It has been kind of quiet at RockSolid Perspective this past week and I wanted to let you know what has been going on.

The economic downturn has finally run its course on the company that I work at in West Michigan. All of our orders are down and we have been waiting to reach the bottom of the “economic hole” before we can start climbing our way out of it. Because of this slowdown in orders everyone got cut back to 36 hours 2 weeks ago. Then last week Thursday everyone was informed that there were going to be pay cuts handed down to the entire company. Reality really set in at this point.

It began to take its toll last week when our Vice President of Sales, who we hired 6 weeks ago, decided that the move to our company was not what was best for him at this time in his life and he decided to go back to the company that he came to us from. Because of this, last week Thursday I was offered a Sales Engineer position which would take me out of engineering for the most part and put me on the road more often. It was kind of flattering for me to think that the President & Vice President thought I would excel at this position but I struggled with whether it was the route I wanted to go with my career. After REALLY struggling with it over the weekend, then going on the road meeting with some new potential customer on Monday, I came to the decision on Tuesday to turn down the opportunity and stay in the Engineering department. However, I will be more involved in the quoting processes from now on but as an Engineer and not as Sales. Let me tell you, this was not an easy decision and it caused a few sleepless nights on my behalf.

Then everything broke loose on Wednesday. Management decided that the hour and pay cuts were not the best route to go for our company because it posed too big of a risk for losing some of the employees that we couldn’t afford to lose. So Wednesday turned into D-Day at our company as 10 employees were permanently laid off which cut our 1^st shirt workforce by 25%. Thankfully I was not affected directly by this but it is always hard to see people let go like this, people that I have worked with everyday for 9 years.

As for RockSolid Perspective, I am hoping that next week things will begin to get back to normal and you will be seeing the normal posting on here. I am planning on doing some posts about tools and methods that we use to quote parts and also some tools that I am hoping to implement into our standard quoting process. Look for these to be coming in the next couple of weeks.

As for you, I hope all is going well in your occupational life. It is a rough time for our country right now and I am hoping that the end will be coming sooner rather than later.

As a CAD Administrator I understand and appreciate the value of an employee that has been thoroughly trained, however the funds are not always there for a company to send every new employee to training at their reseller. I believe this is an all too common occurrence and you end up fighting the resulting problems for the first months of each new designers employment. Or you have the situation where there is a feature that you don’t use very often but you realize what the benefits could be if you knew how to run it effectively.

In order to hopefully offset some of these occurrences with probably 1 of the lesser used tools as a whole, SolidWorks is offering free training for SolidWorks SimulationXpress which is included in every SolidWorks package. The training does not require any sort of registration so you won’t have to worry about a bunch of promotional or sales emails and calls following your training. This is a great opportunity to get some free training and expand your knowledge of the entire SolidWorks package. This is also a great link to pass on to the rest of the designers at your company so that hopefully you can all be on the same page during the analysis of your designs. Also, in addition to the free training video you will be able to download some models for your own personal testing after you watch the video. What more could you ask for?

I have not had the opportunity to sit through the whole training session yet but I am hoping to at some point today. Check it out for yourself and see if this is a feature of SolidWorks that could benefit your company.

To access the free training follow this link or click on the image above and enjoy.

SolidWorks is looking for your help and input. I have recently done a couple of posts on Workgroup PDM and it seemed to be a hot topic each time I did so. So here is your chance, SolidWorks is looking for your input on their PDM products so that can produce the best products that they can. So here is the deal, you fill out a short survey and they will contact you about doing a 60 minute product review/demonstration on November 6 or 7. These can be done in person in Concord, MA or from the comfort of your desk through a webinar. In return for helping them out you will receive a $100 Amazon gift card.

To participate, fill out the survey found here and wait for a return phone call or email about the PDM test drive. Here is your chance to let SolidWorks know what you think about Workgroup or Enterprise PDM and what you would like to see in the future.

A while ago I posted on the suit that Autodesk filed against SolidWorks about the rights to use the DWG name. It seemed to get a lot of attention in the CAD industry so I thought I would share this link with you. Ralph Grabowski, author of the WorldCAD Access blog pointed me to the new and improved site of Owen Wengerd. The site is called CAD/Court and it follows the CAD litigation in general. Check it out here.

My personal note: Isn’t it kind of sad that there are enough litigations in the CAD industry that warrant a site to follow them all. Oh well, I guess that is the day we are in and it is all part of business these days.

2 weeks ago I posted about a special deal that SolidWorks is offering that included free training with the purchase of software. Today I received another marketing email that offers the ability to purchase SolidWorks and make 36 equal monthly payments instead of having 1 lump sum. And the other part of it is that you won’t have to start paying until 2009,

With the state of the economy right now, which I am not even going to go into, this may be the perfect deals for companies that need to purchase another seat of SolidWorks.

To learn all of the details check out this site: SolidWorks Sales Promotion

This deal expires on December 19, 2008 and is only valid in the United States and Canada.

In case some of you didn’t notice, last week I added 2 more links to my SolidWorks Blog Squad section on the right of this page. The SolidWorks Blog Squad is pleased to welcome Lynnette Sabatka and Dave Planchard into our group.

To find out who they are and what they will be writing about please go and check out their blogs and welcome them to the SolidWorks Community.

Lynnette’s SolidWorks Blog

Dave Planchard’s SolidWorks Blog

SolidWorks is offering a free 30 day trial of SolidWorks Premium. Here is what you need to do. Head to the SolidWorks Premium site and in the upper right hand corner click on the tab that says “Request FREE Trial”. Once you do this a pop up form will appear and you can fill out your contact information. You have another option however when this form is available, you can also request a live demo of SolidWorks Premium. The other options on the main page allow you to request a quote or download the white paper for SolidWorks Premium. Once you submit your free trial request you will be mailed your evaluation copy.

This is a great deal for either new potential customers or for existing customers who want to experience what SolidWorks Premium has to offer. SolidWorks Premium has a lot to offer and is worth a look if you are not already using it. This is definitely worth the time to look at it. To see the SolidWorks product matrix and view what each version has to offer click here.

Note: This deal is available in the United States only.

What do you think about SolidWorks documentation? Is it the best you have ever seen? Is it the area that needs the most improvement? Or is it sufficient for what you need? Here is your chance to let SolidWorks know what you think about it. Fill out this 20 question survey and let them know what you think of their documentation.

Also, if you have had the chance to play around with the PhotoView 360 already you can help them out by filling out their survey on this product. Fill out this survey here.

LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD!

SolidWorks introduced a new deal today for its current customers and potential new customers. From now until October 31, 2008 if you buy 2 seats of any SolidWorks software package OR 1 seat of SolidWorks Simulation you will receive 1 FREE training at your local reseller. Now you may say to yourself, that’s not that great of a deal because you still have to buy the software at full price but normally you would have to pay for a full training session on top of the price of a seat.

This is a great time to order that next group of SolidWorks seats or jump on the SolidWorks Simulation band wagon and get your free training session. Sorry, the offer is ONLY valid in the United States and Canada.

You can contact a sales representative at 1-800-693-6000 or learn more about the promotion here.

Today Luxology LLC released an official press release about the details of the Luxology technology Nexus powering the new SolidWorks product PhotoView 360. There has been a lot of talk about PhotoView 360 since it came out in the SolidWorks Community, here is a list of what some of the bloggers are saying about it.

It is good to hear from Luxology finally about the partnership between them and SolidWorks. There have been 2 press releases from Luxology since this partnership came to be. You can view the PDF version of the 1^st release (August 12, 2008) here and a PDF of today’s release here.

Today’s press release goes into a little more detail about the actual PhotoView 360 program while the 1^st press release was more focused on the Nexus 4 technology. These are some fun reads if you are into the behind the scenes details on some of these programs that SolidWorks is offering.

Like I said, a lot of the bloggers covered this new program when it 1^st was released. I personally did not have a chance to play with it at all until last week at the hands on training session at the SolidWorks 2009 Press Launch Event. My first reaction was that it was great. It seems to be extremely easy to use with a clean and simple interface. I have played with PhotoWorks a touch and PhotoView 360 was a lot easier to pick up right out of the box. Make sure you at least try it and play around with it a little if it is included in your subscription package.

If you want to read more in depth reviews of it check out the following blog articles:

• Ricky Jordan’s Blog - Sneak Peak: PhotoView 360 and First Look: PhotoView 360
• Rob Rodriguez Blog.com – What’s REALLY New In SolidWorks 2009? PhotoView 360
• SolidSmack – PhotoView 360 Preview: Download Now Available
• Gabi Jack’s Blog – My first rendering ever…in PhotoView 360
• Mikes Cad Blog – SolidWorks PhotoView 360…My first shot at it
• PhotoView 360: Quick Rendering for SolidWorks Models video done by SolidSmack