In honor of Fenway Park’s 100th anniversary, it was modelled and 3d printed

Objet and Rob Rodriguez teamed up recently to produce a 3D model and a 3D print of the famous Fenway Park in honor of its 100th anniversary.  Rodriguez talks about this challenging task in a recent posting on his blog, Axis Cad Solutions Blog,

I was approached by Objet to create a solid model of Fenway Park for the centennial celebration (1912-2012). …Having lived in New England all my life, being a Sox’s fan and knowing that Fenway was/is an iconic part of baseball history I’d [couldn’t] say, “no”.

I’m not a Red Sox fan, but I can see the love New Englanders have for their team and the Fenway Park venue.  For the past month, there’s been nonstop chatter about Fenway Park and the idea that this is a “building” year for the Red Sox team.

In Rodriguez’ article, you’ll find an eDrawings version of the model (very cool), plus links to Objet’s article about the 3D printing of the park.

Resource: Guide to submitting Enhancment Requests for SolidWorks

I wrote up an article on the SolidWorks Blog a couple weeks ago.  It can be used as a resource to guide users to the area where they can submit their requests to improve SolidWorks.  The article is called Need SolidWorks to do more?  The article covers how to submit bugs and enhancement reqeusts.

Briefly, users should submit bugs to VAR.  A VAR can quickly determine if the bug is known or unknown and how best to address it.

Requests for new functionatality in SolidWorks (known as Enhancement Requests) may be submitted through the Customer Portal on the SolidWorks website.  However, always check to see if someone already has submitted a similar request, so you can vote for theirs instead.

If your request is for new functionality in SolidWorks, the first place to search is the Knowledge Base in the Customer Portal.  The Knowledge Base has quick how-to instructions.  It also has a list of outstanding enhancement requests from other customers.

Anyway, I invite you to check out the article.  It thoroughly covers the submission process.

 

SolidWorks 2012: Reuse Letters from Deleted Views

In the past, SolidWorks would track the letters used in Section Views, Detail Views and Auxiliary Views on drawings. If one of these views was deleted, for whatever reason, it’s letter would no longer appear on the drawing when new views were created. The only automatic method to get the letters to be reused would be to reset the starting letter for the whole drawing. What many users ended up doing was just manually entering letters for new drawing views after one was deleted.

In SolidWorks 2012, a new setting was added that allows you to automatically reuse letters from views that have been deleted.  This setting is in Tools pulldown > Options… > System Options tab > Drawings heading.  Near the bottom, find Reuse view letter from deleted auxiliary, detail, and section views.  Add a check to its box and OK.  The setting’s name is a bit long, but clearly stated.

So, now when a view is deleted, it’s letter will automatically appear for the next Section View, Detail View or Auxiliary View.

 

Cool demonstration of the full scale of the Universe

The full scale of the Universe traverses the sizes as small as one Planck Length (hypothetically the size of quantum strings, branes and foam), all the way up to the distance to the farthest galaxies (and a bit beyond).  A project called “The Scale of the Universe 2” by Cary Huang helps put all of ths into perspective.  Differences in sizes between different elements of the world around us is a bit surprizing.  In particular, check out the size comparison between an ant and the largest bacteria.

 

The web tool doesn’t just show examples at each scale.  It also provides a brief summary or explanation of every object when you click on it.

 

SolidWorks World 2012 Proceedings site is now available ( #fb )

SolidWorks World 2012 presentations are now available for download or viewing on the preceedings website.  Visit http://www.solidworks.com/sww/proceedings/ to access the proceedings information.

Also available there are videos of the General Sessions, Partner Pavilion information and some photos.