Over the past 1 or 2 weeks there has been a lot of discussion across a majority of the blogs about SolidWorks and their attempt or desire to build a full fledged SolidWorks Community. Over the past couple of years social networking in general has taken off in directions that I never even imagined. There are sites like MySpace, Facebook, Pownce and Twitter. Even a site like Plaxo, that I use to manage my contacts, calendar and tasks across multiple computers now has a social networking area that you access through your account. I am sure there are probably hundreds more that I don’t even know about which blows my mind. The only social networking sites that I am a full participant in are Facebook and I am starting to use Twitter more and more.

Facebook has really taken off over the past couple of years now that it is open to anybody and everybody. I believe when the site first started it was only open to students of different levels but they soon opened it up to all and it has really taken off since then. I was never a member of MySpace so I have no idea of what it is like but I heard 1 person say it like this “Facebook is for the higher class of the social networking community compared to MySpace”.

Because of the big Facebook push lately I have been noticing a stronger contigency of SolidWorks related stuff on the site lately. Whether it be familiar faces from the blogs or people that I have met at SolidWorks World or SolidWorks employees, they seem to be popping up everywhere. What this results in is more “Groups” and “Events” and other things that pertain to SolidWorks within the Facebook site. I did a search for SolidWorks in Facebook and it gave me 194 People that mentioned SolidWorks in their profile (jobs, interests, likes, dislikes, etc.), 39 Groups that you could join that deal with SolidWorks (good and bad) and even 2 events (study groups) and 1 page.

Here is what all of this tells me. The SolidWorks Community is alive and strong as it is. People are already networking with other users through sites like this and others. Look at Josh Mings post last week about the SolidWorks Community that he has on Twitter. That is users interacting with users, on their own. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that SolidWorks needs to stay away from all of these type of sites but what I am saying is that I think the way it is now with users finding users and then finding a common ground between them, all on their own, is what builds a community, not a bigger company trying to do it for them. I love what SolidWorks has done RIGHT now for a community, things like SolidWorks World, Regional Tech Summits and User Groups.

They have done a marvelous job thus far and as the old saying goes “don’t fix something that isn’t broke”.

Mike Puckett is on the road again, or in the air I guess would be more accurate. Mike is making an appearance to the SolidWorks Corporation headquarters in Concord, MA this week for the quarterly meeting that was held yesterday along some other meetings that he was able to attend. To see what happened (along with pictures) on his first day at SolidWorks headquarters check out his blog post SolidWorks Headquarters Visit Day 1.

I also believe that he will still be there today for some interviews so if you have any questions that you would like him to ask someone at SolidWorks add a comment to his post Questions for SolidWorks and hopefully he can try and get an answer for you.

So the polls are officially closed and all of the votes have been tallied.  A little under a month ago I started a poll here about "Where Do You Go FIRST To Get Your SolidWorks Technical Problems Answered".  I had an inkling when I began this poll that the SolidWorks Discussion Forums would win but I was completely amazed at how the rest of the votes shaped up.  The SolidWorks Discussion Forums finished #1 with 11 of 29 votes (38%) and in a close second the "Other" Category finished with 9 of 29 votes (31%).  This surprised me the most of anything else during this vote.  A site that I knew about but visited very infrequently seems to be one of the top SolidWorks forums out there, eng-tips.com was the one that the most people let me know was what their other vote was for.  This surprised me a lot.  But hey, I think I now have a new resource to look at when I am looking for answers.  Following the "Other" category was VAR Tech Support with received 5 of 29 votes (17%) and then it was Solid Mentor which got 4 of 29 votes (14%).  Comp.Cad.SolidWorks and Members of Your Local User Group did not receive any votes.

So now that the votes have been revealed lets take a closer look at what all of this voting tells us.  As I stated before the SolidWorks Discussion Forums finished #1 which was not a surprise to me at all.  Richard Doyle filled me in on some awesome numbers when I first started this vote, he said that SolidWorks Discussion Forums has more then 43,500 registered members and from my experience the turn around time between posting a question and getting an answer is extremely short, which everyone knows time is valuable.  The SolidWorks Discussion Forums is where I personally go first and foremost for any questions I come across.  The second place vote getter was the "Other" category which I am guessing that eng-tips.com carried this category on its back (if you voted for other and it wasn’t eng-tips.com please let me know).  I do not know a whole lot about this resource but I will tell you one thing, I will definitely be checking it out closer now.  From what I have seen so far it looks like it could become another valuable site to add to my bookmarks.  Coming in third was the good ‘ole VAR Tech Support.  I do not know if the 5 votes that they received are a good thing or a discouraging number.  I think the 5 in one way is a good number because that means there are still people that are going to their VAR for any and all problems that they have but on the other hand it shows that users are going to a lot of other resources to get their problems and questions answered quickly but are still paying the big price tag each year for their updates but not so much for the tech support that they receive with these subscription services.  This may be another discussion for another day.  The last site to receive any votes was Ben Eadie’s brain child Solid Mentor which I think is a testament to what this site is going to become.  The forum portion of this site is just getting going and I think that it is only going up from where it is right now.  I was extremely surprised to see the Comp.Cad.SolidWorks did not receive a single vote, I thought that this site would be in a fight for the #2 resource.  Well if nothing else this little vote gave some users an inside track on other places to check out for help (like me with eng-tips.com).  Thanks to all of you who took the time to vote.

By the way, this was not meant to discourage the use of any of the sites or resources that were mentioned here.  I believe everything mentioned is a viable resource that can be utilized if needed.

This is the last day to vote in the poll "Where Do You Go FIRST To Get Your SolidWorks Technical Problems Answered?"  So if you have not done so already, vote today!  SEE POLL TO THE RIGHT!

Since I have become a larger part in the West Michigan SolidWorks User Group I have been doing a lot of thinking about what makes a successful user group. Is it the group that has the most members that are CSWP’s or CSWA’s? Is it the group with the most members that attend SolidWorks World? Is it the group that has the largest average attendance from meeting to meeting? Is it the group that has 2 or 3 "big name" presenters (SolidWorks World presenters or SolidWorks employees) at every meeting? Or is it the group that feels like one huge family get together at every meeting? I tend to lean towards the last one for many reasons. The biggest thing about SolidWorks User Groups is the community, the numbers or presenters or accolades are nothing if you don’t have a relationship among the members of your group. Now don’t get me wrong, being certified and having good presenters and having members attend SolidWorks World are awesome things, and stuff I will promote any day of the week, but they are nothing to a user group if the group part is taken out of the title. So how exactly do you build that tight nit family reunion feeling among members. This is what I have been contemplating since returning from SolidWorks World and I think a good start to this is to have regular meetings. You need to find the happy point that is between not having enough meetings and having too many meetings where people get sick of coming every time. Our group (West Michigan SolidWorks User Group) is going to be meeting on the second Tuesday of every other month. I am in no way saying that this is that happy point for everyone but that is where we are going to begin our journey and go from there. I think that each group individually needs to determine what their happy point is, it is not something that an "outsider" can tell them what to do. Another thing that can build relationships among the members are to have organized group activities at your meetings where groups can break down problems inside of SolidWorks. This exercise forces people to mingle among each other. A few years back I was not one to walk up to a group of people and just start talking to them (I still am not completely that way) so it has always been hard for me to build a relationship more than a hi and bye conversation. By breaking into groups like mentioned before you begin the building blocks of a deeper conversation and thus a better chance to get to know someone on a more personal level. Let me know what you thoughts are on this. Do you have any suggestions? Let me know, I would love to hear how your user group builds the group into a community of users.

P.S. I wanted to mention that a lot of this started at SolidWorks World when I saw the community that the NASWUG seems to have. I saw Ricky Jordan and Brian McElyea on numerous occasions stop and talk to people from their group like they were childhood friends that were in each others weddings and so on, it was awesome. They are to me the prime example of what a user group community is all about. This is not to say that other groups are not like this but I really noticed them at SWW.

Seeing how the presidential primaries are in full effect I decided to run my own little election process here at RockSolid Perspective.  I am curious as to who/what will be elected as the #1 Problem Solving Resource For SolidWorks Users.  Lately I have seen and heard quite a bit of discussion’s about what is the most popular place to get your SolidWorks technical problems answered.  There was a forum on the SolidWorks Discussion Forum about VAR support, concerning how much you use your VAR and what kind of support you get from them.  In connection with this I was talking to an employee at my VAR about some of the online forums that are available.  He said that his main stay for online knowledge was Comp.CAD.SolidWorks because a couple of years ago SolidWorks Discussion Forums just didn’t have what it took to run with the Google group.  Now there is a 3rd forum site that is available to you at Solid Mentor.  Ben Eadie has done a tremendous job setting this site up to fill a lot of your various SolidWorks needs.  This conversation and forum triggered some interest on my behalf about where you, as a user, go to get your answers.  I also added the members of your local SolidWorks user group as a source for you to select.  Please vote today, however the poll will stay open until March 1, 2008.  If you vote other please leave me a comment about where you go.  Thanks and happy voting!

P.S. VOTE IN THE POLL WHICH IS LOCATED ON THE TOP OF THE RIGHT SIDE BAR!

While browsing the “new and improved” SolidWorks Discussion Forum this morning I came across a link to a SolidWorks site that lets you know what SPR’s have been fixed in each service pack release. Now I realize that this is not a new site by any means, but it is new to me. So go check it out if you are wondering what kinds of improvements are included in each service pack before you distribute it company wide. However, only a brief SolidWorks 2008 sp2.1 fix list is on there so it makes me wonder if the .1 version service pack has fixed any of the crash and burn problems that so many users are experiencing with sp2.0.

By the way, before I forget thank you Deepak Gupta for sharing this information in this thread: Service Packs.

Check it out for yourself: Service Pack Maintenance Notes