Mike Puckett's Blog

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. 

iPhone 2.0 Details

Completely non Solidworks related, but since I have one, might as well get some info out there about todays announcement about the new iPhone 2.0, who knows, maybe the headline alone will drive some hits to the site today from web searches.

Available July 11th will be the all new 2.0 version including features that users have been demanding since its release nearly a year ago:

GPS, 3G speeds, Third Party Applications, Full Microsoft Exchange Integration, and support for all major Microsoft Office Applications.  Its funny for all the fun Apple makes about Microsoft, they still realise that they have to support their major products to be successful.  Price point has also been lowered to $299 for the 16gb model, and $199 for the 8gb model.  However it was not clear weather thats over the counter pricing, or if those prices reflect subsidies given by the service providers.

Still absent are some basic functions that $49 phones have like picture messaging.

All the info you could stand about todays announcements can be found Here.

Solidworks 2008 Education Software

The fine folks in the education department at Solidworks have Released the 2008 version of their software.  The education site lists the terms to be able to purchase the education software as follows:

SolidWorks Student Edition Purchase Eligibility

The SolidWorks Student Edition 2007-2008 is available to degree-seeking students or full-time faculty members whose intended use is for personal learning or academic purposes.

A “degree-seeking student” is defined as a student who can confirm enrollment in a degree-granting program OR can confirm full-time enrollment in a certificate-granting program.  Do not purchase this software if you are not a degree-seeking student or faculty member.  Commercial and Institutional use is prohibited.

The education version is exactly like the full version, and comes in two versions:

SolidWorks Student Edition 2007-2008

Suggested retail price $99.00 USD

SolidWorks Student Edition with COSMOS 2007-2008

Suggested retail price $199.00 USD

The COSMOS edition comes with all the COSMOS products including non-linear, motion, and Flo!  Your only real limitation is that when you create a drawing or print anything out, it prints a watermark stating that its an education edition.  Those prices on the site are still for the 2007-2008 edition, but the prices haven't changed much over time.

The education department is headed up by Marie Planchard who is most well known for the Solidworks Tutorial Books her and her husband write.  The books are extremely well written, and are a definite must read for anyone just starting out using Solidworks.