Jeff's Tool Shed

I remember when I first saw SolidWorks back in about 1998. I had just become part of the Technical Publications team at Genie, charged with illustrating and writing parts manuals. At the time, the illustrations were created in some convoluted process that included AutoCAD, CorelDraw and an EPS converter. I happened to walk by one of the design engineers, saw him working with SolidWorks and wondered why we couldn’t created the illustrations from it. When I asked some of the "old timers" from Tech Pubs about it, I was told that you couldn’t get a true Isometric view from SolidWorks and "we’ve always done it this way". Well, that last part is what got me started on SolidWorks. I hate that answer. Plus, I knew that you could get pretty much any view you wanted from SolidWorks. Much to the chagrin of the aforementioned "old timers", I illustrated my first manual completely from SolidWorks drawings. Last I heard, all the manuals at Genie are now done that way.

Fast forward to present day. As I wrote some weeks ago, I’m no longer working for a reseller. As a matter of fact, I’m my own boss now. An opportunity fell into my lap and I started my own business (JRM Consulting & Design, Inc. – for those of you wanting to know). The company I’m working for saw a potential for SolidWorks to do some great things for them and took the leap and purchased a few seats. That’s where I come in, along with another consultant. While they had an inkling of what SolidWorks can do, we’ve shown them even more. The coolest thing for me is how enthralled they are by the power and versatility of SolidWorks. Whoever initially showed them SolidWorks must have only scraped the surface. Hell, we’ve only scraped just below the surface and these guys look like a group of kids on their first visit to Disneyland. Not that I’m complaining. It’s because of their excitement that I spend 4 days a week away from home working.

What’s my point? The people I’m working for have been in, and around, engineering for decades and are just now taking the leap to 3D. All it took was one person to show another person the power of SolidWorks for it to happen. It seems to me that there is a very small segment that truly can say 2D is all they need. The rest of the engineers, designers, drafters, etc, that haven’t made the leap just need the right person to show them. Are you that person, or do you still need to make the leap?

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