Welcome to the brand new look

Welcome to the brand new look for the SolidWorks Legion website (http://www.fcsuper.com/swblog).  The website is now upgraded to the latest WordPress version 2.8.5.  This allows for more powerful functionality.  I finally have polls that don’t suck!!!

Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.

Please explore the site.  Contact us if there are any funny things that happen with the site during your visit here.  Many of the previous posts where formatted for the old website layout.  Due to this, they may appear a little messy.  I’ll be working to clean these up over time.  The old version of WordPress used to hide double spacing between sentences (for whatever reason).  The current version does not.  Apparently, as part of this upgrade, I get a bunch of extra symbols where the old version hide those spaces.  So, if you see a funny A after every sentence in an older post, just ignore it.

Thank you Jennifer Szabo for again rescueing me from certain calamity.

SolidWorks Labs: Tagger

SolidWorks LabSolidWorks LabThe ability to tag features within a solid model was added with the release of SolidWorks 2008.  This sometimes under-utilized capability may go unnoticed by many.  After all, the function to add tags is a tiny little icon in the far right corner of the status bar.  SolidWorks Labs has developed an improved user interface for tagging in the form of an add-in called Tagger.   Within its own task pane, it allows the user to see all of the tags used within the open SolidWorks document.  Users can even select specific tags as favorites that can be easily applied to a feature at any time.  To use the tags, simply click on the term in the Tagger task pane.  This will highlight the the associated features within the FeatureManager.  This add-in from SoildWorks Labs adds new functionality that makes tags all the more useful.

SolidWorks World 2010 Agenda

Agenda header

The preliminary agenda is now posted for SolidWorks World 2010 on the SolidWorks website.  The agenda is subject to change, of course.  That usually means that more breakout sessions may be added.

If justification for attendance is still needed, the agenda itself can serve as an excellent resource.  One way to look at SolidWorks World is that it is an opportunity to attend up to twelve educational classes.  At $995, that works out to be just under $83 per session.  I’ve easily paid over $800 a day for some industry seminars.  SolidWorks World is a big bargain.

But wait, there’s more!  Attendees also get to explore a large trade show (Partner Pavilion) with hundreds of exhibitors.  Some trade shows are free, but more technical ones tend to charge some sort of nominal fee.  At SolidWorks World, it’s included as part of the package.

Agenda links

CAD Administration
Data Management
Design Automation
Design Validation
Education
Modeling Essentials
Productivity Tools
Customer Success/Designing Better Products
Design Communication

Coming soon in November, attendees will be able to pick their session preferences.  Spots are not guaranteed for regular breakout sessions even with advanced session preference selection.  However, it’s important to pick preferences soon, especially for hands-on sessions which usually fill up fast.

13 and 13 (likes and dislikes in co-worker behavior)

ThomasNet has a blog.   Apparently, it’s been running in one fashion or another since 2000.   Of course, back then maybe they didn’t label it as a blog, but that’s really what it is.   There’s a couple of articles that caught my attention recently.

13 types of irritating coworkers

13 Types of coworkers we like

In these articles, David R. Butcher explores the best and worst traits in our coworkers (and ourselves) at work.

His likes and dislikes may seem a bit arbitrary.   He complains about the suck-ups in the first article, but lauds the jokers in his second.   He makes the obvious observations regarding the positive coworker; yet in a sense of irony, he complains about the complainers.   It’s a fairly entertaining read.

Funny marketing

It a rather blatant attempt to promote CoCreate, PTC sends out something that appears to be a fake survey via email every once in awhile.  The email invites the reader to try out a “self-qualification” test on whether their team’s design style is parametric or explicit.  The test asks such questions as “within the selected concept design, a broad range of predictable and structured changes can be driven quickly and easily to derive new designs” (choose one in a range of Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree).

The funny thing with this test, of course, is that regardless to one’s responses, the result is always the same.  A screen will pop up declaring “Explicit Modeling is right for you.”  It has links to find out about and download CoCreate.  Even if I wasn’t my jaded self, this marketing approach would rub me the wrong way.  It’s just cheezy, so I’m briefly ranting about it.

Point Locations (Virtual Sharps)

The names for dimensioning methods within ASME Y14.5-2009 often do not match the common names.  For example, what most of us call ordinate dimensioning is officially labelled as rectangular coordinate dimensioning.  This can make finding information about certain dimensioning methods hard to find within the standard.

One dimensioning method that is particularly difficult to find is point location.  A point location is where a point is located by the intersection of extension lines only.  The method is known by so many other names.

  • theoretical sharp corner
  • theoretical corner
  • theoretical sharp
  • apex
  • intersectVirtual Sharp optoins
  • intersection
  • intersection point
  • imaginary point
  • virtual sharp
  • and likely others as well

SolidWorks uses the term virtual sharp.  SolidWorks offers a list of options for the delineation of virtual sharp (i.e., point location), which is found at Tools pulldown>Options...>Document Properties tab>Dimensions heading>Virtual Sharps subheading.  The only method supported by ASME Y14.5-2009 is the use of intersecting extension lines from two surfaces; so called witness in SolidWorks.

The standard does not require any other identifier or labelling.  Yet many of us do feel compelled to add some sort of label to the dimension, using one of the above terms or their initials.  A label does add clarity, particularly when the scale of a view makes display of a point location hard to read.

Point location

I covered this topic once before from a slightly different perspective in this article: Virtual Sharps.  That article includes instructions on how to create a virtual sharp in SolidWorks drawings.