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January 2008

January 31, 2008

Solidworks World Video Interviews

So even though 99.9% of the non-blogging press were shall we say, boring, the press room still had its highlights.  On one particular afternoon, Jeremy Luchini was being interviewed about the Solidworks Certification Program and he had a surfboard in tow.  I was asked (or more like prodded into) joining an interview with Nancy Buchino, Solidworks Public Relations Specialist, about the surfboard that had been signed by a few hundred CSWP's at Solidworks.  I guess they needed to bring down the level of attractiveness in the video, so here I am joining Nancy to explain a little about the surfboard.

CadJunky Interview

The Difference Of C.E.O.’s

Last week during Solidworks World I wrote about Solidworks C.E.O. Jeff Ray's personal interaction with his companies customers. Today I attended the Pacific Design Show in Anaheim. Among other CAD companies in attendance was Alibre. I had started noticing these little bags of popcorn prominently displayed all around the Autodesk booth:

Upon closer inspection, it was actually a bag with an Alibre logo on it. So off I headed in search of this Alibre. When I found the booth, I found the source of the bags, and decided to see what they had to offer that they felt it right enough to produce such interesting popcorn containers. As I was checking out their demo video, a gentleman walked up and started asking one of the booth attendees about their software. The popcorn, combined with a show special software price of $495, was certainly a draw. Anyhow, back to the guy. Having the benefit of anonymity, I listened in to the conversation and the questions being answered. There was one that really stuck out. The guy asked how it worked. So the guy from Alibre explained it this way. He said that Alibre was different from Solidworks and Inventor in one major way, Alibre was a parametric based system, and the others were not! He explained than in Solidworks and Inventor, you had to draw things to the exact dimension, and in Alibre, you sketched it, and then sized it. So after the guy took his free 30-day demo CD and walked away, I introduced myself to the guy from Alibre. Now this wasn't just any guy, he was Alibre C.E.O. Greg Milliken. So after telling him I was a Solidworks C.S.W.P., User Group Leader, and Blogger, I called him on his comment about Solidworks not being a parametric based system. Needless to say Mr. Milliken was a bit speechless. He tried to explain away his comments to the booth visitor by saying that wasn't what he really meant to say, yet he had said it, and the guy had walked off none the wiser. I next asked him to explain to me what benefits I would see by switching from Solidworks, to Alibre. Choosing his words carefully, he explained that Alibre wasn't meant to target power Solidworks users like myself, but to provide a similar software package for what he called the bottom of the pyramid. He knew he really couldn't slide any more sales pitch stuff my way, so he offered me his business card (just minutes after telling the previous guy he was out of cards), and asked me if I would like a demo CD to play with for 30 days. So I took my CD, and off I went.

The comparison I'm trying to make here is the drastic difference between someone like Jeff Ray, and this guy. While Jeff Ray may be a tiny bit on the stiff side, one thing that is evident is his passion for delivering a product that he can be proud of. He shows that he doesn't need smooth lines, or sales pitches to sell his product. He lets the product speak for itself. This guy from Alibre has obviously only tried to copy what Solidworks does, but he should also take a look at how to create a product that won't require tricky sales lines, or crafty popcorn containers to be successful. So Mr. Milliken if you somehow come across this article, I ask you this: how do you say "Alibre is the future of 3D CAD", and that "The guard is changing" in this blog post, but then tell me your product isn't aimed at a user like me? Maybe Alibre should stick to popcorn bags.

Anyhow, a few more pics from the show:

Where's popcorn? Can you spot the bag in the Autodesk booth?

It looks as if there were two guys at the show who thought Digital Prototyping was a new term from this century!

January 30, 2008

A New Way To Find Me

In an effort to be cool like CadFanatic, SolidSmack, Matt Speaks, Ricky Jordan, and Rob Rodriguez, I figured it was time to get an ultra easy to remember web address like those guys.  So starting today, you can easily find my blog at www.mikescadblog.com from any computer in the world (except maybe Iran and China).

So tell your friends, update your links, and continue stop by from time to time to follow my rants, raves, and reviews!  Big thanks to Patrick Cook, Web Guru extraordinair, for getting the logistics figured out for those of us that are not so savvy in the web inner workings!

January 29, 2008

A Post Solidworks World Gift

Just a week after the big show in San Diego, Solidworks has given its users another gift.  No, Microsoft didn't get jealous and decide to send out 4,000 Zune's in response to the iPod give-a-way.  Solidworks today released service pack 2.1 for 2008.  Just a few weeks after 2.0 was released this new mini service pack comes directly to everyone skipping over early visibility.  This is the third .1 service pack for 2008 following .1 and 1.1  Visit the customer portal to get your download going.

January 28, 2008

Solidworks Technical Summits Coming To A City Near You

If you want to get some top notch training in Solidworks, and you have $40 to spend, the Solidworks User Group Network Technical Summits are for you!  This year the 10 city 1-day tour kicks off in Orlando Florida on March 18th, and even includes an international stop in India (thats 1,574.68 Rupee's at todays exchange rate)! 

These 1-day events feature break out sessions on predetermined topics like drawings, photoworks, assemblies, and other including a regional session selected by an area user group leader to fit local wants and needs.  The sessions are presented by Solidworks experts, and rival what you would see at a Solidworks World session.  In fact many of the presentations are from there!

Visit the link above to get information and locations, and make a trip out to one, you will learn something, and thats guaranteed!

January 25, 2008

A Pleathora Of Postings

In the Saturday to Wednesday time frame I was at Solidworks World, I posted about 25 posts dealing with the event.  As most normal people have a life, and were not able to follow along with all the posts, it was suggested I do a round up of the more interesting posts into one-liners, and then a link.  So here we go, the links to the posts:

If you want to know when next years Solidworks World is, click Here

If you want to see a sneak peak at Solidworks 2009, click Here

If you want to know what the top 10 enhancement requests at Solidworks World were, click Here

If you want to see highlights from the offsite event at The Gas Lamp, click Here

If you want to hear the Lynn Allen interview, click Here

If you want to download the file of that interview, click Here

To see highlights of Tuesdays General Session, click Here

To find out who the chumps are, click Here

To find out what CSWP's do for fun, click Here

For highlights of Monday's general session, click Here

For pictures of Sunday nights reception, click Here

To get Jeff Rays take on the status of Solidworks, click Here

To read what John Hirshtick thinks the future of CAD involves, click Here

To see that bloggers know how to have fun, click Here

And finally...

To see why I may have a better chance of getting invited to Autodesk University, instead of Solidworks World next year, click Here

January 23, 2008

And So It Ends

As quickly as Solidworks World started, it has ended.  This year I had the chance to meet and interact with lots of fun people.  I want to take a few minutes to say thanks to some people:

  • Nancy Buchino and Laura Kozikowski from Solidworks-Thank you for your hospitality, and making sure I had everything I needed, you guys rock!
  • Kerri Dunne and the event team at Solidworks- You guys put on one heck of a show.
  • Richard Doyle from Solidworks- You keep us all inspired, and remind us all why we do it!
  • Solidworks Bloggers- I have never met a more passionate group of users anywhere.
  • Patrick Cook from Solidworks- Thanks for helping me get my word out there.

So thats it.  The parties are over, the drinks are gone, and San Diego says goodbye to over 4,800 attendees.  I got to meet so many users this week, and I didn't talk to one who didn't have a good time.  For those that followed along here, I hope I was able to make it feel like you were here, and possibly inspire some of you to make it next year.

For me reality restarts tomorrow morning with an all day customer meeting.  But like every year after Solidworks World, my batteries are recharged, and I'm ready for anything.

Solidworks World 2009 Dates Announced

Keep those dates open, Solidworks will take over Walt Disney World Swan & Dolphin Resort for Solidworks World 2009!

Solidworks 2009 Sneak Peak

So today was the day. At the doors of the hall waiting to get in at 8:15, was the biggest crowd of all three days. In talking with a few, they were all excited to hear about what they will see in Solidworks 2009. Let me say performance was the buzzword the past three days, and today they proved its coming.

Each year the Solidworks team puts on a little skit to preview the next release. This year was "Engineers In Crisis", a Dr. Phil type talkshow dealing with engineers that have slipped over the edge after not being able to deal with P.A.S. or performance Addiction Syndrome.

First up was Tom. He noticed that things started to get real slow on his CAD system a year ago. Let's see what the doctors prescribed to help Tom deal with the large assemblies he works with.

SpeedPak technology was first up. New sliders in the speedpak interface let Tom adjust the resolution if you will of how many parts of this 560 part assembly show up on his screen. Only what's left on the screen is what gets loaded into the assembly

Next up to help Tom out, sketch enhancements.

As Tom sketches, the geometry he is drawing is automatically being dimensioned, and once he drop the line, he instantly can type in the length he wants.

The new slot tool should help ease Tom's stress. A new tool that allows you to create rectangular, or radial slots, that automatically ca themselves.

The final area to help poor Tom, was a new sheet metal functionality, Solid To Sheet Metal"

You create a solid, and Solidworks will wrap it in sheet metal, and then unfold it!

But Tom needed one more treatment, plastic tools.

New lip and groove, automatic draft and shell features, should set Tom on the road to recovery. In fact Tom now has a new name, crazy, crazy for Solidworks!

Next up was poor old Bill. Too many steps in his day to day work made him uneasy, and Bill took his rage out on his ACME coworker Bob:    


                                                                                       

                                  

                              

                              

                              

That's exactly what you see. The ability to generate a complete BOM without the need to create a drawing. Full BOM functionality is there, at the assembly level.

You can even split it off to a separate screen. Again, full BOM functions are available as shown in the second picture.

But Bill also got tired of assembly created features not carrying down to the part level, 2009 now lets him choose assembly features like cuts to carry over to the part level.

Bill also needed new sketch editing tools.

Using the new stretch tool, Bill can grab geometry, and drag them, and the dimension will automatically update, but only when using this tool. He also has the ability to type in positive or negative numbers.

The last area of frustration for Bill is the toolbox. Let's see if any of these new features help him feel better.

Changing the configuration of a washer can be done on the fly:

With Instant 3D that was new in 2008, Bill can drag the length of his toolbox items to the available configs:

Last up was Joe who needed some changes to the user interface, and Solidworks 2009 delivers:

How about the new magnifier, this allows you to zoom in on a certain area, work without needing to constantly pan and zoom.

View orientation in 2009 is also easier, click one of the arms of the triad, and the model rotates to that view.

Working with dual units has never been easier. The measure tool (and the status bar at the bottom of the screen) now supports dual units:

The command manager can now be docked like a normal toolbar on any side of the screen:

The command manager is now shorter, allowing the placement of standard tool bars at the end of it:

Some more enhancements to cables and routing:

How about ribbon cable support?

Drawings are also getting some changes, and Joe could not be happier:

Multi leader bends, you can also drag and drop chamfer, and hole call outs to other locations:

And let's not forget how excited Joe is going to be about the new title block wizard, double ckick the title block, and have direct edit access to the customizable fields, and you can write the data back to the custom properties in the model:

So that wraps up Engineers In Crisis.

One last area that was covered was performance.

Those are staggering stats! Is it true? Well they opened up an assembly on two identical machines. One was running 2008, and the other was running 2009. Once open, they inserted the assembly to a standard 3-view drawing. 2008 took nearly two minutes to complete this task while 2009 did it in well under 30 seconds!

Solidworks World 2008 Top 10 Enhancement Requests

This year Solidworks chose to use some User Group Leaders to help announce the top 10 enhancement requests.

Since 2001, Solidworks has implemented 83% of the top 10 requests year after year.

So here they are:

Solidworks will now try to implement as many of these as they can in future releases. Number 2 and 6 got the largest applause.