SolidWorks Legion

What’s New in Solidworks 2012: Search Commands

One more notable What’s New item from SolidWorks 2012 is the new Search Commands tool. Search Commands in the Search corner that allows you to quickly find a command by typing its name.

Simply start typing a common name in the Search Commands field and you will be immediately presented with possible matching commands. Not only that, if you click on the eye-glasses next to the command name, SolidWorks will automatically take you on a step-by-step path to the location of the command within the menu or toolbar interface.

But there’s more.

When searching for a command:

Click and hold on command from dropdown.
Drag the command to any visible toolbar or CommandManager.
Release mouse button to drop command at that location.

That’s right, Search Commands allows you to quickly add a found command to any toolbar within your user interface so you can keep at a favorite location for future use.

The customization doesn’t stop there. Multiple-letter shortcuts can be added to Search Commands! This can be done at Tools pulldown>Customize…>Keyboard tab in the Search Shortcut column.

As a bonus to even all of that, Search Commands is automatically accessible when the you strike the “S” key to bring up the Shortcut Bar. Whenever the Shortcut Bar is up, you can just start typing! Your entry appears in the Search Commands field and automatically initiates your command search.

This new tool helps new and occasional users find commands that they may never have used before or may have forgotten about because they don’t use the SolidWorks every day. Additionally, it can help experience users find commands on unfamiliar workstations, since many users like to customize toolbar layouts.

Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs speaks at SolidWorks World 2012

One of my favorite shows on TV is Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe. Even though the keynote speaker was announced ahead of SolidWorks World 2012 (Tony Fadell), there was still a surprize guest speaker! Can you guess who (as if you didn’t already know): Mike Rowe.

Mike Rowe is a down to Earth kind of guy that has a passion to honor the men and women who do the jobs that the rest of us are thankful we don’t have to do. Rowe spoke about wanting to bring white collar and blue collar trades together. Though there is value in having degrees (of which he has one in Communications), he states that our society is too focused on that. In particular, he does Dirty Jobs to honor his Grandfather, Carl, who was a plummer and mechanic. With all the unemployment, there doesn’t seem to be enough people to fill jobs like plummers and electricians. A very good article covers details of his talk on Graphics Speak

He talked about mikeroweWORKS, built by the fans of Dirty Jobs, which seeks to help close the skills gap and link up tradesmen. His mission statement says it better than I ever could.

Meeting Mike Rowe

When travelling across country late last year with my wife, I discovered a section of our hotel store at the Grand Canyon that was dedicated to Dirty Jobs. There was a foam board cut out of Mike Rowe’s image. To joke with my wife, who never found her way into the store, I took a photo of me with the 2D cut out.

In a bit of irony, I actually did get a chance to meet Mike Rowe at SolidWorks World 2012, and yes, he gracitiously took his photo with me. Can you tell which is the real Mike Rowe?

SolidWorks World 2012 announces enhancements for 2013

Briefly, here are the announced enhancements planned for Solidworks 2013. (As noted by Fielder Hiss, other enhancements are also planned.)

– Show Hidden Bodies in Parts

– Assembly Performance Offender

– eDrawings Markup Import

– Quick Section Views

– Revision Cloud tool

– Snapshots in and Doc

– Bounding Box Cut-List Properties

– 3DVIA Composer- new support for multiple cameras

– Quick Pick Document Type-for filter files

– Envelope Enhancements

– Insert Multiple Parts all at once

– Multiple Exploded Views

– Rotate Exploded Part

– Favorites Folder

– Plastic Boss Mount Control

– Cosmetic Thread and Dowel Holes

– Surface Intersect to add and remove materials

– Extrude Multiple Thin Contours

– Equation Entry to enter equations in any property

– Vary Pattern Dimensions

– Previous Release Interoperability (can open 2013 in 2012 as long as running SP5)

– EPDM- collaborate with others

– DraftSight- EPDM Checkout and Copy Sketches

SolidWorks World 2012 Top Ten Enhancement Requests

In a tradition of SolidWorks World, there is a vote for the top ten enhancement requests for SolidWorks. This year’s list varies a bit from previous a bit more than normal. There’s a couple reasons.

First, several items from last year’s top ten was actually included in the next release (some even announced at the show). Here’s the completed and planned items from last year’s list:

SolidWorks should cleanly uninstall itself (Done in the same year)
Freeze Features (Done in the same year)
Enhanced Equations Input & Editing & Linking (Done in 2012 and added abilities planned for 2013.)
File compatibility between versions (Announcement some ability for this is planned for 2013.)

Item number 9 from last year was to keep the Ideas area of the forum open for year around voting. It should be noted that this isn’t actually a request to improve SolidWorks, but regarding the process to provide input for how to improve it. It is essentially a vote for the voting process. Technically, voting for enhancements is available year around via the Enhancement Requests area in the Customer Portal. The Idea voting system is something fun just for SolidWorks World that allows SolidWorks to have the opportunity to take a yearly snapshot of customer needs.

Second, the voting system for Ideas worked a bit different this year. In previous years, voting and submission of ideas was mingled. This meant that ideas that where submitted early naturally received more votes. This year levelled the playing field. All ideas where first collected in the first phase, then voted upon during the second phase. Ideas that may have been hidden in previous years now got a chance to be noticed.

SolidWorks World 2012 Top Ten Enhancement Requests

#10- Thread creation wizard
#9- Add lock rotation option to cylindrical
#8- Escape key should immediately return control of the interface (similar to request from last year)
#7- Dimensions should stay where you place them
#6- Ability to control a plane’s front and back side orientation
#5- Reduce the bounding box of drawing views to visible components only
#4- Address the shaded with edges bleed thru issue
#3- Don’t delete your children, dangle them instead (similar to request from SolidWorks World 2010’s list)
#2- Mass properties should include the option to automatically put a point a the center of gravity
#1- Start using more CPU cores whenever its possible (similar to request from SolidWorks World 2010’s list)

Firsts and lasts and repeats of SolidWorks World 2012

SolidWorks World 2012 saw some firsts and some lasts. Attendance peak was just shy of 6000, first time attendance reached that level. Attendance of the CSWP-CSWE Event was well over 800, also a first. Yet, there’s a last too. This was the last time the event is for CSWP attendees.

Next year, the special event will only be for CSWEs. In part, this is in recognition of the success of the CSWP program, where having the Core certification is becoming the norm. It is also meant to honor the new status of the CSWE.

This is also my first SolidWorks World as an employee. This means I was very busy with the business of…well, I was working. This was the reason for my lack of posting articles during the conference. As mentioned previously, I did frequently update the SolidWorks World 2012 flickr group and the hashtag #sww12 on Twitter.

Along with some first and lasts, there are also some repeats. San Diego was again a great host city, even covering the conference on a local news station. We again had an awesome Gaslamp Block Party as the Special Event. The food was much better this time around.

Birds-of-a-feature is where people of similar interests can enjoy their meals together and have interesting discussions. There’s been some experimenting with the format of this idea in recent years. This year, Birds-of-a-feature was returned to the Breakfast and Lunch room, where it seems to work well. It is no longer limited to just one day, nor just to lunchtime.

The keynote speaker, Tony Fadell (billed at the inventor of the iPod), was announced just ahead of the conference. Yet, SolidWorks World still managed to have a worthy surprize speaker, Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs!

When looking through the Conference Notebook and Show Program, I discovered that the list of Breakout Sessions started with one of my presentations, Advanced Customization Techniques in SolidWorks within the CAD Admin category. Ironically, this session was scheduled in the last timeslot of the conference, on Wednesday at 2:45pm. Of course, there were 214 total sessions spread across 11 timeslots. I’m not 100% sure, but I believe that’s also a record.

SolidWorks World 2012 prelude (after the fact)

With my new role at SolidWorks, my time at SolidWorks World 2012 was spent working. As such, my hobbie (this website), was not updated during the conference. I had hoped for a chance to post at least a couple of updates during the conference.

I wasn’t fully out of commission though. There are many tweets and flickr updates from me during the conference. Though I made a few Facebook updates, most of these where via Twitter; so it almost goes without saying that Google+ didn’t get updated.

Also, I forget my camera, so all of my photos where with my phone. Fortunately, its camera isn’t half bad.

More to come.