At 10:00 tonight I’ll be on an airplane heading to the east coast. I’ll spend the weekend with family before heading to Concord to get my first real glimpse at SolidWorks 2011. The only time I’ve seen it was at SWW back in January, so it will be interesting to see what they’ve come up [...]
Aug
27
Aug
16
Hidden Nuggets?
Most people are well aware of SolidWorks up front capabilities, i.e. creating 3D models. However, there are nuggets within the basic package of SolidWorks that some are aware of. Things like SimulationXpress, FloXpress or DriveWorksXpress. You can find these tools under, strangely enough, the ‘Tools’ drop down or on the ‘Evaluate’ tab on your Command [...]
Jul
14
Mechanical Mashup Contest
First, I should ask if you’ve heard of Mechanical Mashup. No? It’s another one of Ben Eadie’s ideas, he of SolidMentor and SolidJott fame. Mechanical Mashup is for the DIY’ers out there. From their ‘About’ page: This site is for you if…. -If you own something that you can’t wait for it to break so [...]
Jun
29
Forethought vs. Crap
I’ve been busy lately, super busy. I figure I’m averaging almost 60 hours per week here at my new job. Why you might ask? Because of the crap I’ve been trying to polish. I was brought in to replace a couple of engineers who just weren’t getting things done and, it turns out, what they [...]
Jun
03
DJO – Supporting athletes one knee at a time
If you watch College football, you’ve seen their products. If you’re a Chargers fan, you’ve seen their products. Bengals or Packers? Yup, you too. DJO, Inc. designs and produces state-of-the-art knee braces, among other things. 90% of NCAA Division I teams use them. Shawn Merriman, Mark Tauscher, Chad Clifton and Carson Palmer use them. What’s [...]
Feb
26
DriveWorks World 2010 – The Movie
No, that’s not a misprint. The incredibly intelligent, although slightly whacked, team over at DriveWorks are making a movie. Glen Smith, CEO and co-founder, admitted that the idea came to be whilst indulging in a drink or five one night after work. Once they’d made the commitment, there was no turning back. For those of [...]
Feb
09
3DConnexion steps it up
I’m a few days behind on this, but 3DConnexion has improved the driver for their 3D mice (mouses?) by automatically determining the optical center of rotation. I was part of the beta testing of this driver and I really like what they’ve done. Rather than defaulting to the origin, or having to select a particular [...]
Dec
08
SolidWorks Resources
The SolidWorks task pane. We’ve all seen it, right? Probably used it a time or two for drawing view insertion or to dig something up out of a design library. When was the last time you clicked on the ‘home’ tab and looked at what it has to offer? Granted, starting a new document, or [...]
Dec
07
AMV Steelworks
First, I owe an apology to Gabriele Meluzzi from Steelworks. Gabriele, mi dispiace. I took way too long to complete this review, especially after all of your patience. In a nutshell, this program rocks. While it took me a bit to muddle my way through, I really ended up liking it. The tutorials are pretty [...]
Oct
29
AMV SteelWorks
I’m going to end up having to do a couple of posts on AMV SteelWorks. There’s just a lot to cover on this particular SolidWorks Solution Partner’s software. Frankly, I’m quite excited to be trying out this particular product. After having gone through trying to create a steel-based structure last summer, I’m already wishing we’d [...]