Mike Puckett's Blog

How Many Seats Does It Take?

Tenlinks today Reported that Autodesk has announced it has sold it's 800,000th seat of Inventor since introducing the product nine years ago.  Impressive?  Definately, but consider the fact that at the time they launched, they had a HUGE Autocad user base to advertise their new software too.

How many seats of Solidworks are out there?  Thats been an unadvertised number for a couple of years.  The last official publicly announced number was 450,000 which was announced at Solidworks World in Las Vegas, back in 2006.  The number I have heard floating around in the past 3 months is that Solidworks has in the area of 750,000 seats out there. 

Rocking & Rolling In Southern California

Earthquakes are pretty normal for us out here, but its been quite a while since we had anything as big as we did today.  If you would like to follow along, we are tuned into: http://www.knbc.com/videostream/10954229/detail.html

The earthquake was centered about 15 miles south east from where I'm at, and it shook us pretty good.  Seemed like it lasted for a good 30-45 seconds.  Since the initial quake, we have experienced 4 additional aftershocks of 3.8 or bigger.  No damage here, and it doesn't seem as if the news helicopters can find any either.

A Month Full Of What's New In Solidworks 2009

Welcome Solidworks Express Subscribers. More Info On Solidworks 2009 Can Be Found At This LINK Every Day In August.

Starting Monday August 4th, and continuing everyday for the entire month of August, you can come to my blog to get a review of a new feature to be found in Solidworks 2009!  Be aware this will not include Saturday or Sunday however, because CAD is boring on the weekends!  Thats 20 new features.

Sure you could wait for the VAR roll-out presentations, or you could wait for the main stream cad media to put down the tea and muffins and pontificate about what they feel you should know, or you can tune into the blogs starting on Monday August 4th to get the real inside scoop from actual users perspective.

On Monday August 4th, the non-disclosure agreement that beta testers were bound by, expires.  That means that after that point, we can all freely discuss 2009 how we see fit without fear of being tracked down by the Solidworks legal team and given 100 lashes.

A good portion of the bloggers participated in the Beta program, and have no doubt been collecting information to write about.  As you will see with some of the new features, a few of them were dramatically changed during the Beta program based on the input of people in the forums.

So get your feed readers set, and get ready for the tide of 2009 info to start flooding in!

Solidworks World 2009 Site

The last week of July is typically the time when the Solidworks World website changes from the previous event, to the upcoming event.  Registration usually opens shortly after.  In preparation of this event, the Solidworks World website has been temporarily taken down, most likely while the new site is uploaded.  Here is a LINK to what the site was showing on the 17th via Google Cache (it appeared late last week when I visited the site), and here is what it is showing today:

So what does being the first to register for Solidworks World get you?  Technically nothing, but they used to announce your name on the main stage during the general session.  To keep track of the site yourself, bookmark www.solidworks.com/swworld and don't forget to start planning now!

EDIT 7/29/08: It seems as if the redirect to the old 2008 site has been fixed.  Normally when a new site is being uploaded, the redirect links will fail.  Its just a sign that something is being done in the backround to the site.  We saw this with the beta site just before its launch also.

Solidworks 2009 Beta Contest Points: Win A Dell Laptop With Only 16 Points!

So let's say you were only able to achieve 16 points in the beta contest.  What can that get you?  Well even though thats less then a tenth of the amount of the points of the overall winner, you actually have the chance to win the second highest valued prize. 

New in the beta contest are four random drawings.  The first level is for over 15 points which puts your name in a drawing for either an iPod Nano, or a Dell Precision 4300 laptop.  The second level is achieved at 26 points which will get you an additional entry into the drawing.  The prizes for the over 25 club are the same as the over 15 group.  So with 26 or more points, you have two chances to win one of the four drawing prizes.  Visit the customer portal to sign up and download Solidworks 2009 Beta 3 to join in the contest.

Time Is Running Out... Free CSWP Exam

As a Solidworks subscription customer, you have just a few days left to take advantage of the free CSWP test being offered to you.  Head over to the Solidworks Training and Certification Page and click the subscription customer link to get the code necessary to get your free test.

Solidworks 2009 Beta 3

The third installment of the 2009 beta program was released today in the customer portal. Unlike previous years, each beta period for 2009 has been a service pack instead of a full release. The Solidworks beta team has done a pretty good job staying on schedule with the original time line announced at the beginning of this years beta program.

Through the first two versions there have been a good amount of bug fixes, and quite a few new feature 'modifications' based directly from input users have contributed in the beta forums.

It's never too late to join, so head over to the customer portal to join, or to upgrade if your already participating.

Elvis Sighting

To help celebrate Disneylands 53rd Anniversary, Elvis showed up to perform. No sign of Walt Disneys frozen body as of yet.

Uncovering The Solidworks Beta Program

Because of endless end user license agreements, anyone participating in the Solidworks Beta program is pretty much prohibited from sharing any of the new features of the software until the first Pre-Release version is released.  Aside from the actual software side of the program is the discussion forums that serve as the meeting place for beta testers, support techs from Solidworks, VAR's, and anyone looking for more information about the beta program.

I recently had a pretty strange issue where I was basically unable to activate either of the two installs of beta that I was using (one on my desktop, one on my laptop).  I first posted my issue in one of the forums, and had some very good suggestions on how to fix it within a few hours.  After trying to work through the issue for a couple of days I received an email directly from Terry Mccabe at Solidworks who was going to make sure my issue was corrected.  After trying a couple of different things, Terry was able to get the issue resolved, and I am now fully activated on both computers (I promise the laptop install won't be used to give sneak peaks at a user group meeting)!  I greatly appreciate the attention my issue received, and the suggestions from the other users in the forum were a big help too.

I'm certain that having this venue to discuss things about Solidworks had a little something to do with the direct support I received, but if you browse through the forums you will see that I'm not all that special.  There are numerous threads in the forums where Solidworks employees have either started threads, or have become very involved in the discussion.  There are quite a few threads where Jim Wilkenson who is the head of the Solidworks User Interface has asked what users think about different features, or is asking for direct feedback on other areas.  Of course Jim isn't the only employee participating.  I have seen posts from the head of the sketching team respond to questions about the sketching interface, and have seen a few of the "COSMOS" guys chime in on relative questions.

Alot of attention has been drawn to software documentation, and users who feel it's lacking, or not sufficient.  There has been a discussion started by Solidworks asking what users expect in documentation.  No doubt this is the beginning of a drive to improve that area of the software.

Typically about half way through the beta program is when participation starts to drop off, but now is when it really starts to get fun.  As each version of beta is released, it becomes more and more stable, and the new features really start to shine.  In particular there is one new feature that a lot of users have 'magnified' to the point where the discussion surrounding how it should work has generated over 100 responses.  This is the Solidworks community directly affecting how this particular feature will eventually be implemented.

So if you haven't joined, there is still plenty of time to participate, at the very least I would recommend going to the forums and reading through the discussion forums to see if anything grabs your attention.

My iPhone Experiance

As I mentioned on Friday, I decided to do the whole launch day thing for the new iPhone. Arriving at 7am, I never imagined it wouldn't be until 1:30 pm that I would actually be on my way home! I met some pretty fun people in line, so that made the time pass a little quicker.

So was it worth the wait? Not really, but going to an Apple launch day event is one of those things that's fun to do at least once. As far as the phone goes, it's just about everything the first generation phone should have been. Apple was forced into the lesson that ultimately people are going to buy what they want, and not what they get put in front of their face. This is the same thing that many large companies go through. They set out on a bold new front, then fix the misshap on the next go around. Alot of people moving from solidworks 2008 to 2009 will definately see this as well.

The pictures are taken from this phone, and this post is being submitted via the new Typepad application that is available free in the iTunes app store. One of the pictures is a screen shot of my gps location inside Disneys California Adventure. The gps feature is new to this version of the phone. Although it ismt turn by turn navigation, there are a coiple of companies working on releasing an application that provides that functionality For anyone familiar with the park, the locator puts me at the king Neptune bar, which is exactly where I'm at! The other picture is taken looking out over the park from the bar.

So overall the phone is a large improvement, and as more and more applications become available for the phone, it will only get better. Now, who's working on a solidworks model viewer app to submit to Apple?