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.