Category: SolidWorks World

SolidWorks World 2008 Day 3 (Jan 23) Breakout sessions

My first breakout session of the day was SolidWorks Sheet metal: Why do I do it like this or that?.  This session went into a lot of detail about sheet metal functions in SolidWorks.  There was discussion covering tears, closed corners, dimensioning preferences, K-factors, when to use normal cut, and the fact that all thicknesses on a sheet metal part need to be identical.  One good point was that closed corners work only when the flanges have the same parent feature.  Like all good sheet metal presentations, miter flanges where also discussed.  One problem I had with the presentation is that way too much time was spent on discussing creation of flat patterns.  When several attendees confronted the presenter with the fact that flat patterns are not often necessary for a designer to create, he argued the point without really understanding why the attendees contested it.  According to ASME Y14.5M-1994, the drawing represents the final product.  Adding intermediate steps (such as flat patterns) are unnecessary since the vendor is responsible for the final product represented on the drawing.  Besides that, most sheet metal shops are much better at determining K-factors and knowing their shop’s limitations than most designers.  I think more information could be packed into the presentation if less time is spent on flat patterning.

After lunch, I attended Leveraging the Design Tables and Configurations….  Many points where covered.  Here’s a few.  It is important to establish a good naming convention for configurations.  Effort must be taken to determine how the model will be represented (drawing, BOM, literature, etc).  Utilize folders in the Model Assembly.  Utilize formulae in the Design Table instead of equations area.  One good point was the suggestion to save backup copies of design tables outside of SolidWorks in Excel itself.

My final Breakout session of SolidWorks World 2008 was Demystifying PDMWorks Workgroup Triggers.  Although I’m not familiar with PDMWorks API, I did learn something about what is possible in PDMWorks.  Also, I learned about the setup required to utilize the triggers. 

I didn’t take many basic how-to Breakout sessions this year.  My main focus was on developing my skills in configuration, customization, more detailed how-to’s, and set up.  I made sure I attended several API related sessions.  Overall, I feel the experience was something that I would not want to miss.  I’m glad I had the opportunity be involved in this experience. 

SolidWorks World 2008 Day 3 (Jan 23) General Session

Several presentations stand out in my mind from the Wednesday General Session.  This was the session that really got down to the business of talking about the SolidWorks community and the future of the SolidWorks software.

Richard Doyle introduced the SWUGN regional leaders to the General Session.  I’m guessing this is the first time many people even heard of this group. This is an important group that is responsible for increasing the number of SolidWorks User Groups nationwide; and worldwide too.

SWUGN Leadership

Another memorable presentation was Engineers in Crisis comedy skit used to introduce us to many of the new functions and improvements that will appear in SolidWorks 2009.  The skit consisted of a supposed talk show host addressing many frustrations that CAD users (unnamedly SolidWorks users) experienced when using their CAD software.  The frustration was collectively referred to as PAS (Performance Addiction Syndrome).

Engineering in Crisis

Who isn’t addicted to something that performs well?  They showed short videos of some engineers who were going mad because of issues they were having with an unnamed CAD program.  To help, three “doctors” presented the videos and then explained the solution offered in SolidWorks 2009.  This one particular engineer in one of the stories was vexed by “too many steps.”  This was prolly the funniest of the bunch.  I remember when they showed him getting out of his co-worker’s car.  His co-worker double beeped his remote to lock his car.  The engineer (Bill, I think) preceded to yell something like, “You only need to beep it once!  Doing it twice is too many steps!  Ughh!!!”  The interviews with his boss and co-workers were icing on the cake.

PAS

Anyway, the point was that SolidWorks 2009 would be adding functionality and simplifying some tasks.  Just to name a few:

  • Big news is that SolidWorks 2009 will accept negative dimensions when adding dimension values to objects within a sketch!
  • Handling of large assemblies has improved substantially.
  • Features created at the assembly level will be transferred to the part.
  • BOM tables can now be directly added to the Model Assembly.
  • Slot tool has finally been added.  (In fact, I recently participated in a questionnaire regarding how this feature will be dimensioned on the drawing.)
  • In sketch mode, dimensioning for sizes of objects will automatically pop up and ask to be populated when the object is created.
  • Routing now supports flat cables, and so on.

This skit was immediately followed by a demonstration of the speed differences we can expect from SolidWorks 2009.  They had a side by side comparison between SolidWorks 2008 and 2009.  It does appear that performance will indeed be massively improved.  This is of course based on the presentation.  I will reserve my final judgment for when I get a chance to use 2009 for myself.

SolidWorks World 2008 Day 2 (Jan 22) Block Party!

Go-Go Dancer at the Concert

After three whole days of almost nonstop geekdom business, it was time to let loose, all on SolidWorks Corporation’s tab.  This was the SolidWorks World 2008 Block Party!  For this event, a few blocks of the Gaslamp Quarter was shut down just for the attendees of the conference.  Most of the bars and restaurants served free tap beer all night.  There was plenty of pretty finger food that was OK.  The live band was a nice touch, but didn’t really do it for me; too many not-so-good covers of 70’s rock classics that I don’t much care about anyway.  Then there was the two lone Go-Go dancers that were kind enough to spend as much time taking pictures with all the guys as they did dancing.  They musta been good sports about the whole thing.  

Chris MacCormick and I meet up at this one place with a small out-door patio.  He then took me around to meet everyone, including fellow bloggers, reps, and SolidWorks Partners.  This was my first time at SWW8.  Here’s a snippet of a slide-show.  I’m sure some will recognize themselves! 🙂

The night did end a little early at 10pm.  I guess that is to be expected for an hosted event on public streets.  As far as I can tell, we all had a blast.

SolidWorks World 2008 Day 2 (Jan 22) Breakout sessions and such

Finally, after two days of being strangers passing in the night, Chris MacCormick and I finally had a chance to meet up on this day.  But more of that later.

After the General Session was over, my first breakout session of the day was the Hands-On Session Creating SolidWorks Add-ins.  Although I dabble in creating and editing SolidWorks API to help shortcut common functions, I still am just a hack at VBA programming.  I had hoped this session would’ve been useful to continuing my exposure to VB.NET and making add-ins for SolidWorks.  I was very dissatisfied with this session.  This was particularly disappointing because this was my only Hands-On session for the entire SWW8, even though I had logged-on to the SWW8 website at the right time to allow me to get any Hands-On sessions I wanted (way back in 2007).  The session didn’t start off well.  There was a typo on my schedule card that pointed me to the wrong room.  Once I found the correct room and sat down, it took too long to get the session started.  Once the presenter started, he asked a question to check every-one’s experience level.  He asked the question so quickly, I do not believe anyone understood what he said until he uttered the words something like, “Good, everyone will know what I’m talking about.  Let’s get to this.”  Once he did start with the lesson, he flew through so fast, most everyone just gave up trying to follow along.  It took forever to get his attention to tell him no one know where he was in the lesson.  He just wasn’t paying attention to the attendees.  Worse yet, very few of the computers were even configured correctly to allow us to successfully follow along, even if we tried.  By the time some of us finally were able to bring this to his attention, half the session was over.  Many of us had not passed the first few steps.  He then discovered our computers had a wrong setting.  As we moved on again, we again found we couldn’t follow along.  He found out that yet another setting on the computer was wrong.  Basically, the presenter did not make sure the classroom computers where set up properly for his lesson.

At that point Chris MacCormick gave me a call to check when and where we were going to meet up for lunch.  I was so frustrated at the poor quality of the session, I answered the phone without apology. Chris and I planned to meet up in a few minutes.  I then just walked out with 15 minutes to spare. By that time, I was about the fifth person at a Hands-On computer to walk, and I wasn’t the last.  Also, almost all back of the room observers had left by that point.  What did I learn?  Know when to hold them; know when to fold them; know when to walk away; know when to run.

I finally met up with Chris just before the cafeteria opened.  It was about time.  He turns about to be a cool guy with a lot of dynamic energy.  Lunch provided by SWW8 was pretty good.  (I had given up on the SWW8 breakfasts by this time.)  We were later joined by Richard Doyle and another acquaintance of mine.  Chris had missed the SWUGN Annual Summit Meeting on the day before, so Mr. Doyle filled him in on some of the details.

After lunch, my first breakout session of the afternoon was Chris’ own Using the Power of 3D to Teach GD&T.  This session was geared towards being an interactive event between educators.  There were a lot of others who attended that may not have understood this paradigm.  Chris went into detail about the DimXpert and how to use this an other functionality to demonstrate GD&T, including possible limitations or dangers with relying too much on the software to define specifications.  I’ll let Chris go into more detail about this and his other session if he chooses. His session did spark a lot of dialogue between educators.  After the session, I witnessed more people flood up to the front of the room to talk to him than any other presenter at any other session I attended throughout SWW8.

Chris MacCormick

My final breakout session for the day was Exploring the SolidWorks API from a Battleship.  This session was more of a demonstration of how to use SolidWorks and its API creatively for unusual tasks.  The game of Battleship was completely modelled and emulated within SolidWorks.  It was very cleaver and extremely comprehensive.  The presenter did go into his methodology for writing API.  In part, these are some of the points:

  • Identify goals and level of user interaction.
  • Build API ready SolidWorks data (in the model and any files that will be used in the program).
  • Outline the code and define variables; including organization of classes and modules.
  • Explore SolidWorks API for automation.
  • Use clear naming convention for variables.

Because of the nature of the demonstration, this session proved to be a bit self-serving to the presenter.  However, this is also why this particular session was prolly the most entertaining of the day.

SolidWorks World 2008 Day 2 (Jan 22) General Session

Another amazing day at SolidWorks World 2008 started at this day’s General Session.  Both keynote speakers are greats in their own time.  Dr. Donald A. Norman has a pedigree too long for me to go into here without having to site multiple references and a lengthy list of achievements.  He was billed by the SWW8 introduction as being in the ranks of Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Thomas Edison for having been presented with the Benjamin Franklin Medal from the Franklin Institute.  His speech was a cleaver.  He discussed the design of every day things in the context of what is good design and what is poor design.  One point he made was that a good design is intuitive.  It doesn’t need signs just so that the user can understand the product.  He spent quite a lot of time showing poorly designed products with signs everywhere on them and comparing these to well designed products that are so simple, no explanation is needed, or perhaps it only needs explanation once and then never again.  He showed examples of how pointless signs are, especially when their meaning is lost.  The irony of this is that I found such a pointless sign within an hour after his presentation right at SolidWorks World 2008.  Those of us who saw Dr. Norman’s presentation will likely have a deeper appreciation of this sign, and yet be just as confused by what it could possible mean as anyone else would be. 

Crazy meaningless sign posted at SolidWorks World 2008

Seriously, what in the world could this sign mean and why is it taped to the wall, and how come it mentions “Solid Works”?  Is this instructions to the SolidWorks software not to hit the wall, or randomly placed instructions for humans not to hit SolidWorks?  Or is it that for some reason, the sign’s maker was concerned people attending SWW8 would have sudden and uncontrollable urges to go around hitting this particular spot on the wall?  If so, what’s so special about this spot that makes hitting it worse than striking some other spot on the wall?  Oh, and why did they spell SolidWorks with a space in the middle as “Solid Works”?  So much information is packaged in this meaningless sign. 

The other keynote speaker was Dr. Robert Ballard.  He is another person with a long laundry list of accomplishments.  His most pop culture oriented claim to fame is that he was co-discoverer of the HMS Titanic.  Dr. Robert Ballard talked about his program to bring ocean exploration into the class room, literally.  This is being accomplished by using the most advanced communications technology available.  I think he was almost bragging about the fact that he has I2 access for his many projects.  I2?  A.K.A. Internet 2.  It’s the next generation of the Interest that is much faster and has much higher capacity than our slow old dumpy Internet.  DSL vs. Cable?  This is nothing and meaningless.  I2 is the future.  Of course, normal human beings cannot get access to I2 right now, and prolly won’t be able to for many years, but it was fun watching Dr. Ballard go into his many uses of it.  How does he use I2?  Because of its extremely wide bandwidth, he is able to transmit huge amounts of data.  This allows him to send a ship out to sea that can launch an ocean exploring robot.  That robot can be controlled from a land based location which is no where near where the exploration is going on.  Everything the robot sees is transmitted half-way across the planet where it is also being controlled.  This great feat was Dr. Ballard’s goal since the 1970’s and now he has made it happen.

Now, the question of this General Session really is, who is this mysterious female photographer who is silhouetted against the stage backdrop that was taking photos of all of us? 

Mystery woman of SWW8

Feeling Better after SWW 2008

*Previously written but accidentally left pending*

My head is clearing.  Thursday after the SWW2008 close I came down with something awful.  I found myself huddled in the fetal position all day and night.  Some of you may have seen me in that same position Saturday in the airport terminal.  Bless my wife for getting delta airlines to provide a coule of blankets while we waited for our 2 hour delayed flight.  Note to self – When running a 103 degree temp DO NOT GET ON A PLANE.  It took 3 days for my head to decompress.

Enough of the self pity let’s talk about the conference-

The week flew by much faster than I would like it to.  My time started Saturday moring with alpha testing.  Because of the NDA that uses my wife as collateral I can not comment too much about it but I do like the ideas that we worked on- Keep it up COSMOS group.

Sunday was filled with Round Table discussions.  I usually enjoy these because i get a glimpse into the minds of other users and how they are using the software.  honestly after these session I have enough content for a 3 hour stand up routine as well as 2 months worth of ideas I want to try to implement in my companies.   This year was a little different as I had much more to offer than most.  One of my concerns with the release of 2008 was the DimXpert.  Some of you may have already seen some of my concerns about this really cool functionality.  The SolidWorks Guy (forgive the mispelling) Avelon, was very attentive to my concerns and had some really good ideas for the continuation of this tool.  Here is a list of what I find problems with – 1. Many people have no idea what GD&T is and now they can make even more expensive and impossible parts with an easy button that is not really that easy.  2. Users have no idea what ANSI/ASME 14 standard this tool is pulling from. 3. With the epidemic of poor modeling to get the job done, this enables even more of that by allowing users to apply appropriate dimensioning &  tolerancing after the model is complete without any regard to how these parts will react when edited later..  Later on in the week Avelon did a great demonstration of DimXpert which really calmed me down.  There is a method to using this tool and it is now my job to learn that method and apply it to the teaches here at NTI.

Another topic I commented on is about Top Down Assembly.  Far too often I have found rascally users finding a part that was deisgned Top Down and Say “this part will work great for my new assembly” modify the part and completely hose up a released products documentation.  I asked for a Release To Production button that would take Top Down Assembly design and “completely” break references to the assembly changing up to surface to Blind and the current dimension so on and so forth.  I saw some SW employee eye brows raise to this idea.  Especially when another attendee discussed how his company remodeled every thing designed top down prior to product release. Productivity lost i say.

Anyhow overall Sunday was very successful for me.  I was able to vent and be heard in the same breath.  I was able to compliment and be heard when appropriate and I met several new people who share some of my concerns.

My next blog will discuss the actual conference proceedings.

Until then – Work Hard, Play Harder

Chris MacCormack