there. By simply clicking on the RMB you will get a list of additional functionality that is available to you. These include the ability to walk around your model, fly around it, show it shaded with edges, etc. etc. etc.

If you would like to see the 3D PDF that I show here you can open it by following this link.

I hope this helps you and your company to communicate better both internally and to your customers.

Nov 19 2008

SolidWorks 2009… A Great New UI Enhancement

I have read about all of the great new enhancements in SolidWorks 2009 but sometimes you don’t realize how nice they will be until you actually see them in action. As is the case with the above picture. This morning I was working on a component and had added a feature above the chamfers in my FeatureManager tree. Well it caused some errors with missing references for the chamfers so when I went in to fix them I received this nice preview of what was going on. First you will notice in the graphics window that it is showing the ghost images of where my chamfers used to be along with it being highlighted in the PropertyManager. This is great because it will allow me to quickly delete missing references and re-associate them to new faces or edges (in the case of chamfers or radii).

If you haven’t already switched to SolidWorks 2009 you can download SP1 in the Downloads and Updates page of the SolidWorks Customer Portal as long as you are a subscription customer. To see a list of some of the things that were fixed in SP1 you can check out the Fixed SPR’s page or download the What’s New in SolidWorks 2009 PDF document.

Drop me a comment of other new features that you like even more after seeing them in action.

Nov 13 2008

Quick Conversions On The Fly

How many of you have to do a fair amount of dimensional conversion between inches, millimeters and centimeters?

At our company we do all of our modeling in inches but there are a fair amount of our customers that send us hard copy prints that are fully dimensioned in metric units. I would then have to spend some time manually converting these dimension over to inch so that we could model the part correctly. It worked but it ate up time that I could be designing. Well, I found out the other day that there is a easier way to do this without having to go into Tools>Options every time and change my units for that file and then when I was done have to go back in there and change them back to inch units.

You can do it right inside your dimension input boxes while you are sketching/dimensioning. I know there are probably a lot of you that are saying to yourselves right now…he is just finding this out? The answer is yes, I know, I am ashamed but I figured that if I just found this out there may be others out there that don’t know you can do it also. Back to quick conversions, when you add a dimension to a sketch or feature you get a dimension input box as shown on the right. To do your conversion all you need to do is enter in the number you need converted followed by the unit it is currently in (i.e. mm, in, cm) as you can see in the picture below. Simple as that!

Nov 12 2008

SolidWorks & Vista…Give Me Those Icons Back!

About a month ago I made the switch to Windows Vista Ultimate from Windows XP. For the most part I am really happy about making the move but there was one thing that really, I mean really, bothered me with Vista. In Windows Explorer you were forced into having a thumbnail preview of each file as opposed to the SolidWorks icons for parts, assemblies and drawings. Some users like the thumbnail preview but I am not one of them. I like to be able to quickly tell what kind of file I am looking at by just looking at the icon, especially since our assembly file names include nothing to differentiate them from our part file names.

So for a while after I starting using Vista I searched around on the web for a solution to this problem but I quickly found out that I was not the only one that had this pet peeve and no one seemed to know how to correct it. The option that SolidWorks includes it it’s Tools>Options (see below) doesn’t work with Vista so it is something that I just figured I would have to live with. Well, not anymore! I stumbled across the solution today when I was making some performance adjustments and now I am a happy camper.

So here is what you have to do to get those beautiful little icons back in your folders. Right click the Computer icon (or name in your Start menu) and select Properties. From here you will want to select Advanced system settings.

The System Properties window will pop up and you will want to select Settings in the Performance group box.

Once you select that the Performance Options window will appear that has a bunch of different options available to you. You can “Let Windows choose what’s best for my computer”, “Adjust for best appearance”, “Adjust for best performance” or “Custom”. The option that you will want to make sure is UNCHECKED is Show thumbnails instead of icons. Once you select this your choice will automatically switch to “Custom”.

VOILA!

You will now be able to see the plain SolidWorks icons as opposed to all of those small thumbnail previews that you can hardly see anyways. Please note that this is universal for all of your icons however, so your pictures, PDF documents and everything will show a icon instead of the thumbnail but I can handle that if I can get my SolidWorks icons back.

Nov 9 2008

Orlando or Bust…What Other’s Are Saying!

It has been a little while since I have done a post in my series titled “Orlando or Bust” about how to convince your management to send you to SolidWorks WORLD 2009 in sunny Orlando, Florida. Last year when I was attempting to convince the management at my company to send me to my first SolidWorks WORLD I learned a lot about what to expect from other users that had been there before. So last week I sent out a questionnaire to some of my fellow bloggers to see why they feel it is beneficial to attend this event from a user’s perspective. Below you can find the response’s that I received back from them (be sure to check out their blog’s as well, they are a wealth of knowledge for everything SolidWorks related). Here is the question and the responses:

Question: As a user who has been to a previous SolidWorks WORLD, why do you feel it is beneficial to attend this event?

Jeff Mirisola – Jeff’s Blog

  1. I feel it’s beneficial for a few reasons. First, and foremost, the learning opportunities. As an attendee, you have the opportunity to attend classes taught by experts in a multitude of disciplines. There are “hands-on” sessions so you can actually follow along with the instructor. Then there’s the vendor fair where you can check out a huge selection of partner products. Lastly, there’s the networking. You’ll meet people there who can assist you when you get stumped, who can provide a different point of view on how to accomplish different tasks or help you overcome various challenges in your designs.

Josh Mings – SolidSmack

  1. Without a doubt, if you have a goal to go there and find out about something that will benefit yourself or your company – a process, a program, or technique – you will learn more than you originally thought possible. You will come away with more ideas about how that process can be used and you will benefit from conversations with others about how they use SolidWorks. Set a goal. Make sure your company knows. Find out everything about it when you go.

Brian McElyea – CADFanatic

  1. Attending the SolidWorks World conference has major benefits not only for the attending users, but also for their respective companies.  There is a tremendous return on investment; companies receive not only an increase in the users’ skills and knowledge of the software, but also can benefit from the networking aspects associated with this sort of event.

    Users can network not only with other users, but with SolidWorks employees, third-party developers, and potential vendors and customers.  The wealth of information that can be gleaned from just strolling through the Partner Pavilion is worth the cost of the conference by itself.  Couple that value with all of the sessions available, access to the entire conference session presentations after it is over, and the potential business opportunities, and it is easy to see the benefits far outweigh the costs of attending.

    I have personally never went to a SolidWorks World conference where I did not learn something new, be it functionality of SolidWorks I was unfamiliar with, new modeling techniques, or answers to some engineering problems that my company was facing.  And seeing other’s designs in the Partner Pavilion always helps inspire me to be more creative in my designs.

Matt Lorono – SolidWorks Legion

  1. I found the diverse type of breakout sessions to be very valuable.  They do not just cover SolidWorks how-to or hints/tips/tricks.  Business appropriate topics are also covered.  On such as session last year covered project management in the context of a 3D CAD environment.  Another session I enjoyed discussed how to handle file management and SolidWorks within a regulated industry.  I learned lessons from these particular sessions that immediately benefited my company upon my return.

    Also, having employees attend can raise the profile of one’s company, generating interest on the part of others who may not otherwise discover your company via other means.  This can help attract both clients and potential highly qualified new hires.

As you can see, this event is a must attend for any level of SolidWorks user. Whether you are a beginner or an advanced user you will be sure to find an unbelievable amount of information that will help you do your job better and more effectively. So talk to your management, let them know what you can bring back for yourself, for your fellow engineers and for the rest of your company.