My CAD History – Part 2

My CAD History – Part 2

The switch to PC based CAD was a big step. At the time there was basically the AutoDesk products and that was all. There was talk of a CAD program designed for and around Microsoft Windows but it wasn’t ready for primetime. I guess this transition was driven by two things; 1. We had a customer who required that we provide them with all the drawings associated with their parts on their drawing formats which were AutoCad. 2. As mentioned in yesterdays post the cost of maintaining and upgrading the hardware for the Applicon software was prohibitive.

During this transition I would ‘model’ the parts on the Applicon system, make a drawing and save a DXF file. This DXF file was then transferred to the PC using Kermit on a RS232 cable. This was the only way for the two systems to talk to each other. Then a co-worker who was more versed in AutoCad would create the necessary drawings. In the mean time I attended TPM’s training classes for Mechanical Desktop. We also purchased from TPM an add-on for Mechanical Desktop called AutoSM. AutoSM by Radan was a product that allowed us to design our sheet metal parts and unfold them in the Mechanical Desktop environment. I think we stated on Mechanical Desktop 3.0 which was built on AutoCAD 14. It was a capable product but overly complicated, I heard it said that there are over a hundred ways to draw a line in AutoCad. After a few years of this and my attending all the offered AutoCad classes that Blue Ridge had I was starting to get pretty good at this job. And then in 1998 we saw a demonstration of SolidEdge…

To be continued next week.

My CAD History Part 1

My CAD History Part 1

When the owner of our company decided that we needed to start using CAD I guess I was the logical choice since I was an accomplished sheet metal mechanic and knew a little bit about computers. At the time I had been working in the sheet metal industry for about 15 years. My computer experience was limited to some FORTRAN programming I did in college and BASIC programming done on a then state of the art Commodore VIC20. I probably wrote the first (and only) sheet metal stretch out calculator for the VIC20. Okay, back to the story at hand…

We started with the Applicon Bravo3 software. We had a FAB module which did the sheet metal design and unfold, a DRAFT module where the drawings were made and another module called GEM (if I remember correctly) in which we could build assemblies. All of this software ran on a Digital Equipment MicroVAX. This was high end stuff at the time. One of most interesting things about this software was its interface. It used what they called Marching Menus. There was an area on the bottom of the screen that was always occupied by the menus. When you started there was simply one column of menus on the far left. As you made picks from this menu the appropriate menu would pop up directly to the right of the previous menu. This would continue until your command was finished. You might have menus strung all the way across the screen. I know it sounds cumbersome but I actually liked it. Your picks would remain highlighted so you could look back and see exactly how you got to where you were.

We used the Applicon software for quiet a few years. It’s downfall at Byers was really caused by the high price of maintaining and upgrading the Digital Equipment hardware. We were finally sold on Mechanical Desktop with a 3^rd party add-on for sheet metal. (See tomorrow’s blog). What happened to Applicon? After we stopped using it they ported the application to the PC platform and were eventually bought out by UGS the SolidEdge people. I think that now it is in CAD/CAM oblivion.

NEXT: Mechanical Desktop with RADAN AutoSM

SolidWorks & Weight Watchers?

SolidWorks & Weight Watchers?

I first started doing the CAD work at Byers sometime in 1988. Since that time I’ve seen my weight continually creep upward. As I reflect back on this I see that this was due to two things, inactivity and snacking while I work. When I was out on the shop floor running a press brake and doing manual sheet metal layout I was always on the move. Snacking while I worked was out of the question because my hands pretty much stayed a varying degree of filthy. But as I spent more and more time in front of the CRT drawing cartoons I didn’t move much of my body except for my jaw.

I say all that so that I can tell you that change is possible. This past Monday marked the one year anniversary of my wife and me starting Weight Watchers. In that year I have lost 75 lbs and went from a 44" to a 36" waist. My wives results are very similar. What changed? We started making conscious decisions about what we put in our mouths and made a point of being more active whenever we have a chance. It is important to note that losing weight was not our goal; our goal instead was to become healthier. I am pleased with the results.

A year ago I was taking blood pressure medication and Lipitor. I had to monitor my blood sugar levels on daily basis. I am now on no medication and only spot check my blood sugar occasionally.

If you’ve gotten in the ‘rut’ I was in; not eating properly, not getting any exercise then you might want to give Weight Watchers a try. They have the tools and motivation you need. There are no ‘special’ foods or equipment required. You don’t count calories, carbs or fat grams, you count points. Every food has a point value that is based on a ratio of calories, fat and fiber. Of course portion size is important but there are plenty of things with 0 points that you can fill up on. I can truly say that I’ve never felt hungry while on the plan. I’ve had cravings from time to time but never truly hungry. My doctor says that his patients have tried them all, and year in and year out Weight Watchers is the most effective at getting the weight off and keeping it off.

And by the way, I have 14 more pounds to lose to reach my goal weight.

http://www.weightwatchers.com/index.aspx

Life with SolidWorks - Import/Export

Life with SolidWorks

Import/Export

Imagine my surprise when I tried to import an AutoDesk Inventor part file into SolidWorks. It’s one of the file types you can select on the open dialog box. But you get nothing…unless you have the version or newer version of Inventor that the file came from installed on your system. Which in this case means that SolidWorks ‘works’ in conjunction with Inventor to import your file into SolidWorks. I’m sorry but I have a problem with this logic! If I can afford to have both programs installed on my system then do I really need to translate from Inventor to SolidWorks?

In all fairness I guess the reason this capability is included at all is for persons switching from Inventor to SolidWorks. It seems that we had something similar for Mechanical Desktop files way back when we switched. But I have to wonder what the hold up is, I mean we can import SolidEdge, Catia, ProE, and CadKey why not Inventor. Granted with the mentioned formats we end up with a ‘dumb’ solid but we get nothing with Inventor!

I’ll be on the phone today talking a customer through saving a STEP file of his Inventor part so I can import it. Seems like a waste of his time and mine. Such is:

Life with SolidWorks

SolidWorks Works for Gardens?

Life with SolidWorks

The long weekend away from SolidWorks was nice. Not one line or circle was drawn by yours truly. Instead I actually did some physical work outside. Building a raised bed garden from landscape timbers is both fun and rewarding. My wife and I built our first RBG last year and enjoyed garden fresh tomatoes, bell peppers, zucchini, and squash through the summer. If you so some studying on raised bed gardening and its counterpart square foot gardening you will be surprised at the yield of produce you can obtain. So this year I built a RBG for my Mom & Dad.

Raised bed garden links:

http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/gl_design_raised_bed/

http://www.raised-garden-beds.com/

http://www.raised-garden-beds.com/Advantages-2.htm

http://www.thegardenhelper.com/bed~const.html

Square foot gardens links:

http://www.squarefootgardening.com/

http://journeytoforever.org/garden_sqft.html

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/sqfoot/

You may ask, what does this have to do with SolidWorks:

Here is a ‘bad’ rendering of my first RBG modeled in

SolidWorks:

Good Friday

No SolidWorks today or for the rest of the weekend. Take some time off, enjoy the family and remember the sacrifice that was made for you. Maybe I'll see you at church Sunday.

PERFORMANCE & STABILITY

Thursday’s Blog

I’ve only been doing this blog for four days and I’ve gained even more respect for Matt Lombard and other bloggers I read regularly. This is actually work…

I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the stability of SolidWorks 2008. The number of crashes has been greatly reduced on our systems. In fact, I get more crashes in DWGeditor than with SolidWorks. This bodes well for us users. I say this based on what I heard at SolidWorks World about how a ‘renewed’ concentration has been placed on performance and stability in the upcoming release. I think that some of this new philosophy actually started in SW2008. I know stability can be greatly affected by hardware, operating systems and even other installed applications. But being the one who usually experiences these problems and using the same system that I was using with SW2007 I am encouraged so far.

What about you? Register (completely painless) and post some comments about this or other issues you want to discuss. The hardest part of writing a blog is finding something to write about, you can help me by giving me some feedback.

Thanks

Featuring FeatureWorks

Way back when our company first purchased SolidWorks the 'office' versions didn't exist. I somehow convinced the owner that we at least needed PhotoWorks and FeatureWorks. The reason for PhotoWorks was obvious; I wanted to make some of those neat renderings like I had seen on the website and brochures. FeatureWorks was an easy sell to my boss when I told him that we would be able to load all our legacy SolidEdge and Mechanical DeskTop parts into SolidWorks. Yes it was an easy sell but the ideal fizzled after the first couple of conversions. It might be different with machined parts but with sheet metal in most cases it was easier just to redraw the parts. So FeatureWorks was placed on the back shelf so to speak.

Recently I've been contracted by a local engineering firm to import their customer's SolidEdge parts and assemblies into SolidWorks. They wanted more than just an imported solid; they wanted the features recognized and their sketches fully defined. So in the past month and some 400 files later I've used FeatureWorks more than all my previous years combined. From this experience I have a few observations.

1. FeatureWorks is not perfect. There are some things it just can't do anything with. Usually fillets or chamfers on a curved edge will give it problems. For example the 'chamfer' that goes around the head of a hex head bolt.

2. A combination of automatic and manual recognition seems to work best. An example would be a flat plate with holes in it. On automatic FeatureWorks will see a base extrude only with a rather complex sketch that contains the lines that make up the plate and the circles that make the holes. While not technically wrong it is not good modeling procedure (don't flame me).

3. As you use it more and more you pick up on techniques and the best sequence as how to implement FeatureWorks.

Overall opinion: FeatureWorks works and works well.

Anyone else have experience with it? Please comment.

Check out this fun SolidWorks link: SUPERCADGENIUS

More Sheet Metal Thoughts

Forgive me guys but there are a lot of nights when I dream of sheet metal and some of those dreams are actually nightmares!

As a follow up to a post I did on the WNC-SWUG website concerning SolidWorks sheet metal flat pattern inclusion on drawings for your sheet metal vendor I would like to present a situation that happened here at Byers. While not directly related it does give us 'sheet metal' vendors a possible solution to a similar situation.

Our customer was designing an enclosure in SolidWorks but he had zero experience with sheet metal. I think that he actually wanted us to teach him how to use the sheet metal tools in SolidWorks over the phone. I saw quickly that this was going to lead to all kinds of problems and confusion. So we told him to just design a box, door and back panel with no regard to sheet metal other than the thickness. We received his drawings and part files yesterday and using the SolidWorks sheet metal tools we easily converted them to sheet metal parts that we can manufacture. Not to say that this would always work...but it is a possibility.

Have fun today while you model something that excites you in SolidWorks today.

Welcome to the WNC-SWUG SoapBox

Hey fellow SolidWorks Users, welcome to the group's blog. Here I will be posting opinions, news and even personal stuff from time to time. The blog makes it easier to get info out to everyone on a timely basis. The wnc-swug.org website will still be maintained and even upgraded over the next few weeks. I have lots of ideas and also welcome any input from you.

PLEASE please go ahead and register and post comments...