SolidWorks Legion

SolidWorks World 2013: What’s in Orlando, FL besides Walt Disney World Resort?

Dothan, AL is the Peanut Capital of the World. Salinas, CA is the Lettuce Capital of the World. Alma, AR is the Spinach Capital of the World. Though Orlando’s nickname is The City Beautiful, some might call this sprawling area in Florida the World Capital of Amusement Parks. There are so many, it’s hard to think of other things to do there.

Guess what! There are other attractions too!

And, other stuff to do too, depending on your interests.

Pirates Cove Adventure Golf
Improv Orlando
House of Blues in Orlando
Hard Rock Cafe in Orlando
Mad Cow Theater
Casey Gorman commented “to the east [there’s] Kennedy Space Center. It’s only about an hours drive.”

If you are staying an extra few days after the end of SolidWorks World 2013 with or without kids, there’s plenty to do for all sorts of interests in the greater Orlando area.

SolidWorks World 2013 just weeks away

Breakout Sessions

SolidWorks World 2013 is only a weeks away! It’s shaping up to be a great convention! The session schedule is filled with great topics. These are a small sample of what is on the schedule as of January 1, 2013 (schedule is subject to change):

Advanced Motion Simulation Techniques in SolidWorks by Shrikant Savant. Learn about advanced simulation techniques using SolidWorks Motion, such as control design, event-based motion, exporting motion loads to SolidWorks Simulation, etc.
Think Differently! — Multibody Techniques in SolidWorks 2013 by Alin Vargatu. See how SolidWorks 2013 adds new and spectacular tools for creating and managing multibody parts. We can even call them “game changers.” Once mastered, these multibody techniques will open up surprising possibilities for saving time and shortcuts.
IAW ASME Y14.5 – Use It Only if You Know It by Rustin Webster and Jeremy Clark. Explore the right and wrong way of creating drawings (IAW) ASME Y14.5M. Attendees will learn fundamental drawing rules concerning view orientation and position, tolerancing, interpretation, dimensioning, accuracy, simplicity, and clarity.
Automate Your Design with Equations by Don Van Zile III and Frank Ruepp. Get a closer look at equations. SolidWorks 2013 has significant enhancements to equations, and we will learn how these enhanced capabilities can help you to speed up and automate your design process.
Fifteen Years of SolidWorks Tips and Tricks by Phil Sluder. Learn how to use SolidWorks 2013 in the real world in this fast-paced session of tips. These will not be found in the help file, they come from years of learning, teaching, and using the software daily in a small dynamic design environment.
Power Surfacing by David Gill. Demonstrate how to easily create and import organic, free form surfaces in SolidWorks. Demonstrate new Sub-Division surface modeling plugin for SolidWorks.

Pages: 123

Getting ready for the new year

It’s that time of year again. You know, the end. 2012 had a lot of changes in my life which happen to coincide with changes in SolidWorks in various forms for various reasons, some of which I control, much of which has nothing to do with me whatsoever.

I moved from California and from industry to take a job as a Definition Product Manager for SolidWorks drawings In Massachusetts. As I write this, I’m snowed into my home, or at least my car is. I can get outside and leave a trail of 2 foot deep holes anytime I want. I just won’t get to anywhere useful very quickly. Contrary to popular conceptions, there is snow in California. The difference is that the snow is limited to the hills and mountains. Great for skiing and for going about your daily life without weather getting in the way very often at all. I will say that I prefer to be walking about in light snow rather than light rain. It’s the blizzards that are annoying.

Surprize, suprize, the world didn’t end 5 days ago. The next prediction for the end of the world has already been floating around and was being promoted in the weeks leading up to December 21, 2012. Sir Isaac Newton predicted the end of things to be 2060 based on his interpretation of Bible prophesy. We cannot get more creditable than that! Here’s some others: Yup, there’s others.

2012 was particularly busy for me, with all the changes and the fairly new job. Can you believe that I’ve already been in Massachusetts about 1 and a half years? Still seems like yesterday. A very special Thank You goes to my wife for being a good sport and indulging me in this grand change.

I do have a prediction for 2013. It will continue to be very busy for me. There’s a lot of cool stuff going on right now. I’m very proud of my role in SolidWorks 2013, eDrawings for iPad, and eDrawing Pro for iPad; not to mention all the new stuff planned for 2013. Keep an eye out at SolidWorks World 2013.

Senseless Sunday: Rolling space wax

The inability to roll your tongue is a genetic trait that may involve more than one gene.¹
American pronunciation of tt and dd in words like letter and bladder make the same tongue movement and similar sound as the rolled Spanish “r”.
A person in orbit around the earth gets taller while in orbit.
Sahara Desert is growing about 1/2 mile southward per year.
Before an official name was chosen in Mandarin Chinese, one of many transliterations of the name Coca Cola was “bite the wax tadpole.” Another was “female horse fastened with wax”. Current official transliterate trademark is made up of the characters of K’o K’ou K’o Lê which translate as “to all the mouth to be able to rejoice”.²

Sometimes it’s the little things or Freedom to zoom around (New in SolidWorks 2013)

This entry is part 5 of 12 in the series New in SolidWorks 2013

SolidWorks had an interesting and small limitation for a long time. If you were editing an annotation note in the graphics area of your drawing (by double-clicking on it), you couldn’t use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out around the document. Sure, you had access to increase and decrease zoom level using other means, but that would be focused on the center of the screen in both directions. As such, linking your note to other annotations on other areas of your drawing usually involved planning one step ahead.

Starting with SolidWorks 2013, the mouse wheel now zooms in and out while you are editing an annotation note in drawings. For example, if you are creating your general drawing notes and wish to add a link to a dimension in a drawing view at the other end of the drawing sheet, you can now simply zoom out with the mouse wheel, move the mouse cursor to the dimension and click it, then use the mouse and wheel to zoom back to focus the screen around the general notes while you are still typing.

Another use may be if your annotation note is not yet set to wordwrap and text is extending off the screen. You can now quickly zoom out to see all of the text and set the note’s bounding box so that it wordwraps, then zoom back in to continue your edits.

This is going to be one of those little things that you won’t even notice when you use it. You’ll prolly won’t think twice about it, acting as though this was the way it has always worked.