Mike Puckett's Blog

Don't Take My Word For It...

I have written several times on here about the benefits of participating in the online Solidworks Community.  Devon Sowell posted an interview today with a guy named Gary Swingle who happened to be the 50,000th person to join the Solidworks Online Forum.  Reading the interview, there were a couple of points that really stood out to me that re-enforces exactly where the Solidworks Community has grown from.  This is pretty good evidence that using these resources that are available to everyone, is a great thing.

Head over and read the entire interview, and I think you will see lots of similarities of how you got started.  Like Gary, I too pretty much had to learn Solidworks on my own, and like Gary, I also have discovered lots of ways to do things differently by reading posts in the forums.  And if you haven't already done so, head over to the forums, and join in on the discussion.

Free Plastic Filling Analysis Software?

Simpoe-Mold has announced that they will be offering a free 'basic filling simulation' program called e-Simpoe at the end of July.  Here are a few quotes from the press release:

"e-Simpoe, although a free version, will provide basic filling simulation functionalities, including melt front animation, to take into account manufacturing constraints early into the design stage of plastic parts.

e-Simpoe directly fits into SIMPOE strategy to develop and democratize design validation for the mainstream MCAD market.

Moreover, e-Simpoe can be also used as a viewer  to consult simulation results performed with any of the commercial SIMPOE softwares, whether they are filling, packing, cooling and/or warpage simulation results.

e-Simpoe will be  delivered with an on-line tutorial and on-line help, and will benefits from the same user-friendly and intuitive interface as Simpoe-Mold."

Simpoe-Mold produces a suite of three plastic filling simulation programs, one of which runs directly inside of Solidworks.  Simpoe-Works which is the Solidworks add-in runs as a tab on the feature manager inside Solidworks.  I had a chance to play with this software at Solidworks World 2008 in San Diego.  As a former (and recovering) Moldflow user, it was nice to see an easy to use, and easy to understand plastic filling program.  We are contemplating replacing our Moldflow license with Simpoe Works in the near future.

If you would like to participate in the beta for the e-Simpoe product, send an email to: beta-simpoe@simpoe.com, and they should be able to get you set up.  I'm sending in my request today!

Help Shape The Next Big Online Engineering Community

Solidworks released today, the second part of a survey they are conducting on what community means.  The second part seems to focus heavily on on-line content like forums, blogs, and social networking sites.  It comes across as a survey meant to help shape the 'perfect' on-line community.  Is Solidworks trying to create a one-stop on-line engineering community site?  Lets all contemplate a combination of Myspace, Youtube, Flicker, Solidworks Forums, and blogs, all in one place.

One of the survey questions asks what blogs you frequent, so I am sure you will give me some help there!  To complete the survey, Visit The Survey Site, but allow yourself about 10-15 minutes to complete, its a long one!

Solidworks 2009 Beta Rolls On...

With the Beta 1 period just about half way over, the beta forums are full of lots of discussions about new functionality, bug fixes, and lots of suggestions for further enhancements.  More evident this year seems to be the direct interaction of various Solidworks employees in the forum discussions.  One new piece of functionality in 2009 has generated a thread with well over 100 replies where the director of user experience Jim Wilkinson has been discussing how users think this new function should work.  Recommendations made in the thread, and other threads are already starting to make their way into the Beta 2 release which should be in early July.

If you have chosen not to participate, I encourage you to go read through the forums to familiarize yourself with the new changes to 2009, and to see how they are progressing.  The feedback you can provide will only serve to create a better product that I will use.  Also, now is still a good time to join in the testing and contribute to the next release of Solidworks!  Log in to the customer portal to get all the information.

Gas Price Relief, Two Tacos At A Time....

Pretty much 100% non-solidworks related, but here ya go:

http://www.jackinthebox.com/twofreetacosday/

Enjoy your free tacos on Thursday!

Is a User Group Worth It?

I personally owe my involvement in the Solidworks Community to the User Group that I started nearly 3 years ago.  Because of it I was offered the opportunity to start this blog, have networked with hundreds of interesting people, and have made lots of inside contacts at Solidworks itself.  So for the everyday Solidworks user, how worth it is it for them to spend up to three hours of their time attending a local User Group meeting?

Dan Bovinich is the head of the Eastern Michigan SolidWorks User Group (EMSWUG).  At their last meeting at the end of May, Dan conducted a survey of the people that attended the meeting asking them what they thought of the presentations, and then asked for general comments.  One thing to note is that this was an anonymous survey, so these were pretty candid answers.  Here are screen shots of the survey results in response to that nights presentations provided by Dan:

The third image is of the survey results of why people actually attend the meeting.  If you look at the leading answers, its interesting to see that people are genuinely going mainly for the information, and not the food or the prizes:

Based on those results, if I was an everyday user, I would be extremely tempted to attend the next meeting.  Now in case your not in Eastern Michigan, there may be a group closer to you.  Just head on over to the Solidworks User Group World Wide Directory, and you can find one near you.  If there isn't one close, then why not give it a try and start one of your own?  More information on that can also be found on the Solidworks User Group Network site.

Solidworks 2008 Service Pack 4.0 Available; Getting Bit By The Installation Manager

Service pack 4.0 for Solidworks 2008 became available last night in the customer portal on the Solidworks website.  Along with a laundry list of fixes, there is supposed to be improvements in overall performance.

One area that still has some issues however is the installation manager.  Now either I'm a gluten for punishment, or I am just to trustworthy, but each time a service pack comes out, I git the installation manager a chance, and it always lets me down in some way.  I then end up downloading just the raw update for Solidworks, and the other add-ins get left behind.  This morning was no different.  Let me walk you through the process.

So first off I choose the installation manager and off I go.  Notice the message at the bottom of the screen highlighted below in red?  Anyone know where that documentation resides?

Once the installation manager finishes downloading (which it does for every service pack) I choose individual installation.

Alas I see something new.  instead of downloading some huge file, the installation manager can download what it needs and use the DVD as a source for all the other files.  Sweet!  Let me dig out my service pack 0 DVD and get one step closer to service pack nirvana.

So finally they got it right and things are good.  I am ready to download:

So approximately 58 minutes later, the download finishes and the installation begins.  Like the screen above asks, the 2008 DVD is in my drive, waiting to assist in getting me to the new service pack.  Now look at that screen shot one more time.  Notice it doesn't say that I need a particular 2008 DVD in the drive? 

Well upon starting the installation, it checks my DVD and discovers that its a service pack 0 DVD and it asks me to please insert the service pack 3.1 DVD so the installation can continue!

Now unless Solidworks is going to send out new DVD's to all their customers after each service pack, this method simply isn't going to work for anyone.  Besides, Al Gore and his new found environmental buddy Barrack Obama may have an issue with such a vast waste of resources.

So when you go to upgrade to service pack 4.0, make sure you have the correct DVD if you want to use this method of upgrading, if not, do it the old trusty way and download the raw file.

Solidworks 2009 Graphics Card Compatibility

With the release of Solidworks 2009 Beta this week, the Solidworks graphics card compatibility site was also updated.  Added to the mix was early certification results for ATI and nVidia cards.  This year is nothing like last year where the adoption of a new shader model by Solidworks knocked out a lot of current cards people were using at that time.  Chances are if you have a certified card for 2008, you will be OK for 2009, but may need a driver update.  Below are the nVidia and ATI cards as of today.  Of course graphics cards certification is always ongoing, so if yours isn't listed, it may be soon.  For other brands, you can visit the Solidworks Graphics Card Site.

Solidworks By Any Other Name, Is Still Solidworks

*Disclaimer* The question of wheather posting this information breaks any beta rules is not very clear.  In fact there was some discussion as to wheather or not it was, and the discussion was never resolved.  So I figure since this information is available in the customer portal, and in the What's New in 2009 document that was linked to on other blogs, its fair game.  Besides, what marketing person wouldn't want people to start hearing this stuff asap?

In a move to align the ever growing product offerings by Solidworks, the suite of 2009 products will see a renaming of products to hopefully make things more simple to understand.  Among the most notable of the changes is the change of the COSMOS name to Solidworks Simulation.  Infact all the products offered by Solidworks have the Solidworks name in their respective names. Here is a rundown of the new names:

Solidworks 2009 Beta Update 6-10-08

Well the Beta pages are back up as of this morning, and the download link takes you to the download center.  There isn't a 2009 Beta file listed yet, so stay tuned, I would imagine it will appear shortly.

UPDATE 11:30am PST- The 2009 Beta file for Windows XP, & Vista 32 Bit and XP 64 bit are now available via the download center.

I have received a number of comments and emails asking me direct questions about functionality inside of Solidworks 2009.  I have to say that no matter how much I would like to share with everyone all the new stuff, I simply cannot do it due to license and non-disclosure agreements.  The best piece of advice I can give you is to participate in the program yourself, and explore the new stuff.  At the very least, download the What's new document and reading that will give you a good overview.  I will try to release stuff that doesn't fall under those agreements, and from time to time we get bits of information that we are told can be released.