SolidWorks World 2012: Things to do in San Diego (Updated)

Due to the relatively good weather in San Diego all year long, family attractions don’t have to close for the “winter”.  Here are some of the places you may wish to visit while in San Diego for SolidWorks World 2012.  Have fun with these ideas!

Attractions

Enjoying the town

  • San Diego’s Downtown – Creation of downtown areas for denizens has become an art form by its own right in California.  Practically every little town to big city has a developed downtown.  San Diego is no exception.
  • Seaport Villiage – Great place in the San Diego harbor for diner, explore shops and more.
  • Coronado Island – Beautiful area to explore, just over the bridge!
  • East Villiage – Up and coming area near Gaslamp.

Enjoying the area

  • San Diego’s wine country – though it may not be as nearly as developed as other wine regions in California, still might be worth the time to explore.
  • La Jolla Cove – Beautiful beach and cove.
  • Pacific Coast Highway – for those who may want to drive along the beautiful California coastline.  This could be a couple of hours to a couple of days, depending on how far you want to drive and how much you want to see.

Special thanks to Troy Peterson on the SolidWorks forums for many of these ideas.

**UPDATE**

Daniel Herzberg has created a nifty utility on Foursquare (you don’t need to be a member of Foursquare to see the link) that includes additional points of interest and a general map of their locations.

 

 

Rulers!

Although the status bar of the SolidWorks drawing mode always displays the X and Y coordinates of the location of the mouse cursor on the drawing sheet, sometimes the visual aid of a sheet ruler may provide additional help. 

SolidWorks drawing mode rules can be turned on at View pulldown>Rulers.

Once turned on, the rulers appear at the top and left edges of the drawing window.

The rulers also enhance the usefulness and feedback when the Grid is displayed. This is because the rulers provide constant confirmation as to the mouse cursor’s drawing location on the screen, no manner how far in the zoom level.

This makes keeping track of one’s position on the drawing sheet more intuitive, especially during sketching and using snap-to-grip functionality.

Control over various aspects of snapping and grid are available in Tools pulldown>Options…>Document Properties>Grid/Snap. 

Changes to grid increments are reflected in the rulers.

New in SolidWorks 2012: Improved placement of Section View Labels (Another one not mentioned in “What’s New”! )

In previous versions of SolidWorks, when you attempted to move the Section View letter by clicking on it and dragging, very strong soft snaps would often force the location of the letter to fall into one of two set locations around the Section View cutting plane line arrow.  The snaps seemed even stronger if you were zoomed out a bit.

In SolidWorks 2012, users now have more intuitive control over the the placement of a Section View letter when they wish to move it.   The two snap locations are not nearly so strong.  It is still very easy to place a letter at one of the two locations by dragging and hovering the letter over the arrow tip or the bend in the cutting plane line.  However, it is also much easier if you want to place the letter at a different location; particularly when you are zoomed out.

This improved functionality will help users that like their Section View letters to appear at alternative locations for style or maybe because of a very busy drawing with limited space.

Senseless Sunday: skin deep lunacy

  • The next leap year where Feburaury does not have a full moon is 25721.
  • The current definition of the term “Blue Moon” dates back to March 1946, in which Sky and Telescope magizine mistakenly misinterpreted the definition of the term from 1937 Maine Farmers’ Almanac.  “Blue Moon” originally referred to the third Full Moon in a season which has four Full Moons2. 
  • Atheists outnumber all but nine organized religions in the World.
  • The skin of a polar bear is black. Though the fur appears white, it’s actually clear.
  • More often, you will use more gas making a left turn than making a right turn.

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.

SolidWorks World 2012 Top Ten Voting is in full swing!

The annual vote for the top ten requested enhancements for SolidWorks World 2012 is in full swing right now.   The format for this year’s Top Ten changed from previous years.  Last year, some ideas didn’t get noticed if they were submitted late in the process.  As a result, they received fewer votes, not because they weren’t desired, but because they didn’t have as long as other ideas to gather votes.

For SolidWorks World 2012, the system is more fair.  All ideas where submitted prior to voting.  On January 3, 2012, voting was opened.  So far, the response has been great, with some surprizes.  If you haven’t done so since the 3rd and you have an active subscription, check out this year’s Top Ten list, and place your thumbs-up or thumps-down for new functions that you’d like to see added to SolidWorks.  It doesn’t take too long to go through the list, so I would actually encourage anyone to vote on as many items as is practical.