Category: News

Secret Spy Photos within SolidWorks Headquarters

Several fellow bloggers and I were recently fortunate enough to be taken on a tour of the SolidWorks headquarters in Concord, MA. Not many have the clearance for such an honor. (The last of such tours was conducted on April 1, 2005.) The onsite DNA analysis required samples that I now regret giving up. The lie-detector test took over 5 hours. After all that (and more that I will never speak of again), the tour started. They allowed me to take photos just as long as they were able to redact any secret information before I published them. Unfortunately, this meant that a great many photos simply got removed. Here’s what I am allowed to show you.

Secret Area 1

The only fact I’m able to share about this photo is that this is Secret Area 1.

Power Plug

I was told that this power outlet generates enough electricity to power 2 vacuums at the same time. The blanked-out areas adjacent to the outlet are ÞÐsΛ Θ♣É−‡Ñ for other purposes.

Skunk Works

I’m not allowed to say that this stair well leads 18 levels underground to Secret Area 5 where current tests are now being conducted on something called t-virus in a joint venture with Umbrella Corporation.

England rules!

Although SolidWorks Corporation is wholly owned by Dassault Systemes S.A. of France, there continues to be rumors of an English connection. I personally found no evidence of this.

Secret Area 7

This is Secret area 7. I’m not allowed to specifically mention the individual who is blocked out in this photo.

Processing Lab

This may or may not be a secret processing lab where much of the development of SolidWorks may or may not occur.

Pretty boring

This was the only photo that wasn’t redacted at all. Frankly, it’s just a chair. I’m sorry that I was only able to provide this boring photo in its original form.

SolidWorks headquarters

The visit to SolidWorks headquarters in Concord, MA has been very eventful.  This has been on busy trip.  The schedule has been full from each early morning to evening.  The SolidWorks bloggers definitely have a lot of material to work from in the up coming months.  There is a lot of detail on already available information, as well as a ton of info about what’s to come soon. One thing that is coming up that SolidWorks Corp is very proud is Sustainability and SustainabilityXpress.  There’s also a lot of exciting improvements to SolidWorks 2010 that make it worth a look when it comes out.  More to come, including “secret” photos of the SolidWorks operations.  😉  For now, I’m heading out to my long flight back home.

Lexington, MA

Lexington is a small community just outside of Boston on your way to Concord in Massachusetts.  It’s one of those places visitors may not expect to find themselves when coming to this grand state.  It has a quaint downtown with simple flare.  SolidWorks Corp (aka DS SolidWorks Corporation) has invited many of the SolidWorks bloggers to this locale for what looks to be an all-you-can-eat buffet of their product offerings in the Concord headquarters, with glimpses of what is to come for SolidWorks 2010.  This is my first visit to Concord, MA and to the SolidWorks Corp headquarters.  There’s a few returnees to the headquarters in our group of attendees.  Every attendee has been a SolidWorks Corp guest to press events in the past.  This event is technically not a press event (being just for SolidWorks bloggers); it is my first time I am a guest of SolidWorks Corp at an event outside of SolidWorks World.  I’m a excited about that and the prospect of being able to see the SolidWorks Corp headquarters.

The Answer to “Who is using 3D Mice?”

The results are in from my previously posted polls.  I have three results from two polls about who’s using 3D mice, and how they got them.  How did I get three results from 2 polls?

Well the first result of the polls is that I really dislike the polling site memedex.com.  I wish wp-polls would work, but it does not right now for my blog.  Oh well.

Ok, with regards to the second poll first, the question was “If you have a 3DConnexion 3D mouse, did you…?”

  • …buy it yourself (55 votes)
  • …get it through your company (49 votes)
  • …win it in a contest (14 votes)
  • …receive it as a gift from 3DConnexion (8 votes)
  • …steal it (3 votes)

So, it looks like most users either buy own 3d mouse, or their company bought it for them to use.  I am surprized at the number of people who have bought these devices for themselves.  I guess that says something about the usefulness of such devices.

Something that isn’t really a surprize, but worthy of mention is that 3 people actually admitted to stealing or otherwise obtaining one through some nefarious means.  I added this option to the poll almost as a joke, but I knew someone would come forward, so it was a legit option.  You 3 thieves!  ::shakes fist::  😉

“Do you use a 3D mouse with your 3D CAD application?”  The answers to this poll are skewed.  By a wide margin, responders stated they used 3d mice. This was kinda expected since the title of the article naturally drew in such users and likely precluded many of those not interested in 3D mice.  Regardless, here are the results.

  • Yes, everytime I use 3D CAD. (75 votes)
  • No, but I want to. (26 votes)
  • I have one, but I rarely use it, if at all. (21 votes)
  • No, and I don’t want to. (17 votes)
  • Yes, often or sometimes. (12 votes)
  • No, what’s a 3D mouse? (9 votes)

I think I know what the next poll will be.  I use my SpacePilot PRO with SolidWorks (and Google Earth).  With what applications are other people using their devices?

And the May Contest winner is…

The winner of the May Contest is Deepak Gupta! The contest was to see who could list the highest number of SolidWorks related forums not currently listed at Lorono’s SolidWorks Resources.  The contest itself generated over 70 comments, with about 65 or so submissions.  I am personally amazed by the total number of submissions. 

For his efforts, Deepak wins a CSWSP-FEA test.  From the SolidWorks website,

“The Certified SolidWorks Professional Simulation Specialist exam is designed to test an individual’s complete understanding of Simulation tools inside SolidWorks. Candidates who successfully pass this certification exam have demonstrated the ability to set up, run, and examine the results of various types of Simulation scenarios. They also have demonstrated the ability to interpret the various results available to them in SolidWorks Simulation.”

Best of luck to you, Deepak.  I’ll send you the info for taking your test by the end of the week.  I hope you pass with flying colors! 

Honorable mention goes to Frank Dijkstra.

The June Contest will be announced next week. Best of luck to everyone!

New type of SaveAsPDF macro

SolidWorks is able to save drawings and current model views as a PDF format file.  SaveAsPDF with Folder SelectionThere’s been a lot of macros written over the years that cut the process of saving as PDF down to as few steps as possible. One of the long standing requests for this type of macro (and many similar types of macros) is to allow the user to pick the save location. Just uploaded is a macro (SaveAsPDF with Folder Selection) that does just this, and simplifies the location selection process for default folders. This new macro also uses more modern API techniques to save the file (using modelext::saveas instead of model::saveas4).

This macro does many things that previous macros haven’t.  While allowing the user to establish a default save location folder, it also provides automatic alternative choices when the default is not available.  Yet, even with all of these, the user can still override automated selection and pick a new location.  It does all of this without the use of VB6 forms.

As with other macros that do similar tasks, this will work best when assigned to a keyboard shortcut or a toolbar icon.   Also, as with all SolidWorks macros, there is a chance it will not work “out-of-the-box”.  This is normally due to the fact that SolidWorks updates core reference libraries with each release.  If errors are encountered, simply re-reference to the libraries that are available to allow the macro to function.  More information about that is available in this previous article.