Due to priorities, there is no SolidWorks World 2013 app for smartphones. Even still, there is an interactive floor plan link available for the Partner Pavilion. I am able to use most of the functionality of the link on my Android 4.0 smartphone. Deepak Gupta has a quick review of the SolidWorks World 2013 floor plan link in his article:
A regular fixture at SolidWorks World each year is the CAD Managers Bootcamp. This is a great presentation on how to get the most out SolidWorks from the CAD Manager’s perspective. Richard Doyle gives a brief history of this event on his blog and discusses what to expect when you attend this year. The bootcamp is held the day before SolidWorks World, so you’ll need to arrive a little early in order to attend.
In this special edition of Senseless Sunday, we learn that plans to build a Death Star will not happen under the current U.S. Administration. On We The People, when a petition reaches 25K votes, the White House issues a formal response. The petition to build a Death Star was politely rejected by the White House recently. In short, the White House doesn’t support the costs, nor do they support blowing up planets.
As we lead into SolidWorks World 2013, a land of geekdom if there ever was one, an interesting meme is making its rounds on the Internet. There seems to be a bunch of hoopla about “fake geek girls”. What’s a fake geek girl? Apparently Urban Dictionary doesn’t have an entry for it yet (as of today, anyway). Umm, I did find a definition at some site called Geek Feminism Weekly (whatever that’s supposed to mean…kinda sounds like random words thrown together that only vaguely represent what it really is, similar to California Pizza Kitchen.) Anyway, their definition for fake geek girl is:
Fake geek girls – allegedly women who show up at geek events, possibly while hot, with not enough geek cred for you.
This all seems to have started with an article on Forbes (Really, Forbes? Yes, Forbes.) called Dear Fake Geek Girls: Please Go Away. In this article, the author talks about being a “geeky girl” growing up and how she now sees “pretentious females” now posing as geeks when they haven’t put the time in to justify the claim.
What’s with all the hate? In fact, why are girls singled out as being fake geeks (especially by other woman) for being posers? I think a commenter on a recent article by @Mikeynerd says it well (Fake Geek Girls),
The Fake Geek Girl thing bugs me. Because I do feel there is an underlying sexism at play.
If someone is a poser, then it doesn’t matter if they are a woman or man. But, is it even bad to be a poser? Isn’t a poser just someone whose trying to figure out what everyone else already knows? Aren’t they really an outcast too? As outcasts trying to fit it, doesn’t that make them more geeky (since being a social outcast is technically a major component of geekdom)? The answers to this series of rhetorical questions are as follows: no, yes, yes, and yes.
I’m going to go out on a limb to reveal information about SolidWorks World 2013 ahead of time. Don’t tell Dassault Systemes that I’m revealing this secret to you! The secret: men will outnumber women at SolidWorks World 2013. Not by a little, but by a lot! I’m going to bet that most woman who attend this conference with a full pass are as geeky if not more so than most of the men who attend. In fact, many of the men who attend this conference are prolly fake geek dudes by comparison. But, that’s all OK! We are all there to interact, learn, share, teach, and connect in a mutually supportive (and sometimes fun and exciting) environment to gain a higher level of geekdom (value).
There’s been a long trail of discussions on the topic of adding watermarks to SolidWorks drawings. For one reason or another, watermarks are seen by some as necessary in drawings. The starting point of the conversion can be roughly traced back to the SolidWorks Forum in 2006. In December 2007, I did one article that incompletely addressed the need. If you just needed text to show up on your sheet format, you can review the first article.
Then, a question was asked at the first Stump the Chumps presentation at SolidWorks World 2008 about how to add watermarks to drawings. No answer was given at that presentation (the chumps where stumped).
Soon after SolidWorks World 2008, Ben Eadie (one of the stumped chumps) found an About SolidWorks article that discussed various aspects of this topic. (The article appears to have been maintained/updated since then.) Around that time, I also wrote a detailed article about how to link your custom properties to your watermark and provided a trick to get the watermark note to appear underneath elements on the drawing sheet. Linking custom properties to the watermark allows the watermark value to be controlled by Enterprise PDM workflows.
OK, so what was the trick to getting notes to appear underneath drawing elements? If you created a block of an annotation note on your sheet format, that note block will appear under your drawing (without obscuring drawing content).
In Solidworks 2013, you no longer need to use that trick to get your sheet format note to appear underneath drawing elements. There is now a command that resides in the right-click menu for each annotation note on the sheet format called “Display Note Behind Sheet”. When checked, the note is placed underneath drawing view elements on the drawing sheet, including other annotations, dimensions and model geometry in both HLR/HLV and shaded modes.
Display Note Behind Sheet is a checkmarked command in the
right-click menu for any annotation note on the sheet format.
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With the checkmark set on the note in sheet format, the
note appears under all drawing view elements.
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Uncheckmarking the option will apply standard ordering
of drawing elements, with geometry obsured by
the note.
Over the past few weeks, SolidWorks Blog has been profiling several Partners that will be exhibiting at SolidWorks World 2013. There is a lot of detailed information shared about each in the following recent articles.
There’s plenty more profiles to explore on SolidWorks Blog as well, such as HP, Striker Systems and several others that have been profiled since October 2012.
