Mike Puckett's Blog

New Features For Certification Exams Released

This weekend, version 7.0 of Virtual Tester was released online.  Virtual Tester is the software that manages and delivers all of the SolidWorks Certification Exams.  The system is an online tool that manages the entire database of nearly 40,000 certified SolidWorks Users around the world. 

The first change is how certified users log into our system.  The online Certification Accounts page has been combined into the SolidWorks Certification Center page.  You can access your account by using the login button in the upper left corner of the page:

One of the biggest enhancements comes in the tester software itself.  As we all know PC's can crash from time to time from a variety of reasons.  Unfortunately having a computer crash during a times online exam is not very good.  Virtual Tester 7.0 features recoverable exams.  If your in the middle of an exam and your computer  crashes, the virtual tester system automatically pauses your exam online and allows you to pick up right back where you were in terms of the time remaining.  This is accomplished by letting the online server track your exam time, instead of the tester client that is running locally on your machine.

Another new feature is Portrait mode.  What portrait mode allows you to do is to reshape the tester window to fit the edge of the screen much like the SolidWorks tutorials do:

As you resize the window, virtual tester automatically resizes the components, and moves items around to allow for a cleaner presentation.

There are a variety of other behind the scenes enhancements as well that will make the system grow along with our ever growing group of certified users.  Take some time to check out the SolidWorks Certification Center to see all the tools available.
 
 

Want to save $300 on SolidWorks World, and attend the CSWP Party?

If you have ever attended, want to attend, or are attending SolidWorks World, now is the time to save up to $300 off the price of admission. From now until October 29th you can get in on the early bird special and get $200 off the admission price. In order to get an additional $100 off, all you have to do is be a Certified SolidWorks Professional (CSWP), or pass the CSWP exam before that date. You can get more information about becoming a CSWP at the SolidWorks Certification Homepage.

But there are other benefits to being a CSWP at SolidWorks World as well. The biggest perk is the private CSWP party held on Monday night at the conference. At SolidWorks World 2011 in San Antonio the event will undergo a bit of a change familiar to those who have attended in the past. What will be different this year is that the event will begin a half an hour earlier then it has in previous years. Also from 6:30 to 7:15 the event will be a private event for Certified SolidWorks Experts (CSWE) and then the event will open up to CSWP's at 7:15 and go until 9:30 that night. The private CSWE event will feature exclusive door prizes, shirts, and other surprises.

As far as theme goes, we are lining up a couple of very cool SolidWorks customers whose products we will feature prominently through out the night, and will also make sure everyone goes home with a door prize as well.

What's the theme? Well give us a little more time to get everything finalized and watch for further announcements about it here in the coming weeks. In the mean time get yourself registered and expect to have a good time at the wildest 3D CAD conference in the west!

Some Lightning Pictures

Totally not SolidWorks related, but I used to use this blog for personal stuff as well as SolidWorks stuff, so I thought I would bring back some personal stuff.  

These are some pictures I took the other night of a storm that was passing through the Las Vegas valley.  I live just a couple of blocks from the south west edge of the Las Vegas Valley, so it's very dark in that area.  The storm was headed to the north, so I got some pictures before it blew through.  Enjoy.

  

   

To capture these pictures I had my Nikon D70 sitting on a tripod next to my truck.  I was using the kit lens (18mm-70mm) to take the pictures.  I was sitting along side a road that was pretty much pitch black.  I opened the shutter and let it sit open until the lightning struck.  Once that occurred I closed the shutter and repeated the process. The hardest part of trying to capture lightning on camera is to know where to point the camera.  In the third picture I had just panned it to the right and was barely able to still get the big bolts on the left side of the picture.

Also I know it's been a while since I posted here but that's because I have been doing most of my posting over on the SolidWorks Corporate blog.  I'm going to start posting to both but will keep fun personal stuff like this, to this blog only.  Hope you enjoy the pictures.  And thanks to Matt West for the new look!