Yesterday I made the just under 3 hour trip to the east side of Michigan and attended the EMSWUG meeting in Troy, MI which is just north of Detroit.  Dan Bovinich, the group leader and honorable mention for User Group Leader of the Year at SolidWorks World 2008, did a wonderful job setting this event up and keeping it moving on schedule.  There was roughly 50 attendees at this meeting which was held at the beautiful Automation Alley building.  Attendees were treated to great lunch, a lot of networking opportunities and 2 presentations that were given by an AE at each of the 2 resellers here in the Wolverine state.

Dan led the meeting off by doing a quick 8 picture slide show of some of the things that were featured and seen at SolidWorks World 2008 in San Diego, CA.  This was good as it was a quick way to possibly wet the appetite of some users that may be interested in attending the event next year in Orlando, FL.  Next, Dan did a brief polling of the attendees as to which version of SolidWorks they were running and what operating system they were running it on.  I found it very interesting how many people where still using SolidWorks 2007 as their #1 CAD program and had not upgraded to SolidWorks 2008 yet.  Dan then introduced the first presentation and presenter of the afternoon.  Jon Benavides from Fisher/Unitech did a presentation titled "90 Tips in 90 Minutes".  This was a presentation that he had taken and modified from someone that had presented it at SolidWorks 2007.  His presentation offered a lot of information in what seemed to be a short amount of time.  There were definitely things that were shown however that peaked a lot of peoples attention because I noticed quite a bit of note taking during his presentation.  The tips and tricks style presentations in my eyes are always good because they are easy things to take back the workplace and start using the next day.

After a short 15 minute break Dan introduced the 2nd presenter of the afternoon which was John MacArthur from DASI Solutions.  John is also known for his 3rd place finish in the reseller category of Model Mania this past year at SolidWorks World.  John did a presentation titled "Die Design Using SolidWorks".  John showed how he created a fully functioning progressive die in SolidWorks and he also highlighted the many different aspects of die design during his presentation.  After he gave a brief overview of the different areas included in die design he showed a fully animated movie of his progressive die in action.  He accomplished this by using many configurations in his assembly that highlighted each step in the forming process.  John did a nice job with this presentation and I saw a lot of nodding heads and could see some wheels turning for different people when John began to show how he created the animation of his die.  John finished his presentation by showing some of the different animations that he has created over the years, going as far back as 2001.

One thing that I love about the SolidWorks software, user group meetings and SolidWorks World is that you can watch a presentation that is the farthest thing away from the industry that you are in but there is a good chance that if you are really paying attention you will still pull something from that presentation that can be implemented in your area of expertise. 

So now I guess I have to wait until May to attend my next user group meeting which will be the WMSWUG meeting on May 13, 2008 in Zeeland, Michigan.  Lenny Kikstra and Mike Garvelink are currently on tap to present at this meeting so if you are in the area make sure to mark it on your calendar as a must attend event.