The Power of a Blog

The Power of a Blog

If you follow Matt’s Blog you have seen the power blogging at its best. What is ‘Power Blogging’? It is blogging that causes change. Matt voiced an opinion about a SolidWorks Corporation practice, we commented, SolidWorks listened and the practice was changed. As Matt points out it wasn’t necessarily only what he wrote but the reaction from us, his readers and users of the software.

You might have seen on the news in the last few days about the woman’s blog that tells all the crimes her ex-husband committed while in the armed forces. I also read that somewhere about a blog being shutdown by lawsuits from a party named in the blog.

If you listen to Twit (This Week in Tech) you have heard the panelists discussing the validity of blogs as reliable news sources. And recently it’s been all about Twitter which is blogging on a minute by minute basis. Is the information presented in blogs to be taken as news, opinions or entertainment?

To pull all these thoughts together I have but one comment; as bloggers we need to use this new found power responsibility, and as readers we need to carefully glean what we read separating fact from fiction and rants from legitimate concerns.

Friday's Random Thoughts

Random Thoughts

In the May issue of PC Magazine on page 87 there is an article telling how to revert a Windows Vista install to Windows XP. As of right now the article is not on the website so you have to pick up the magazine to get the details. According to the article XP is noticeably faster than Vista on the same hardware. And with the upcoming release of service patch 3 XP will be even faster but the same can’t be said of service patch 1 for Vista. So if what I’m reading is true you might want to consider staying with XP until Microsoft makes Vista better and if you already have Vista installed it is good to know that there is a way to revert back to XP.

What do you think of the Open Office Suite? I loaded it on a PC that I was rebuilding for a friend and the new version looks great. It would appear to do whatever I would need to do with an office product including Microsoft Office compatibility. What I’m wondering and hoping that someone has an answer for; is whether or not the Calc product can be made to work with SolidWorks like Excel does now. This is the only reason I can think of for me to have Microsoft office on my system. Surely someone has researched this... When a company is looking to replace twenty five PCs with new ones the cost of MS Office is substantial!

Speaking of SolidWorks; I used the Pro/E translator for the first time yesterday. It actually worked fairly well once I had the originator of the file remove all the fillets on the part. There were two features that the converted could not handle, a simple revolve and a rib but the sketches were converted so it was easy to correct.

28 days and counting until Matt makes his appearance at the WNC/Asheville SolidWorks User Group Meeting. Thursday May 15 is the night. I think Tom Wilson will be firing up the BBQ to provide us with ribs or chicken but the real highlight of the evening will be Matt’s presentation. Plan to be there!

Running on empty

Running on empty

If you haven’t noticed I will fill you in. It seems that I’ve hit a sort of writer’s block. I’ve been racking my mind to come up with things to write about the last few days. I perused the engineering magazines that came in last week thinking I would find some ideas but nothing interested me enough to write about. If there is anyone interested in doing a guest blog let me know.

We have a project I just started working on at Byers this week. It could be an interesting project if we ever get enough design parameters to get going on it. But due to our confidentiality agreement I can’t really write much about it. Suffice to say that a rather large international company has bought out another company and is in the process of moving the manufacture of the company’s product to the US. Our part in all this is to reverse engineer the handling systems to US standards. Because of the scope and the time limits involved we will be bringing in outside engineering to assist.

One thing that is going on here that might interest only me is the possibility of major computer and network infrastructure upgrades. Our in house IT head has been discussing our options with Dell. This will be the 1^st time since the Digital Equipment days that we are looking to one vendor for all our IT needs. Most of the PCs here don’t need to be CAD capable but with these upgrades the basic PCs will be more powerful that our current CAD stations. The workstations will be Dell Precisions built up with good quadro video cards and 4GB ram. Like I said, I’m excited! The one thing I’m not excited about is the fact that management is leaning towards Vista over XP. Their reasoning is that we will have to make the change eventually so we might as well do it now. Being a guy who reads all the computer magazines and listens to the tech podcasts I can say true fully that this scares the crap out of me.

Is there anyone out there using Vista? What’s the verdict?

What’s on your SolidWorks World iPod?

What’s on your SolidWorks World iPod?

I’m sure that all of you know by now that all SolidWorks World 2008 attendees received a special edition iPod Nano with the SolidWorks logo laser etched on the back. You might also know that it was pre-loaded with video podcasts that all had something to do with SolidWorks. I watched my first and last of these podcasts on the flight back to North Carolina. I’m sorry but the screen is just too small for captured video from a SolidWorks session.

Yes, I know with the right cabling I’d be able to watch the video on my television but why bother when I can go to any internet connected computer and watch the podcasts there. So I’m left with a dilemma, what can I put on the iPod? I was skeptical about iPods and iTunes in general, I mean I figure I’m already in bed with Bill Gates do I really want Steve Jobs to join us? But I went ahead and took the plunge and installed iTunes on my desktop computer. Actually the experience was very pleasant, after playing around with iTunes and letting it add my existing music library which is on a homebuilt NAS running FreeNAS I was sold on it. It was then just a matter of loading up the Nano with stuff I will listen to.

The first step was to remove all the SolidWorks podcasts which I did save so that I could watch them later. This was all done within iTunes. I then loaded up on some music from my library. My music tastes are very diverse for example right now I have Pink Floyd, Allan Parsons, Paul McCartney, Vangelis, Pablo Cruise, Mike Oldfield, Simon & Garfunkel, Chicago, Third Day, Jars of Clay and more.

The music is fine but sometimes when I walk I rather listen to talking or reading to pass the time. So I listen to several audio podcasts, TWIT (This Week in Tech) is usually very entertaining and informative. Leo Laporte leads a guest panel in discussion of the week’s tech news. My favorite panelist is John, that’s a crock of crap, Dvorak. I also enjoy another podcast called X-Minus One. This podcast is old-time Sci-Fi radio shows by the same name. Some of the classic authors are represented here, Asimov, Bliss and others.

There are a few video podcasts that are suited for the small screen of the Nano. One that comes to mind that I watch when I get a chance is Mahalo Daily. These are brief informative and entertaining podcasts that cover a variety of subjects. You can watch them in as few as three minutes.

My opinion of Apple and iPods has been changed by the Nano. Don't get me wrong I never would have bought one but now that I have one I find that I use it every day. I purchased one of the little FM transmitters that allow me to listen to the Nano in the truck through the radio. While this is not perfect it works great for the talk show type podcasts. I find myself longing for a better solution for music though.

There is a vast amount of free media out there for you iPod; I’ve only scratched the surface. Do you have a favorite that you will share with us? Leave a comment.

StrokeIt?

StrokeIt

No you have not stumbled onto some obscene blog. StrokeIt is the name of a program I just found by Googling ‘mouse gestures’. If you’ve been reading the blog you might have seen the posting on things I liked in other CAD programs I’ve used. In the Applicon Bravo3 software we had mouse gestures and since I couldn’t think of a thing to write about today I decided to see there was anything out there that could give me the same experience now.

I down loaded StrokeIt from http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/. The install was easy other than the required reboot to start the program. StrokeIt is free for individual and not-for-profit charitable entity use. Individual licenses are available for $10. But try it out for free and see what you think.

After the install and the printing of a handy tutorial off of the website I was programming StrokeIt to do some neat stuff in SolidWorks. Now I can draw a ‘W’ (for Whole) and a ‘F’ keystroke is transmitted to SolidWorks and you zoom to fit. I also did the ‘S’ key which is starting to get worn out on my keyboard and I also did a ‘M’ for measure. I actually had to add a hotkey for this one to work.

You draw the characters by holding the right mouse button and drawing the letter. You actually see a blue line being drawn on the screen which is better than the Bravo software where you did mouse gestures blind. It takes a bit of practice to get the character drawn so that it is recognized and so that you can do it quickly. If I remember correctly the DEC VMS Windows mouse was faster at this that my Logitech trackball. But anyway it might be something you like.

Follow ups to some of my posts

Follow ups to some of my posts

Thanks to Matt Lombard and Wes Cobb some people are actually reading the blog. So now it has evolved from just a brain exercise on my part to something I ‘almost’ feel obligated to try to do every day. I really do have a whole new respect for bloggers in general and especially those that consistently provide informative and fresh information and not just a bunch of links to stuff they found on the web. Believe me this is work, I enjoy it but it is still work. My commitment to you, my readers, is to write about CAD in general and SolidWorks in particular. I may seem to digress from this from time to time but be assured if you look deep enough you will find the connection. I also commit to only write about what I know; this is why my posts are so short. I might be wrong in what I say or just ignorant of something, that’s where you can help me out by leaving a comment correcting me. I will learn and someone else might learn also.

One of my posts that has generated interest is this one:

SolidWorks and WeightWatchers

Matt refers to it on his on blog:

Blogging for Dollars

Read them and post some comments either on this blog or Matt’s.

I was corrected by an anonymous commenter on this post:

SolidWorks Import/Export

I tried installing the Autodesk Inventor View yesterday and it does work. I was able to import the Inventor file into SolidWorks. Here is the page with the download:

Autodesk Inventor View

You do end up with a ‘dumb’ imported solid but that is better than nothing. It was interesting to note that the two files I tested this on could not be opened in the viewer itself. The error seems to indicate that the database of the parts needed to be updated to the current Inventor version. No comment for fear of being extremely flamed by Inventor users…

Out Sourcing hits close to home

Out Sourcing hits close to home, kind of…

We been hearing the horror stories but I’ve tended to think that this will affect someone and else not me. And even though I’m not actually affected by this occurrence it is a lot closer to home than I like.

At Byers Precision some of our business is 5-axis laser cutting. We take a customer’s stamped part and trim the outside and add any necessary holes or cutouts that may be required. In the last year we have been doing prototype work for a large company that will remain unnamed. They have been sending us models created in Unigraphics that we import in SolidWorks and do the necessary transformations so that an IGES files can be exported which is imported into the CAM software that actually runs on top of Catia. (I feel a blog about a universal CAD format coming on.)

The tangency lines of these models are important to us since we use them to line up the model with our model of actual stamped blank. This last set of model did not have any tangency lines in them. We tried all the tricks we know of to get them to show up in SolidWorks to no avail. Finally we called the customer and through a slip of his tongue we found out that the models were created in India. Luckily he knew enough about Unigraphics that he was able to correct the problem and re-send the files. But it makes you wonder what would have happened if he didn’t have a clue what was going on.

I told my co-worker that maybe we need to start working on our Apu Nahasapeemapetilon accent. He then reminded me that neither of us cared for the Indian food at the SolidWorks World 2008 Block Party. I guess that Wal-Mart greeter job is looking better and better.

What the Future Holds for CAD?

What the Future Holds for CAD?

Next time you have some spare time sit down and think about CAD in general. Where do you think it’s going? What will be the next big thing? How many ‘new’ ways to we need to draw lines, circles & arcs?

I think that feature sets will continue to get larger and larger because this is what sells. This is what drives companies to switch from one program to another. But I wonder sometimes how much more stuff we need.

Being of a sheet metal mind set; I would like to see more emphasis place on this feature set. Square to round, cones and other transition wizards that resulted in ‘real’ flat patterns would really be nice. Also more latitude in what can be unfolded would be great. Just yesterday a customer sent me a ProE file that SolidWorks couldn’t unfold but ProE could. The part had fillets that were partially in the ‘bend areas’. We see this situation often and can’t understand why one CAD program can unfold it but SolidWorks can’t. But in fairness, I’m sure that the reverse is true also.

When I think about the user interface I realize that we have a hint of what’s to come by just looking at SW 2008. We will see more and more of this ‘heads up’ type interface in the coming years. Speaking of that, why isn’t the measure tool on the left click pop-up menu? That just seems natural to me.

Picture if you can the current interface evolving even more over the next few releases…now combine that with the voice command interface and maybe even the mouse gestures I mentioned in the last blog. Now we’re getting somewhere! Now imagine, if you can, a pair of glasses that you put on when you sit down to your computer that had eye tracking like the military uses. Instead of scroll bars you would just move your eyes from side to side and up and down. Need to rotate the part? Verbally say rotate and move your eyes in the direction of rotation. Far fetched? Not really the technology is already available.

What do you think about the future of CAD? Post some comments, it's even easier now. You don't have to register. Right now I'm not even moderating them so please keep them clean.

Thanks go out to Matt for adding this blog to his Blogroll. If you want some really useful SolidWorks info and commentary instead of my drivel check it out at

http://dezignstuff.com/blog/

What’s next for CAD?

What’s next for CAD?

As I consider this question I can’t help but think back to some of the neat features I’ve seen and used in other CAD programs. So before I address the future features that CAD programs might have I will digress to my past CAD history another day and try to remember some of the favorite things in programs I’ve used.

1. In the Applicon Bravo3 software we had mouse gestures. Hold down a mouse button and draw a ‘Z’ on the screen and you zoomed to that location. Draw a ‘C’ to center the view at the point where you drew the ‘C’. Draw an ‘F’ to fit the screen. There were many more and you could even create your own gestures.
2. Also in the Bravo3 software there was an interface programming tool called ‘Flexible Interface Tool’ or FIT. It must have been very easy to use as I remember writing several programs. I wrote programs to generate the flat layout of sheet metal cones and square to round transitions. I even wrote a game that ran inside of the CAD program. I tried to duplicate these programming feats in Autolisp and DCL and most recently VBA but either I’ve gotten too old to learn or I just can’t grasp the new programming languages.
3. In AutoCAD, I really liked typing the commands using their alias. I was faster at this than my co-workers trying to find the correct icon. I know this really old school and the closest thing we have now is the keyboard shortcuts which are okay but I really do miss the command line.
4. In SolidEdge from the start we could save a dxf of the flat pattern from the sheet metal environment. You didn’t have to place the flat on a drawing view and then do a save-as. I am glad to see that SolidWorks finally has this ability.
5. When we switched to SolidWorks we also acquired the 3Dconnexion spaceballs. They have revolutionized the way I do CAD.

These are just a few of the things I can thing of on the fly…Share your thoughts. I’ve always wished that somehow we could put together all the best things from the different programs and make a new CAD program. We could call it:

Bravo! Auto Solid Works with an Edge

Next BLOG – What the Future Holds for CAD

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CAD History - Part 3

The 'solid' years.. It was 1999 when we were first exposed to SolidEdge. My co-worker and I attended a hands-on presentation in Spartanburg SC. We were impressed! Mechanical Desktop always felt like a DOS program running in a window but here was a CAD program that had been designed from the ground up for Windows. It was still a year before Byers made the switch to SolidEdge. It had a steep learning curve but it was completely different from what we were using. My 'new' co-worker attended the training classes in Asheville and gradually eased ourselves into production with the program. For the first year our CAD time was spent equally in Mechanical Desktop & SolidEdge. Any new projects were done in SolidEdge, and changes to existing projects were done in Mechanical Desktop. 'Z' space 'E' is a very hard habit to break and even to this day I sometimes find myself typing this in SolidWorks...it just beeps at me.

We did see a demo of SolidWorks before the decision was made to go with SolidEdge. At the time we felt that SolidEdge had better sheet metal tools than SolidWorks. I can't speak about current versions of SolidEdge but back then the modeling process was similar to SolidWorks, you sketch, you extrude, sketch, cut, etc. I do remember that the assembly creation was a PITA compared to SolidWorks but it was better than Mechanical Desktop.

We used SolidEdge for maybe 3 years and then switched to SolidWorks. I am still confused to this day why the change was made. We were just starting to really get the hang of SolidEdge. My Co-worker and I both recommended that we stay with SolidEdge but the owner thought different. I am sure that the SolidEdge product had matured into a very capable product by now just as SolidWorks has. In the long run I guess I’m glad the change was made since I really do like SolidWorks but still I wonder about the decision making process that was employed when we switched.

Next BLOG….TBD