An underutilized feature of SolidWorks by me is the “Pallet Forming Tools”. I have modified the ‘standard’ tools that ship with SolidWorks into the tools we have in our shop and in the modification process is where I have difficulty. We did take the available training at our VAR when we first switched over to SolidWorks but of course the current version of SolidWorks was 2001+ and I would suppose that a few changes have been made. But as I said I have modified some of the shipped tools into something we can use. The process is always trial and error. I make the changes I think need to be made and then insert the tool onto a part and see what happens. Here is the part that I have a problem with, if I see I need to make more changes and make them they are not reflected on the tool I already inserted. I have to delete the form tool and then insert it again. Am I wrong on this? Maybe this has been changed or maybe I just don’t know what I’m doing. I would think that somehow they be associated and update as such.
An update for anyone who interested in my weight loss attempt; I am now an official Weight Watcher Lifetime member. I reached my goal weight and maintained it for 6 weeks. Actually I’m having difficulty not losing any more weight… (I never thought I’d be typing that in my lifetime.) Was it worth it? I can say with a resounding YES it was. I feel much better, have more energy and don’t have the need to Lipitor or hypertension medication any longer. People will tell me that I’m looking good and I respond, “No I’m looking thinner…I’m still ugly!”
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Am I supposed to be writing for this Blog?
Am I supposed to be writing for this Blog?
No excuses, no explanation, suffice to say that I’m back now after an extended leave.
What’s bothering me today, the new IT department’s policies concerning administrator rights to my computer. Oops did I say ‘my computer’, I meant the computer that I’m attached to 9-1/2 hours a day five days a week.
A little background information is in order here. We all have shiny new workstations here at Byers. They are built to the hilt Dell machines with 4 GB RAM, fast SATA 2 drives and a mid-level Quadro video card. All this is connected to a ‘real’ Dell server with all the bells and whistles. During the install process I was given the administrator password so that I could get all the CAD/CAM software up and running on the machines in the engineering department. This involved fresh installs of SolidWorks and any other programs that we use in performing our jobs.
Everything was up and running and we were productive again and then I realized that I had forgotten to enable duplex printing on the OkiData printer. When I went to fix this problem I was informed by the computer that I must be logged in as the administrator. I then found out the password for this account had been changed and there was no way this information was going to be given to me.
I understand that there are users on our network who have no business with administrator rights. We’ve been down that road before, virus, malware and spyware being installed at the user’s spontaneous desire to click something in their web browser. But I’ve been an integral part of the migration to technology here. When I first started working here the company had recently acquired their first Numeric Control Punching machine. The programs had to be typed into a machine that punched a paper tape that was loaded into the machine controller. There was no CAD/CAM then. As one of the sheet metal mechanics on the shop floor it was my responsibility to manually draft out sketches of the parts in the flat so that the programmer could write the code on a yellow legal pad which was handed to one of the secretaries so that she could type the code into the paper punch tape machine.
When we finally did get our Applicon Bravo CAD/CAM system I was the one who of 3 persons who went through the training and the only one who actually caught on to the system. Not only did I do all the CAD work back then but I was also responsible for the system maintenance. The system was running VMS on Digital Equipment hardware. VMS makes all flavors of windows look like a piece of cake. I even wrote several programs in DCL (Digital Control Language) that managed the tasks of backups, restores and even file renaming of the DXF files to the 8.3 format which was needed by the machine controls.
I’m saying all this just to say that I really feel as if I’ve been ‘dumbed’ down. Heck, I can’t even delete unused icons on my desktop now! Forget about checking for new SolidWorks releases…I must be an administrator.
Yes, there was a problem here at Byers. There was unlicensed software floating around. The system we had for backing up our precious data was crap! People here were installing everything from NASCAR race day to Print Shop 1.0 with no control and no concern as to what was happening to the actual programs that were needed to perform their jobs. But to blanket all persons with the same restrictions is actually counterproductive to the persons who know how to do their job and how to adapt their computers to do it better and faster.
But if this is company policy then I will live with it. I will continue to do my job to the best of my ability with the equipment and software available to me. Will I be happy about it? I don’t think so…all these icons on my desktop are really bugging me!
Am I being a jerk about this? Let me know what you think. Are any of you trying to work under the same conditions? Let’s get some comments going!
No excuses, no explanation, suffice to say that I’m back now after an extended leave.
What’s bothering me today, the new IT department’s policies concerning administrator rights to my computer. Oops did I say ‘my computer’, I meant the computer that I’m attached to 9-1/2 hours a day five days a week.
A little background information is in order here. We all have shiny new workstations here at Byers. They are built to the hilt Dell machines with 4 GB RAM, fast SATA 2 drives and a mid-level Quadro video card. All this is connected to a ‘real’ Dell server with all the bells and whistles. During the install process I was given the administrator password so that I could get all the CAD/CAM software up and running on the machines in the engineering department. This involved fresh installs of SolidWorks and any other programs that we use in performing our jobs.
Everything was up and running and we were productive again and then I realized that I had forgotten to enable duplex printing on the OkiData printer. When I went to fix this problem I was informed by the computer that I must be logged in as the administrator. I then found out the password for this account had been changed and there was no way this information was going to be given to me.
I understand that there are users on our network who have no business with administrator rights. We’ve been down that road before, virus, malware and spyware being installed at the user’s spontaneous desire to click something in their web browser. But I’ve been an integral part of the migration to technology here. When I first started working here the company had recently acquired their first Numeric Control Punching machine. The programs had to be typed into a machine that punched a paper tape that was loaded into the machine controller. There was no CAD/CAM then. As one of the sheet metal mechanics on the shop floor it was my responsibility to manually draft out sketches of the parts in the flat so that the programmer could write the code on a yellow legal pad which was handed to one of the secretaries so that she could type the code into the paper punch tape machine.
When we finally did get our Applicon Bravo CAD/CAM system I was the one who of 3 persons who went through the training and the only one who actually caught on to the system. Not only did I do all the CAD work back then but I was also responsible for the system maintenance. The system was running VMS on Digital Equipment hardware. VMS makes all flavors of windows look like a piece of cake. I even wrote several programs in DCL (Digital Control Language) that managed the tasks of backups, restores and even file renaming of the DXF files to the 8.3 format which was needed by the machine controls.
I’m saying all this just to say that I really feel as if I’ve been ‘dumbed’ down. Heck, I can’t even delete unused icons on my desktop now! Forget about checking for new SolidWorks releases…I must be an administrator.
Yes, there was a problem here at Byers. There was unlicensed software floating around. The system we had for backing up our precious data was crap! People here were installing everything from NASCAR race day to Print Shop 1.0 with no control and no concern as to what was happening to the actual programs that were needed to perform their jobs. But to blanket all persons with the same restrictions is actually counterproductive to the persons who know how to do their job and how to adapt their computers to do it better and faster.
But if this is company policy then I will live with it. I will continue to do my job to the best of my ability with the equipment and software available to me. Will I be happy about it? I don’t think so…all these icons on my desktop are really bugging me!
Am I being a jerk about this? Let me know what you think. Are any of you trying to work under the same conditions? Let’s get some comments going!
Monday, July 7, 2008
SWUG meeting Thursday
WNC-Asheville SWUG meeting July 10th
See the website for details.
I’ll be doing a ‘very’ short presentation on FeatureWorks and then the evening becomes what Wes calls ‘Open Mouse Night’. If you have any cool tips or tricks be prepared to show them off. Bring your files on a flash drive or CD-ROM. If you’ve never been to a meeting this would be a good laid back meeting to attend. We always have food (usually pizza) and good conversation. Get to know the people in the Asheville area who are using the same CAD software as you and experiencing the same issues using it. There will be some VARs represented at the meeting but they are banned from making any sort of sales pitch but they do have answers to a lot of the typical questions that come up.
You might have noticed a theme change on the website. It is a work in progress as I’m creating some new graphics to go with the theme. But the good news is that things seem to fit better in the boxes that with the old theme. I’m no website designer by any means and I do it so infrequently that I have to re-train myself every time I do make a change.
Here is the graphic I want to use as the header:
See the website for details.
I’ll be doing a ‘very’ short presentation on FeatureWorks and then the evening becomes what Wes calls ‘Open Mouse Night’. If you have any cool tips or tricks be prepared to show them off. Bring your files on a flash drive or CD-ROM. If you’ve never been to a meeting this would be a good laid back meeting to attend. We always have food (usually pizza) and good conversation. Get to know the people in the Asheville area who are using the same CAD software as you and experiencing the same issues using it. There will be some VARs represented at the meeting but they are banned from making any sort of sales pitch but they do have answers to a lot of the typical questions that come up.
You might have noticed a theme change on the website. It is a work in progress as I’m creating some new graphics to go with the theme. But the good news is that things seem to fit better in the boxes that with the old theme. I’m no website designer by any means and I do it so infrequently that I have to re-train myself every time I do make a change.
Here is the graphic I want to use as the header:
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