Southeastern SolidWorks User Workshop: Day 2

Southeastern SolidWorks User Workshop: Day 2

I apologize for this being a day late. My excuse is that my brain shutdown last night at 5PM due to overload. The second day of the workshop was very intense for your friendly neighborhood blogger.

My first session of the day was Matt Lombard's presentation on Curvy Stuff. For someone who does sheet metal 99% of the time this was definitely uncharted territory. But I do have to say that I learned a lot and it makes me want to continue my studies in SolidWorks surfacing. Matt took us through the modeling of a pasta scoop which happened to be in his kitchen utensil drawer. We learned about projected curves, boundary surfaces, spline on a surface and the awesome fill surface. I have never used the fill surface command but it must be a really great tool since Matt was the first of two presenters to tout its usefulness.

Next I was in Steve Ostrovsky’s presentation on drawing templates and formats. Even though I knew the material fairly well Steve did point out some things that I could do in a more efficient manner than how I’m doing it now. This class was a hands on lab which invariably has problems with some of the participants not really being at the level of expertise that the material is geared for. I really feel for presenters when placed in this situation. But Steve did a great job of keeping everyone on track. On great tip I pick up here was how to do multi-line custom property descriptions on the drawing sheet format.

After the lunch break I attended Philip Thomas’ presentation on dumb solids. If you’ve ever sat in on one of Philip’s presentations you know what I mean when I say…WOW! Philip is hilarious and educational at the same time. He started out with a very informative history of CAD. Check out CADAZZ.com for some of the information he presented. Why the history lesson? It is necessary to know the history in order to understand the state of CAD interoperability today. We have different kernels, different philosophies and different ways of doing things among the various CAD software companies and even within the same company (Catia, SolidWorks). Philip pointed out that the difference between smart solids and dumb solids is just the amount of information embedded with the solid. He showed several examples and various ways of tackling the errors that the dumb solid might have. I picked up on some ideals that will help me the next time I get a Pro/E file I need to work with in SolidWorks.

And if one class with Philip wasn’t enough…I then attended his presentation on Keyboard Shortcuts. This session was more laid back that the previous one. Philip's Presentation came down to these pointers:

1. Quit banging on the keyboard – get a mouse with as many programmable buttons as you can remember and then program them.
2. Undo is Great – But cancel is better! – when you really mess up a sketch DON’T release the left mouse button, press and hold the right button, now release the left button and finally the right button. You sketch is back like it was before.
3. Wrap will split multiple faces in one go and there other ways to extrude text.
4. Don’t forget Cut-Sweep Solid.
5. The ‘parametize’ tool is very powerful, use the Dim Expert.
6. Make your presentations look good with RealView.
7. Know when to Eject! He gave us a .bat file that ends all SolidWorks processes.
8. Personalize – use the API. Philip showed us some really cool things that can be done with a little bit of VBA programming and Excel.
   

Thanks to all the presenters for sharing their knowledge with all of us attendees. I hope to someday make you proud enough to say, “Look at that guy go! I taught him everything he knows”.

All and all the 1^st SouthEastern SolidWorks User Workshop was a great success. I certainly hope that this will become a yearly event. Tony, I’m giving you a standing ovation as I type.

Pictures may be coming next…

Southeastern SolidWorks User Workshop: Day 1

Southeastern SolidWorks User Workshop: Day 1

Let me say first off that the location is ideally suited for this type of event. Thanks to Midlands Technical College for hosting the event. Tony Cantrell has done a great job on the organization of the event, thanks Tony. And thank you SolidWorks Corporation for the briefcase (but I wish I had chosen the backpack).

The day started more or less around 7:30 with a breakfast that included grits, biscuits, gravy, eggs, sausage and bacon. It looked and smelled awesome…I had already eaten so I can’t review the taste of the food. One of the great things about these events is the people you meet and the things you learn from them. I met Mary who in recent days has been trying to learn AutoDesk Inventor in order to complete a project that the customer requires in that format. Listening to her grief over Inventor makes me appreciate SolidWorks even more. I also met a man who teaches SolidWorks at a local High School. From this conversation it is evident that SolidWorks is really trying to have a positive effect on education.

At 8:30 we all gathered in an auditorium for the general welcome session. Tony said a few words and turned the program over to Richard Doyle. Richard did his SolidWorks community presentation going over all the available content on the Customer Portal. He went over some of the content that is on SolidWorks Labs page of which the new Blueprint Now sounds interesting. It allows you to edit DWG files online; I will check this out for a future blog.

The next session I attended was entitled 3DConnexion Space Pilot. I’ve been using a 3D controller since 2000 but I’ve been experiencing problems getting used to the new Space Navigators we bought to replace our no longer supported SpaceBall 4000FLXs. I was hoping to be able to get some pointers or ask some questions about the configuration of the new devices to be more like the old controllers. There was two things wrong with this session…the presenter was a no show and there wasn’t Space Pilot anywhere in sight. But Tony filled in quiet well and I did manage to win the drawing for one of the Navigators.

The lunch buffet consisted of a nice salad, turkey, beef patties, mashed potatoes, gravy and green beans. I can state that what I ate was very good. There might have been some dessert also but I tried not to notice that.

Session #2 for me was weldments which was excellently presented by Darren Henry. He started off with a PowerPoint but quickly got away from that and actually showed us all that you can do with weldments and how to do them. Since 3D sketches are a prerequisite for weldments I picked up much needed education on those also. Thanks Darren, good job.

The last session of the day was Drawing Tips & Stuff by the overworked (but seeming to love every minute) Richard Doyle. This presentation was full of things that I will be able to apply as soon as I get back to work. I ended up with a page and a half of notes, which is a lot for me. My TIP OF THE DAY comes from this session: When you have a note that mistakenly got attached to a drawing view, in other words the note moves when the drawing view is moved, simply select the note, Ctrl-X, make sure no view is active and do a Ctrl-V. Your note is back and it is not attached to anything.

I'm excited and looking forward to tomorrow's session. I'll let you know how that goes.

SolidNest by SIGMANEST

SolidNest by SIGMANEST

The presentation of SolidNest went on as scheduled with Arie Brown arriving at our facility a few minutes before 9 AM. After we rounded up all the persons who needed to see the presentation and got the conferencing computer set up Arie got started with an overview of what we would be seeing.

Through the magic of the internet and conference calls Chuck Willis joined us and proceeded to show us all about SolidNest. Here is what I picked up on:

1. SolidNest is a Gold Partner with SolidWorks…what does that mean? This is taken from the SolidWorks Website:

Certified Gold Products – Over 50 fully-integrated add-on software solutions from SolidWorks and its Solution Partners provide single-window, fully associative integration. With these products, all software work together using the same design data and changes are updated automatic across all applications.

This all is true, the program runs inside of SolidWorks and it is associative with the parts that are to be nested and processed. At Byers now, the CAD / Engineering department (that would be Tim and I) model the parts, produce fully dimensioned drawings and save a DXF file of the flat layout of the part to be punched or laser cut. Once that DXF file is saved the association with the model is broken. Any changes made to anything makes it necessary to save a new DXF file and re-generate the necessary Numeric Control (NC) code needed by the machine tools. One slip up and we’re making scrap.

SolidNest eliminates the DXF file. Instead of feeding DXF files to another program that generates the NC code you actually process the flat layout configuration within SolidWorks. The program code for individual parts is generated or the code for an entire nest is generated. If a part is changed the nest shows rebuild errors and you know that the code must be reposted. This associative processing is what convinced us to take the time to watch the presentation. Based solely on what I saw I would have to say that this works great.

2. If you have an existing store house of legacy 2D DXF files you would have to load them into SolidWorks and do a base-extrude to add some thickness to be able to process them with the SolidNest program. At first I thought that this would be a drawback but upon further thought I realized that SolidNest is smart enough to know that only like thicknesses and materials can be nested on the same sheet.

3. Yes, a seat of SolidWorks is required on each machine that needs to run SolidNest…duh! But they will sell you an OEM version at a reduced cost (no details on price). I knew this would be true but and it bothers me not from a price stand point but from the point that we are putting the ability of making changes to our models into the hands of people that usually don’t have anything to do with SolidWorks.

4. The laser programming portion of the software was pretty much typical with some additions that made our resident chief laser programmer very happy. One was the sheet remnant library which looked to be great. All the standard stuff like grain direction locking and such is in the program. We could also tell from talking with Chuck that he knew the ins and outs of laser processing which also impressed us. Chuck went through the whole process of building a nest and generating the code and the reports.

5. We were also shown the punch portion of SolidNest and taken through that process as well. I’m usually the one who does the punch programming using our current software so I watch this with maybe more interest than the laser programming. The functionality was not much different from what I’m using now but the familiar interface would make it so much easier to work with. The way it handles forming tools was an improvement over our current software. It is important to note that all the features in a model are available within SolidNest so the original sketches used to model the forming tool is used to locate and orient the punch hit.

Of the five guys attending from Byers the consensus was that SolidNest is a product worth looking at when and if we decide to make a change. Chuck and Arie did a great job on the presentation, thanks guys. I think we all see the advantage of a common interface in which to work. The only drawback and disappointment to us is the fact that SigmaNest has nothing for 5-Axis programming; in fact after more research on our part it seems there is not a Gold Partner solution for 5-Axis laser programming. If anyone knows different please leave a comment.

Look for the next post tomorrow night as I will be reporting from the SouthEast SolidWorks User Workshop. If you’re there be sure to look me up.

SolidNest Demonstration

The ‘CAD guys’ here at Byers will be watching a sales pitch for SolidNest this morning. I update the blog later with what I learn…

Have a good day.

Notes from Matt's Presentation

Since Matt mentioned it I now feel obligated to post some of my notes from his presentation at last week’s user group meeting. I started to just scan the page I took the notes on but I can’t let just anyone see my ‘creative’ doodles until I get the copy write on them. I hope you all are not expecting much…

1. You can create planes within a 3D sketch. This is how you get the feature count down when competing in a modeling contest. This means you can create the geometry for multiple cuts / extrudes from different planes. Of course all the cuts or extrudes must go in the same direction. The example Matt demonstrated would have been 4 or 5 separate features (the way I model parts) compressed to one.
2. Turn on the View ports when sketching in 3D. Add the 4-viewport button to a toolbar. With the 4 view ports you can start a line in one view, click the endpoint in another view and etc. This a great visual aid when doing 3D sketches for routing.
3. To constrain a point or endpoint, dimension from the 3 standard planes.
4. Create a plane parallel to the screen view. Rotate the view to where you want it. Start a 3D sketch; draw 3 points at random on the screen. Constrain them to be coincident (3 points right on top of each other). Break the relations and then move the 3 points apart. Exit the sketch and create a plane using the 3 points. This works because when you move a point it only moves in x-y relative to the screen view, cool stuff.
5. I was able to ask my question: If 3 points can define a circle and 3 points can define a plane, why can’t a circle define a plane? This is possible in the real world but not straight up in SolidWorks. I would think it would be an option on the reference plane creation dialogue box. But Matt explained that you can do it with 3D Sketches. You simply start a 3D sketch, place 3 points on the circular edge where you want the plane and then use the 3-point plane creation.
6. Matt also talked about the difference between the old ‘layout sketch’ and the new SolidWorks feature, Layout Sketch.
7. We also discussed the mistake that we’ve all made when working within an assembly. Forget to change to edit part mode and just start sketching on a face and expect the resulting feature to be placed on the part at the part level. And if there was anyway to ‘move’ this feature to the part level. That’s all I can say about that!
   

There was much more covered in the meeting these are the things that made an impression on me. I might have gotten more out of it but my sinuses decided to go into convulsions in the middle of the meeting and I was struggling to maintain control with an over used handkerchief I just happened to have in my back pocket. What did you remember and will you share it by leaving a comment?

Base Extrude Sketch Visibility

Base Extrude Sketch Visibility

What’s going on here? Is this a new feature in SW2008 or just a bug and can we really tell the difference between the two?

On both of the installs here the visibility of the base extrude's sketch toggles on by itself. We will turn if off and then a few steps down the road it will back on again. This is really annoying when you have an assembly of several parts and they are all performing this feature (I’m sure it’s not a bug) seemingly at random.

My question to the readers of this is: Are we the only ones experiencing this handy new feature? If not, has anyone found a way to keep this from happening?

After last weeks user group meeting I was left with the feeling that I’ve been missing out on some functionality available in SolidWorks just because of my failure to embrace 3D sketches. I just started reading the SolidWorks Surfacing and Complex Shape Modeling Bible; it is my hope that when I get to Chapter 4 a light bulb will turn on and I’ll finally feel comfortable with the concept. How do you rate your 3D sketch comprehension? See the new poll…

3D sketches, Windows 7, and TGIF

First things first, as usual Matt Lombard was exceptional last night. He is the type of guy you want to hang around with just hoping that some of his expertise will rub off on you. The results of our first modeling contest dictated that our members as a whole needed help with 3D sketches, so on the fly Matt changed his hints & tips presentation into a seminar on 3d sketches. This guy is awesome; if he wasn’t married he’d be meeting my oldest daughter! Keep watching this space for more detailed info as I try to make sense of the few notes I took.

A few blogs ago I discussed Windows XP versus Vista. For all you who are still riding on the XP bandwagon (that would be me) you will want to read this:

Keep XP fresh until Windows 7 Arives

The computer and network upgrade process at Byers Precision is proceeding with some urgency now. In the last few weeks we have had a rash of computer and server issues that has led to at least 100 hours of lost work…that we know of. We’ve been in contact with Dell and had one of their 3^rd party evaluators out for site inspection. Our workstations were hand built about 4 years ago using what we thought were quality components, not top of the line mind you but highly rated for their price. But as with all things they break. We had all the info we needed to proceed with an order to Dell when the owner decides that maybe we ought to talk to HP also. The gentleman in charge of putting all this together was very upset to say the least.

Successful Blogging

Successful Blogging

I received the June PC Magazine the other day and it is another excellent issue. There are 501 tips in this issue that cover everything from cell phones to server setup. You will want to find and purchase this issue, I’m sure you will find something in it that will be of use to you.

Reading the section of tips concerning Blogging I came across tip # 366. Post early – and often. This tip goes on to say that while it’s not a great idea to post simply for the sake of posting, even the best-written blogs have trouble retaining readers with infrequent posts.

Okay, guilty as charged…I will now attempt to repent from my sinful ways. Keep checking this blog as it will be updated at least every other day unless something catastrophic happens to me (or my computers). Another tip says to ask questions in your posts so that the audience will be more apt to participate. So you can expect some questions and I will expect some answers. For example, here is question #1:

In SolidWorks 3 points can define a circle and 3 points can define a plane so why can’t a circle define a plane? Is this a geometry thing or a SolidWorks thing?

I don’t know the answer to this question hopefully someone out there can answer it. I had the need to do this yesterday and I had to fall back to measuring the distance from one of the standard planes to the circle and do an offset plane, it worked in this case but what if the 8 digits that the measure tool shows wasn’t enough?

Have a great day and I’ll see you tonight.

SOLIDWORKS USER GROUP MEETING TONIGHT

SOLIDWORKS USER GROUP MEETING TONIGHT

If you are in the Western North Carolina / Asheville area you will want to be at this meeting. Tonight’s presenter will be the highly esteemed Matt Lombard. The following BIO is from the back cover of his newest book, SolidWorks Surfacing and Complex Shape Modeling.

“Matt Lombard is an independent SolidWorks consultant. Because of his popularity with SolidWorks user groups and through his SolidWorks Web site and online forums, Matt has built a reputation as a go-to resource for everything SolidWorks. He also serves on the SolidWorks User Group Network committee.”

Check out the WNC-SWUG website for the agenda and directions. It might be too late to get in on the Bar-B-Q but if you show up before I'm done with my plate I'll be happy to share.

See ya'll tonight!

Hollywood’s Vision of Future CAD

Hollywood’s Vision of Future CAD

I’m not one who frequently goes to the movies but since my wife and I had a gift cards given to us we decided to catch a flick last night. We went and saw Iron Man. I’m not going to discuss the story go see it yourself. However there is one scene that I will mention as it does relate to CAD.

In the lead character’s workshop we see Tony Stark designing the second generation of the Iron Man armor. He is standing in front of a bank of computer monitors on which is displayed several windows of technical information in what appears to be some sort of design software. Tony merely points at a window showing a CAD model of the suit and drags the window from one monitor to another and finally to a large table like surface. I’m thinking, oh great here is the Microsoft tie in using their ‘Surface’ technology but then I see the model actually take on a 3D holographic appearance that Tony manipulates with his bare hands. In another scene Tony actually inserts his arm into one of these holographic models to test form, fit and function. WOW!

Even if you’re not a fan of movies based on comic books you might want to check out Iron Man just to see one vision of what CAD design software might look like in the future. Can anyone say SolidWorks 2010?

What's Going On Today?

After a rather hectic two weeks of constant projects needing attention I finally caught up and I now have a well deserved break. I still had a few things on my to-do list but I’m knocking them off one by one.

The first thing was to get Matt’s New Surfacing Bible ordered. If you haven’t ordered yours then get over to his site now!

Second thing to do was to talk to my boss about the upcoming Southeastern SW User Workshop. He was receptive to the idea of me going when I told him that I would be taking the wife for a weekend getaway and would pay for half the cost myself. Now I just have to figure out what’s to do in Columbia, South Carolina. I’m sure the wife will find somewhere to shop during the day when I’m in session. Now that’s a scary thought! And then there’s always the zoo which I hear is top notch. Does anyone have any recommendations for night life and a Saturday outing in the area? I still need to register and reserve the hotel room. I’m sure the wife will have some input on the hotel. It appears that nice hotels in the area are far and few between. This observation is based on the reviews I’ve read online, maybe someone has some personal experience in the area they will share.

If you’ve never been to a SW summit or a workshop then I urge you strongly to consider going to this one. The line up of speakers is awesome and I can say from personal experience that you will learn a few things to take back to your job that will make you more productive. Sell it this way to your boss and I’ll see you there…

Assembly or Not

Assembly or Not

Being a job shop we regularly receive CAD files from customers. Even though the customer has the best intentions what we usually get runs the gambit from laughable to utterly useless. Every now and then a situation merits mention…

One customer sends us SolidWorks assembly files, parts files and drawing files using the pack and go feature. These parts are usually a sheet metal part with some PEM hardware installed. You would think it would be a simple matter to load their sheet metal part, apply the ‘Byers’ sheet metal standards, unfold and BAM! We would have a usable flat pattern for our production. Dream on!

The same customer and even the same engineer will do things differently on each and every part. One time we will get an assembly file that contains the sheet metal part and the PEM hardware mated up nicely and then the next time we will get a part file with the PEM hardware extruded onto the sheet metal. This is easy enough to deal with but we still have to generate an assembly drawing for our contract review process and there is always an issue with the hole diameter for the associated PEM hardware.

Some of our customer’s are concerned about what they give us being useful but even though I’ve talked to this customer about the problem they refuse to adopt any kind of standard.

I guess I’m more perturbed when the problem files we receive have been modeled in SolidWorks. I find myself thinking, “Why don’t they take a training class at their VAR?” I tend to think that if they had the proper training then some of these problems would go away. Does one absolutely have to be trained by a SolidWorks instructor? No. Would it be to their benefit? Yes. Would it be to my benefit? Most definitely!