Monthly Archives: January 2009

Jan 29 2009

Spotlight on the Community!

Over the past couple of weeks there has been a couple of things going on in the SolidWorks community that I feel need to be mentioned and broadcast here.

DESIGN FOR THE FUTURE


The first is an item that you have probably seen mentioned on the other blogs already but I felt that if I have 1 or 2 readers that visit my blog and haven’t seen this before it would be worth it. Alex Ruiz, the SolidWorks Geek himself is doing an awesome thing on his blog right now. It is a project called Design For The Future. Alex is hoping to raise a total of $5,000 for the Orangewood Children’s Home in Orange County, California. The Orangewood Children’s Home is a place for children rescued from abusive or neglected homes to go during the process of finding them a foster home or group home. To find out more about the Orangewood Children’s Foundation please follow the link here. Alex has a special connection to this foundation and home that I will let him tell you about. Follow this link to read Alex’s story.

NO ENGINEER LEFT BEHIND


On a different note, there is another great opportunity going on right now for the engineers that have a personal connection to the economic crisis that our country is going through right now. Fisher/Unitech, a SolidWorks VAR from the Midwest, has started a program called “No Engineer Left Behind“. This is a $250,000 investment that allows displaced engineers to get free SolidWorks training and possible internship opportunities. To qualify for this program you must meet all of the following criteria.

  • Must be a displaced designer or engineer within the last 12 months from a position where 2D or 3D CAD tools were used
  • Proof of unemployment must be furnished in the form of a letter from previous employer or current statement of unemployment benefits
  • Candidates must understand that the 30-day internship is not guaranteed.  FISHER/UNITECH will provide its customers that have elected to participate with a list of workers who have completed the No Engineer Left Behind training program.  Next steps will be handled by our customers, as they see fit.
  • Acceptance into No Engineer Left Behind is on a first-come, first-served basis.

For more information on this program check out their blog for more details including contact information. Check it out here.

MY TAKE

Right now our country is at a cross roads and is in some seriously tough times. Now is the time for all of us to stick together and if there is any way that we can help each other out we should give it some serious consideration. Now you have my $.02, take it for what it’s worth but be sure to at least check these 2 programs out.


 

Jan 28 2009

The Countdown is On…SolidWorks WORLD 2009


Tick..tick…tick! That is the sound of the countdown timer that I have begun for SolidWorks WORLD 2009 which currently stands at 12 days. With each passing day up here in West Michigan the sunny and warm weather of Orlando, Florida is sounding better and better.

Last year was the first SolidWorks WORLD that I attended. It was in warm San Diego, California and was all in all a great event. As a member of the press last year I had the opportunity to do some 1 on 1 interviews with SolidWorks employees that I could share here with all of you. This made for an very frantic pace to try and maintain throughout the event and I felt that I was not getting a good grip on any one thing because of all of the pre commitments that I had made.

This year is going to pose a new adventure for me at SolidWorks WORLD. I will be giving a presentation this year titled “The Ins & Outs of In Context Modeling” which will be in the 2:45-3:45 time slot on Monday afternoon. I am really looking forward to meeting some great users before, during and after this presentation and if you are interested at all about in context modeling please stop by during this session and see what it is all about.

Unlike last year, I have decided to not doing any 1 on 1 interviews this year. Instead, I have decided to focus on bringing you more complete coverage the general sessions, the technical breakout sessions and some of the great partner products that will be on display during the conference. Hopefully I will even be able to test some of the partner products so that I can give you a complete review here. One of the products you can look forward to reading about here that has already been graciously lined up is a product called HSMWorks which is a CAM package that runs right inside SolidWorks. So stay tuned here for a complete in depth review of this product.

If there is anything in particular you would like to see me cover from this year’s event please drop me a comment right here and I will try my best to get something on here about it.

I am really looking forward to this year’s event. It should be a great time and hopefully I can meet some of you there. If you see me wandering around please stop me and introduce yourself, I leave meeting some of my readers. If you want to find out some more about me please check out my new “About Me” page and see what I am all about.

Also, if there is any way to speed up time please let me know because this event could not come soon enough! Look out Orlando…here we come!

Jan 26 2009

Take a Look!

I have finally gotten around to something that I have wanted to do since I started this blog back in March of 2007. I have added an “About Me” page to my blog. Last year when I was at SolidWorks WORLD I had quite a few people tell me that I should have a picture of myself on my blog so that they could recognize me when I am out and about. Well I have finally added a picture to my blog (on the “About Me” page) and have also included some personal and SolidWorks related information and fun facts. You can access the page by clicking here or by clicking the About Me link on the right side bar.

So go take a look and learn a little about the man behind RockSolid Perspective.

Jan 15 2009

SolidWorks 2009 Textures…Why the Change?


Some of you may have noticed that in SolidWorks 2009 all of the appearances, textures, materials, etc. are grouped into 1 area. What I could not find was how to add just a texture to a face like you could in SolidWorks 2008 and previous. It seemed to just be missing from the equation. Well after I did some research, and with some help from Jeff Sweeney and Ricky Jordan, I got it figured out (at least I think I do). I was given these two links that show you how to get your textures back and how to handle them once you get them inserted on your part. The key is to follow these links in the order that they are here.

  1. What’s New in 2009 – Textures ?? (Randy Simmons, 3DVision Technologies)
  2. SolidWorks 2009: Goodbye Colors. Hello Appearances! (Ricky Jordan, RickyJordan.com)

So why change something that isn’t broke? I understand the thought process behind combining all of these features into 1 single location, and I like the idea. The one thing I don’t like is that it does not include EVERYTHING that it needs to and you have to do the above workarounds to get your textures back. This is coming from a frustrated Engineer and CAD Administrator (was frustrated) and not a programmer. If I had any idea of what it takes to program a software like SolidWorks I would probably understand how some of this happens.

This goes for all of the bugs and quirks that you will find from service pack 1 all the way to service pack 4 or 5. I do not know if it is possible for ANY company to ever create a software that is 100% perfect, that will work with every system configuration, every design situation you could run into, etc. etc. So I guess what I am saying is give these software companies a break from time to time. Each year it seems to be a bigger and bigger band wagon of people that like to tear the software company apart because they are getting software with bugs and glitches in it. This is not only for SolidWorks but for any software company.

There you have it, enough of my ramblings. So to wrap this post up, if you want your textures back like you had in SolidWorks 2008 and previous…follow the (2) links above (in order) and voila…you will get them back.

Jan 15 2009

UPDATE: SolidWorks 2009 SP2.0

As I posted yesterday, SolidWorks Corp. posted the full download of SolidWorks 2009 sp2.0 to its Downloads page of the SolidWorks Customer Portal. Soon after I posted that I began my download and noticed that my download size (2.2 GB) seemed a lot bigger than what the discussion on Twitter was. Not too long later I received an email from SolidWorks. It read as follows:

Cannot Upgrade SP2 EV to SP2 Full. Due to changes made in SP2 Full, the SP2 EV version cannot be upgraded to SP2 Full version. If you have installed 2009 SolidWorks SP2.0 EV, you must uninstall it before installing 2009 SP2.0. Once 2009 SP2.0 EV is uninstalled, you can proceed by either:
Upgrading an existing SolidWorks 2009 SP0 or SP1.0 installation, a full download of 2009 SP2.0. Best regards, SolidWorks Corporation

So, if you have been running the early visibility release of SolidWorks 2009 sp2.0 you will have to completely uninstall it before you can install the full release of it. This is a nice detail to know before you begin the download. One thing that I did notice also when downloading SolidWorks 2009 sp2.0 (after I uninstalled SolidWorks 2009 sp2.0 EV) it did not recognize my serial number from the previous version as it normally does, so make sure you have that handy when you are installing SolidWorks 2009 sp2.0.


 

Jan 14 2009

It’s Live! SolidWorks 2009 SP2.0

SolidWorks today posted the full release download of SolidWorks 2009 SP2.0 on it Downloads page of the SolidWorks Customer Portal. All you need is an active subscription service and a customer portal login and it is all yours. For many companies service pack 2 is around the time that they go ahead and roll out the latest version of SolidWorks to their company. That means that your time to shine is now.

I am going to give you a little bit of advice, take it for what it’s worth. You may have read some posts about people having troubles with SolidWorks 2009. I personally have not had any crashing troubles or anything of the such. I have however had some quirky things with Microsoft Office 2007 since I downloaded SolidWorks 2009 but I have not pin pointed it to anything SolidWorks. I feel that I am getting closer and if I come up with what was causing the crashes I will post it right here. Back to my main point, I think SolidWorks 2009 is definitely worth the download so go get it now and roll it out. I think that you will be happy that you did!

To find a list of what was corrected in service pack 2.0 you can find it here.

Jan 9 2009

Do the Workaround!

Sounds kind of like some crazy dance from the 70′s doesn’t it? Well after I found this workaround I was dancing around my office like it was 1972!

Ever since switching to SolidWorks 2009 I have noticed that I have been unable to resize the shortcut bar (“S” key) when I was customizing it. This caused me to get kind of frustrated because it would not allow me to properly position my commands how I wanted them. So I figured that I would post the question on solidjott.com and see if anyone else was having the same issue. Now, if you haven’t already checked out solidjott.com you need to do it now (well on 2nd thought finish reading this post and then check it out). Anyways, I posted the following question and realized that others were experiencing the same issue as I was.

            

hey everyone! i am running 64 bit vista ultimate with solidworks 2009 sp2.0 ev 64 bit. has anyone experienced the inability to resize the shortcut bar with these settings? it is not a early visibility issue because i have had this problem since sp0.0. please let me know, it is not a show stopper but can be kind of annoying!

After I got some comments from others that were having the same problem I started to look into it a little bit more and found a service request in the SolidWorks Knowledge Base that explained this problem and a workaround to fix it. If you run a dual monitor setup (which most do probably) you probably will experience this problem if you are running SolidWorks on the secondary monitor. In order to resize your shortcut bar you will now need to move SolidWorks over to the primary monitor, resize it, then move SolidWorks back over to your secondary monitor. VOILA, it works! Now I hope that SolidWorks fixes this in an upcoming service pack but for the time being you will need to do this workaround.

Now that we got that out of the way, go check out SolidJott. It is an awesome new SolidWorks Q&A site that includes an add on that will allow you to use it right inside the SolidWorks Task Pane. What that means is that you will no longer have to switch between SolidWorks and the web if you are experiencing a problem of sorts and are looking for some feedback from fellow SolidWorks users. Ben Eadie has done an unbelievable job with this site and add on and deserves all the credit. Solidjott.com is often populated with quite a few of the SolidWorks power users that are chomping at the bit to answer your question or concern.

Jan 5 2009

Out with the Old, In with the New!

Well a new year is upon us and hopefully it will be a year of change for the better for ourselves and our economy. 2008 was a year of economic downturn for many of us and hopefully we are only going to see an improvement in 2009.

As for RockSolid Perspective it has been kind of quiet around here for the last little while. Over the past month and a half to 2 months I have been really busy. I have been working hard on my SolidWorks WORLD presentation titled “The Ins & Outs of In Context Modeling” which if you are going will be on Monday in the 2:45 to 3:45 time slot (if you are going to be in Orlando in February). I have also taken on a basketball head coaching position for a middle school here in West Michigan that has made November through January VERY busy for me. Enough excuses right? Well I am hoping that this upcoming year will bring more time (or at least allow me to allot more time) to writing posts for RockSolid Perspective.

I do have some plans for this blog in 2009 and I wanted to share a couple of them with you. Here are some things that you can look forward to seeing here at RockSolid Perspective this coming year.

  1. A complete review on 3dvia Composer (hopefully you will see this quite soon after SolidWorks WORLD in the beginning of February)
  2. Live coverage from SolidWorks WORLD 2009 in Orlando, Florida (maybe even some live blogging if possible)
  3. In depth blog posts about SolidWorks CAD Administration
  4. More great product reviews
  5. Coverage of my implementation of SolidWorks Gold Partner TactonWorks
  6. An in depth series of posts on What’s New in SolidWorks 2010 (including coverage of what’s shown at SolidWorks WORLD 2009)
  7. Plus much more on all SolidWorks related news

I also have some hopes for myself in general for this upcoming year.

  1. Setup my own self hosted blog site that will allow me to post more videos and screenshots
  2. Become more involved in the SolidWorks User Group community
  3. Become more involved in the various SolidWorks discussion forums
  4. Do more beta testing for SolidWorks 2010 than what I did for SolidWorks 2009 (possibly even some alpha testing even though I won’t be able to share any of that here)
  5. Become more well versed in the areas of SolidWorks that I am not as familiar with

It is my hope that 2009 will be a BIG year for me (in and out of the SolidWorks realm). I hope the same for all of you as well. If you have any suggestions for blog posts or ideas for this site please drop me a comment and let me know what interests you and what you would like to see.

I hope that you have a Blessed and Happy Year in 2009!