News Archives - Page 20 of 52 - SolidWorks Legion

3Dconnexion 3D Mice now support Vectorworks 2011

It seems that I cannot have too many technical articles on SolidWorks Legion without also having straightforward product announcements in the mix. I’ll have a couple of articles later this week that cover a topic I found to be interesting regarding glass standards by Paul Bieber. For now, here is a product announcement from 3Dconnexion.

3Dconnexion announcements

3Dconnexion has announced that their full line of 3D mice now support 2D/3D AEC CAD design software. By full line, I assume they are talking about currently supported 3D mice, such as the SpaceNavigator and SpacePilot. Anyway, 3Dconnexion claims the following.

3D mice further enable professionals to draft any shape, on any plane, and in any view in an intuitive manner that augments the simplified and unified design experience offered in Vectorworks 2011.

When working in the true 3D modeling environment in Vectorworks 2011, 3Dconnexion 3D mice provide a level of design interaction that is unattainable with a traditional mouse and keyboard.

My own experience with 3Dconnexion

It should be noted, as a matter of disclosure, that 3Dconnexion did give me a SpacePilot PRO back in 2008. They did so with no strings attached. I can say whatever I want about the device (and I have). In general, I have found the device indispensable. It took time to become that valuable. However, I must admit, when I find myself reaching for a 3D mice at someone else’s workstation and its not there, I know just how valuable the SpacePilot PRO is to me.

In other 3Dconnexion news

One more item for the day. 3Dconnexion has a design challenge. The purpose of this challenge is allow users to show off their 3D skills. This challenge is also promoting the fact that 3Dconnexion has a Facebook page. For more information, check out their website.

3DVIA goes 3D

Last week, Dassault Systemes announced that the free download of the new 3DVIA Studio development environment now includes drag and drop stereoscopic 3D. They state that this allows any user of the 3DVIA Studio to quickly create a “3D experience”, not only for 3D monitors and TVs, but also for non-stereoscopic screens using the traditional red-blue glasses.

They claim the new functionality in their free 3DVIA Studio application will help developers and “average customers”. 3DVIA Studio comes with tutorials that can get users started with this functionality within minutes.

I’ve personally not dabbled with the stereoscopic toys in 3DVIA Studio yet. I did try out 3DVIA Studio recently, and I’m looking forward to playing around with it more. For now, here’s a quick introductory video about the new fucntionality.

Draftsight for Mac now available: Free 2D CAD

DraftSight for Mac (a new CAD .dwg editor) is now available for download! It is a beta release, so there is still room for improvement (not that I know what needs improving on the Mac version). If you are a Mac user who’s interested in DraftSight, please join the DraftSight.com community to get ideas or provide your suggestions.

News of the day

There’s a couple of CAD industry press releases that came to me last week from Dassault Systemes. I decided to experiment a bit with WordPress by providing both press releases at the same time in a dual column format. Since this article is more of an experiment in WordPress formatting than an actual attempt to perpetuate announcements, I’m going to be lazy by doing something I almost never do. I’m going to post the nearly raw press releases (except for the addition of some images from Mike Puckett to help illustrate the DS HQ announcement). I know, I know, but either one of these press releases will be of interest to someone, so I don’t necessarily feel completely guilty. You are free to read one or both (or none), as you please. (If you are interested in seeing another point of view covering the DS HQ move, check out this article from “The Real Reporter“.)

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3DVIA Composer

Here’s an official video about improvements to 3DVIA Composer this year. If you use SolidWorks, pay special attention to Magnet Lines. There’s a buzz building to get that functionality included in SolidWorks at some point.

SolidWorks 2011: Auto Arrange Dimensions tool

There is a a set of new drawing functions in SolidWorks 2011 that’s catching a lot of attention. These are the Auto Arrange Dimensions tools which are built into the Dimension Palette. Using a thumb wheel and available options, the user may automatically space dimensions from smallest to largest, aligned and centered (where possible), spaced with the pre-set offset distances, adjusted to avoid overlapping, and staggered (where necessary). In short, these tools automatically space and align selected dimensions with very little effort.

Currently, SolidWorks 2010 does have auto spacing for dimensions, but this can sometimes be more of a hassle than a benefit. There’s a lot of potential with these new Auto Arrange Dimension tools. They may allow the user to save time while giving them direct control over dimension placement.

Auto Arrange Dimensions is reportedly so easy to use, if dimensions of an entire drawing are selected, they can be spaced and aligned at once using this tool.

If these tools work as well as promised, they can potentially save a lot of time when inserting or adding dimensions to drawings. I guess the only addition I’d ask for is an option to automatically select every dimension on the drawing with the click of the mouse button to allow an entire drawing to be aligned and spaced in one quick action.