Category: News

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.

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.

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:

  1. Click and hold on command from dropdown.
  2. Drag the command to any visible toolbar or CommandManager.
  3. 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?

 

User Group meeting last evening

Hari Padmanabhan and myself presented at the Center Massachusetts and Northern Connecticut SolidWorks Users Group (CMNC-SWUG) yesterday evening.  The meeting was very well attended.   It’s prolly the largest user group meeting I’ve seen.  However, from what I understand, this is par for the course for this region.

Hari gave a very detailed presentation on SolidWorks Animation.  He demonstrated functionality on solid models of real-life toys that he had also brought in.  He  also did a great job of explaining the differences between the three modes within Animation, called Animation (simple point to point movement), Basic Motion (game engine physics) and Motion Analysis (complex physics model).

My own presentation covered DimXpert and TolAnalyst.  DimXpert is one of those capabilities that seems to be under utilized because people are simply unfamiliar with it.  It is a powerful and fairly easy to use tool.  It’s not a whole lot different than dimensioning a drawing, except that DimXpert dimensions and tolerances actually have a fundamental understanding of what they are controlling.

Technically, CMNC-SWUG is my hometown user group, so I’ll be looking forward to their further events.

SolidWorks World 2012 on LinkedIn (show peers that you are attending)

If you don’t have a LinkedIn account, you might consider creating one.  LinkedIn is a great tool to connect with peers, potential employers/employees, consultants, and display your career information in an interactive manner on your own terms.  If you already have an account on LinkedIn and you are attending SolidWorks World 2012, then it may be beneficial to goto the SolidWorks World 2012 event page on LinkedIn to state your attending status.  Showing others that you are attending SolidWorks World highlights that you are participating in an event that potentially expands your skill set (see SWW12 Justification Letter).  A side benefit is that this page provides  an additional outlet to connect with other attendees to build up your contacts.

As of right now, several events have been set up on LinkedIn for SolidWorks World 2012.  Feel free to join the others, however, I recommend joining the event page created by Matthew West, DS SolidWorks Social Media Manager.