Presentations at SOLIDWORKS World 2017

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Normally, members of the Product Definition team at DS SolidWorks Corp give two presentations at each SOLIDWORKS World.  Presentations can be either Hands-on or Breakout.  Hands-on sessions involve attendee participation at desktop computers provided for the conference.  Attendees typically follow and repeat steps shown by the presenter.  Breakout sessions are essentially talks with demonstrations of functionality in SOLIDWORKS products.

Sometimes our team gives extra presentations.  There are cases where our hands-on sessions are very popular, so we add an extra hands-on session of the same material for the overflow.  Other times, we give the multiple breakout sessions on various topics.

My Presentations

At SOLIDWORKS World 2017, I gave three presentations and a panel discussion.  It almost never fails that I give a presentation right after the General Session on Monday of the conference.  This year, my Monday presentation was a hands-on session about new functionality that’s been added to SOLIDWORKS over the past 5 years.  The session was Streamline Drawing Creation with Newer SOLIDWORKS Drawing Tools.  In this session, attendees got to try out newer drawing tools that they may have missed before, such as

  • User Interface improvements
  • Drawing Zones, Location Label and Automatic Border tool
  • All uppercase setting for notes
  • Angle Dimension enhancements
  • Model Break View
  • Balloon improvements and more

If you’d like to check out this session’s materials, please feel free to download:

Streamline Drawing Creation with Newer SOLIDWORKS Drawing Tools (6MB+)

On Tuesday, I gave two breakout sessions.  The first one was planned and well-prepared about MBD called Model-Based Definition using SOLIDWORKS MBD.  This session covered very general overview of  MBD, ways to implement settings in SOLIDWORKS for the best MBD experience, SOLIDWORKS MBD tools (3D Views, 3D PDF Publisher, etc), and DimXpert.  A lot of people attended this session.  Though, I didn’t pack the house to the wall.

Filling in the room to talk about MBD

The Powerpoint for this session is downloadable here (SOLIDWORKS files not included):

Model Base Definition using SolidWorks-2017 (4MB)

The second Tuesday breakout session,  I presented on BOM’s, called Building SOLIDWORKS BOMs.  Due to a cancellation by the original speaker, I had to step to not only cover the empty slot in the schedule, but also talk about BOMs without a prepared Powerpoint slide deck or file set.  Since there were no materials for me to work from, I had to skip the Tuesday General Session to give myself time to pull together a session plan and file set.  Given the circumstances, I believe I did well.  I was able to cover many basics about BOMs, and also more advanced capabilities.

  • BOM table display options
  • BOM Type (Top Level, Parts Only and Indented)
  • Options for displaying configurations of the same part
  • Keep Missing Item settings
  • BOM Anchor
  • BOM Template
  • Virtual Parts
  • Document Properties
  • Sorting
  • etc.

Unfortunately, because the session was off-the-cuff, there is no Powerpoint outline to provide.  The session was recorded, so it should be available as a video while the SOLIDWORKS Proceedings are available (soon).

On Wednesday, I was part of the panel discussion about MBD.  Five speakers participated in an engagement with attendees who are interested in MBD.  This session was called SOLIDWORKS World 2017 MBD Learning Path Panel Discussion.  Attendees asked about many MBD related topics, including STEP, real world implications, specific use cases, vendor adoption, etc.

My unorganized #SOLIDWORKS User Group tour – #swugn

This year, I’ve been on a kind of unorganized SOLIDWORKS User Group tour.  I’ve presented at user groups in Tulsa, OK, Denver, CO and Seattle, WA.  The diversity of meeting locations never ceases to surprize me: hotel conference rooms, high school machine shops, college meeting rooms, libraries.  BTW, I’m not pictured in any of the photos below, as I was the one who took these photos of other speakers at these events.

In Tulsa and Denver, I presented on Drawing Views.  As simple as this topic may seem for many, even experienced users have told me they learn something new when I talk about Drawing Views.

In Seattle, I presented on SOLIDWORKS drawing functionality that has been added since SOLIDWORKS 2013.  Even though most of the capabilities I discussed were available since SOLIDWORKS 2014 and 2015, even seasoned users of SOLIDWORKS 2016 jumped up with excitement as they found out about “new” functionality.

Tulsa SOLIDWORKS User Group

Tusla, OK


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Northern Denver, CO


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Southern Denver, CO


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Seattle, WA

Classic drawing interpretation problem

There’s a classic problem with drawings:  interpretation.   Without enough information, there is always some sort of ambiguity.  Let’s take at a classic interpretation problem for example.

What is the shape of the part being described by this drawing (below)?  Note that Hidden Line Visible is turned on for both the Front and Top views.

Classic drawing interpretation problem

Because HLV is on, this cannot be a sheet metal bracket, since you’d be able to see the sheet metal wall as hidden lines in both views.

 

Not the solution

So, can you model this part?  Well, I’m not going to make you wait for the solution.  If you want to cheat to see the solution modelled in SOLIDWORKS, feel free to download it herewoodblockproblem (SW2015).

Resellers are already making great videos about SOLIDWORKS 2016 new functions

This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series New in SOLIDWORKS 2016

This morning, I started looking around Youtube to see what’s already popped up for SOLIDWORKS 2016 What’s New.  There is already several great videos by several resellers.  Here’s a few for Mate Controller, Foreshorten Dimensions and DimXpert.