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.

Senseless Sunday: stop the numbers!

Adding 10 inches to 6 millimeters equals exactly 26 centimeters (10 in + 6mm = 26cm).

Tautonyms is the word for scientific names where the genus and species are the same.

Taxi is spelled exactly the same in English, French, German, Swedish, Portuguese, and Dutch.

Mexico uses the Spanish word alto on stop signs; Spain uses the word stop.

Don’t ask a quantum physicist to define the time length for a jiffy. You might get a long answer.

Rotating a Drawing View

Sometimes one need to show a rotated view in the drawing. If is available in the standard view, once can simply place it as desired. If there is no view as required, one may go to part or assembly and create a new view orientation and then use that in the drawing. To avoid that one can simply rotate the drawing view as required.

1. Click on the view or select the view you want to rotate.

2. Click on Rotate View on the heads up tool bar or standard tool bar.

3. You’ll now see a Rotate Drawing View pop up window.

4. Fill in the desired angle value (I have used 90°). You can also key in a negative value.

5. Once you have keyed in the desired value, click on Apply and view will be rotated.

6. Then click on close to exit the command and you’ll have a rotated view.

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.

SolidWorks World 2011 Twitter feed

I tried to have a twitter feed on SolidWorks Legion for SolidWorks World 2010 back in 2009. That didn’t turn out well for various reasons. Well, I’m going it a try again. I’ve copied the twitter feed (Yahoo! Pipes) that appears at SolidWorks World Connent. It’s modified to include both hashtags #SWW11 and #SolidWorks. It is currently up and running on the right side menu. If all goes well, I’ll have this twitter feed up until after SolidWorks World 2011 next year.