Jeff's Tool Shed

To my loyal readers, I apologize for the lack of content lately. I was laid off a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been utilizing the time as a vacation. Ok, so vacation may not be the correct term. I’ve been working around the house and taking care of various odds and ends that I’ve let pile up.

I do have some reviews of various partner products coming up in the near future, so keep an eye out for those. In the mean time, if you have any questions I might be able to answer, or review suggestions, email me and I’ll see what I can do.

Hey you! How would you like some top-secret information on increasing SolidWorks performance? I knew you would, and I’m going to point you towards the people that know. AMD and ConnectPress bring to you Allen Bourgoyne, a graphics industry veteran, who will present tips and tricks on getting more out of SolidWorks.

Where is this all going to happen? Right here on your computer! July 21st at 10am PT (1 pm ET). Simply click here and sign up for the webinar.

Well, are ya? If so, I’ve got just the thing for you!

Desktop Engineering is looking for designers, inventors, products or companies who are creating products that will impact our lives now and in the future. You can go to DE’s site here, or check out the press release:

DESKTOP ENGINEERING® CALLS FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR
2009 DESIGNS THAT WILL CHANGE THE WORLD CHALLENGE

New Awards Honor Pioneers of World-Changing Innovation

DUBLIN, NH – June 29, 2009 – Desktop Engineering (DE) magazine, the largest circulated media brand focused on upfront technologies that drive the product design/development process, today announced it is now accepting submissions for its 2009 Designs that Will Change the World Challenge. Entries will be accepted today through August 17, 2009. There are no entry fees for submissions.

Designs that Will Change the World honors inventors, innovators, products, and companies creating products or processes that will have a major impact on our lives and future generations. Categories for submissions are Design, Simulation/Analysis, Rapid Technologies, and High-Performance Computing. Designs with top honors will be profiled online and in the December issue of DE magazine.

“These awards bring well-deserved recognition to engineers, designers, and innovators who take on major problems and develop solutions that not only change the world but make things better for future generations,” said Steve Robbins, executive editor and CEO of DE. “We are continually amazed by the engineers who are on the frontlines of changes driven by today’s economy, environment, industry, agriculture, and consumers. Designs that Will Change the World will spotlight breakthrough developments and the talent that makes them happen.”

Entries should affect true world-changing developments in one of 4 categories

• Design — Use of design software including 3D-MCAD, visualization, 3D modeling to create the design.
• Simulation/Analysis — Use of specific analysis and/or simulation software used to create the design.
• Rapid Technologies — A design using prototyping, rapid manufacturing, and/or reverse engineering as a significant aspect of the design process.
• High-Performance Computing — How HPC is used to create the world-changing design.

Judging and Recognition

Designs that Will Change the World provides a platform for the world’s best innovators to earn well-deserved honors from a preeminent panel of experts with deep experience in innovation and design. On top of the panel of experts, DE readers will participate in the process of selecting First, Second, and Third prize winners.

Designs and innovations chosen as most notable will earn the right to use the Designs that Will Change the World logo in advertising, marketing materials, and packaging. DE will promote each honoree in print, online, and through our award-winning blogs.

Submit Your Design

To submit your design for consideration or to download 2009 Designs that Will Change the World rules and eligibility, please visit http://www.deskeng.com/changetheworld/ or contact Steve Robbins at steverobbins@deskeng.com for additional information.

About Desktop Engineering Magazine

Desktop Engineering is based in Dublin, NH. For over 14 years, DE’s editorial mission has focused on delivering technology information and solutions in the areas of design, simulation, and rapid technologies that help design engineers and engineering management bring better products to market faster and at lower overall costs.

CADFind, created by Applied Search Technology Ltd, is a recent addition to the SolidWorks’ Solution Partner family and a winner of Desktop Engineering’s 2009 Reader’s Choice Award. What makes CADFind so cool is that it not only will search through your 3D data, but your 2D data as well.

Let’s say you need model of a widget, and you know that Larry (the jerk who is presently vacationing in the Bahamas) already modeled one up, but you can’t find it because Larry just can’t seem to conform to the company’s naming convention. You can either remodel it (which, given Larry’s modeling abilities might not be a bad idea) or you can wait for Larry to return from vacation. Or, you can use CADFind. Just create a simple model, or sketch, that represents the general shape of Larry’s long-lost widget, click a button, and CADFind will find all the models and drawings that are similar to it. No need to know the name or part number, just the part’s general shape.

How does CADFind do it you ask? It codes the geometric properties of your models, assemblies and drawings (AST defines it as pre-processing) and creates a database of the information. Then, when you find yourself wishing all sorts of pain on Larry, you can create your sketch or model and let CADFind do the searching for you. Naturally, there is some front end work that would have to be done for all this magic to happen. This is where I started scratching my head. While the copy I got came with its own catalog of parts, I wanted to test with my own. I could easily upload a part, but not multiple parts. After digging around, I finally emailed CADFind so they could point me in the right direction. Turns out that the right direction is to send them your your parts/assemblies/drawings and they’ll create the catalog for you. I know, I was a bit taken back by this so I sent off another email to find out why a customer, with thousands of files, would have to undertake such a tedious process. Here is the response I received:

You are correct that uploading or forwarding thousands of part files to us can be a tedious process but it is always the case that setting up the system properly will take effort and organisation.  Of course it is possible for us to create the catalogues on a company’s own computers if they prefer – we can do it either in person or using remote access.  If we manage this process then it allows the company to contract for a fully operational system rather than just purchase an item of software.   As part of that process we normally run a series of performance acceptance tests, optimise/tailor the code to the company’s product range and suggest a suitable catalogue structure.  Once these initial catalogues are setup the company then adds new or modified parts as their designers create them and we have no further direct involvement.

If someone was keen to create their own initial catalogues then we could supply a version of the system that does allow batch coding (as is standard for the 2D and GT versions) but we do warn people that our experience is that SolidWorks may hang periodically and unpredictably – the interval varies but the range lies between 400-2000 parts.  We have not been able to identify any obvious cause for this and the issue has been evident in all the versions since we began experimenting with the system in 2004.   This problem does not occur with our stand alone or 2D versions of CADFind when long runs of over 40,000 parts have been completed without difficulty.  We have also tested the catalogue capacity to over 200,000 parts when the system performs normally, albeit with rather slower searches.

Even with that one (major) drawback, CADFind could prove invaluable to a company that is laden with decades of legacy data. After CADFind has processed and catalogued all those files, being able to find what you’re looking for won’t end up as a hair-loss situation. New employees would benefit greatly where their product knowledge would be lacking.

Personally, I actually liked it. While the searches seemed to occasionally bring up random parts, along with the pertinent ones, overall it’s pretty impressive. Had I had it back when I was with HySecurity, my life would have been much easier during the whole “2D to 3D conversion” phase we went through. Being able to search for a shape, versus what someone thought the part number was, would have been oh so much faster.

I’ve mentioned Fisher/Unitech’s “No Engineer Left Behind” program a couple of times in posts about the SolidWorks Stimulus Plan. However, these guys need to be recongnized as what I think is the most customer-centric SolidWorks VAR.  As mentioned in Desktop Engineering online, Fisher/Unitech is extending their program in conjuction with the SolidWorks Stimulus Program. I would have thought other VARs would have jumped onto this bandwagon by now, but I haven’t heard of any others extending themselves the way Fisher/Unitech has. If you ask me, now is a perfect time to be building relationships with the masses of engineers who have become unemployed lately. At the very least, the word of mouth advertising would certainly help out, especially for those VARs with a less than stellar reputation for customer support.

So, to the whole team at Fisher/Unitech, I applaud you. If I had the means, I’d buy you all a round of drinks too. You guys have raised the bar on customer support.

Shapeways, the first online consumer co-creation community is proud to announce a great opportunity for all its community members as well as to anyone that is interested in doing 3D printing. One of the most important promises that Shapeways made when they first launched last year was to make 3D printing affordable to everyone. They’ve followed on their promise, offering all their different kinds of materials at unprecedented prices. Today Shapeways is proud to announce today that their most popular material, White, Strong and Flexible is now 10% cheaper. This is not a temporary discount but a permanent discount!

By lowering the price of it’s best selling material, Shapeways is delivering on its promise to make next-gen products available to everyone and allowing anyone to experience how unique personalized production is. As demand for materials increase, Shapeways will continue to bring the highest quality and the lowest prices to consumers.

Do you enjoy talking to yourself? Are you like me and find that it’s the only way to have an intelligent conversation? On top of all of that, do you use SolidWorks? If you’ve answered yes to these questions, Xpresso may just be your cup of tea. Xpresso…cup of tea. Ok, c’mon, that was a little funny, right? Xpresso is voice recognition software for SolidWorks. That’s right, now you have a good excuse to annoy your cubicle-mate. You’ll actually be working while talking!

Voice recognition has been in development for 30 years by various groups and, honestly, it’s still in need of some work. After installing Xpresso, you need to activate the add-in and then set up a profile. As simple as it sounds, it was a daunting task for me. I suspect it was a combination of my less than excellent microphone, coupled with my slight accent. Whatever the case may be, it took me 20 minutes to get through the profile setup. You simply read the phrases and as you do, the words highlight so you know the software is recognizing what you’re saying. (A side note: I’d love to see Ricky or Brian use this with their southern drawls. Their hard drives would probably freeze up.) While it’s a necessary step to being able to use Xpresso, it goes to prove that voice recognition still needs some work.

Here’s where the fun begins. Assuming you’ve plugged in your microphone and done the profile set-up, simply saying “start listening” nudges Xpresso into action. You now have a slew of commands to work with. Like SolidWorks, only the commands that are available during any process will be active. All told, there is somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 commands total. Everything from ’sketch’ (which creates a new sketch) to ‘Angstroms’ (changes the units to Angstroms). You can open up any of your active add-ins, save what you’re working on or any other command you’d normally click on. You can see the complete list of available commands here.

You can change the commands lines as well. Instead of “start listening”, maybe you want to say “wake up”. You can edit the command text to do just that.  Remember, it’s voice recognition. Make Xpresso your own.

Here’s the fly in the ointment, for me at least. Unless you have a really good microphone, aren’t self-conscious, or just don’t give a damn, you’re going to end up feeling foolish talking to yourself. Granted, if you work alone it wouldn’t be a big deal and you’ll see a modest increase in productivity. However, if you’re in a room full of other people, someone is going to end up shooting paperclips at you.

I think Xpresso is pretty cool technology. I’m just not overly convinced of its usefulness in a room full of people.

Once again, I’ve stumbled across something that caused me to come to a screeching halt and write a quick post.

Check this out. This, in my opinion, is friggin’ cool:

Do you see that? SolidProfessor right there in your Task Pane. Don’t know how to create an extruded cut? Type it into the search field and, voila!, you have a video right there to watch. I went digging around on SolidProfessors website, looking for the info regarding this gem. All I found was a little blurb under “Key Features” on this page. It seems to me that this is something that those guys should be shouting from the rooftops. At the very least, it should be displayed more prominently. This is going to make training for surfaces so much easier for me!

Yes, you have to have purchased SolidProfessor. As I’ve said before, though, I think SolidProfessor is worth the money. This nifty feature only underlines that sentiment.

I know, I know, I’m easily amused. I still think this is friggin’ cool though.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago (see this post) the fine folks at SolidProfessor hooked me up with their 2009 suite. Where I already know how to use SolidWorks, and I went through their 2008 stuff not too long ago, I decided to approach their 2009 offering a bit differently. I enlisted my 15 year-old son, Nico, to go through the 3D Skills portion. I figured if he could learn the basics of SolidWorks via SolidProfessor’s tutorials, that would speak pretty well for them. I mean, c’mon, we’re talking about a teenager here! It doesn’t take much to distract one. A pretty girl on TV, some (c)rap song playing, innumerable text messages; you get the idea.

I’ve been watching Nico as he’s been going through the lessons and he hasn’t looked up once. He also hasn’t called me over to explain anything. This, in my opinion, says a lot about how well SolidProfessor explains the lessons. He completed the lessons, and not too badly for a first time user of both SolidWorks and SolidProfessor. It wasn’t perfect, but how could you expect it to be? In talking to him about it, there was some terminology that he didn’t fully understand, but was able to figure out what he needed to do. He’s a gamer, not a CAD jockey. Nonetheless, I think he, and SolidProfessor, did a good job. If I can, I’m going to see if he’s willing to give the Core Concepts section a try.

Next up for me, some of the advanced lessons. First one I’m going to tackle is Advanced Surfacing. I don’t have much experience with surfacing, so I’m hoping to learn a lot.

Well, if you are, Surfware has just opened up a demo and training facility in Camarillo, California.  Check out their press release:

Camarillo, CA – February 23, 2009 — Surfware, Inc., developer of SURFCAM® Velocity CAD/CAM systems Powered by TrueMill®, today announced the opening of the Surfware Demo and Training Center in Camarillo, California.

This state-of-the-art facility will serve many functions. It will be a multi-media center where live demonstrations of TrueMill and SURFCAM will be filmed and made available on the Surfware website, YouTube and other communication outlets.

The facility will host live webcasts, where people around the country and the world can view real-time demonstrations of using TrueMill for the high speed cutting of titanium on a Haas machine.

The Center will also serve as a R&D site where additional research on the vast potential of the TrueMil technology will take place. The results of this research will benefit the machining industry worldwide.

Finally, to ensure that visitors to the Demo Center feel at home, the facility is a bright, well-appointed and comfortable place to visit.

According to Stephen A. Diehl, President and CEO of Surfware, “With the launch of the Surfware Demo and Training Center, we now have an outstanding facility that will further demonstrate the tremendous cost savings and efficiency gains created by our TrueMill technology. With the opening of the Demo Center, Surfware is continuing its commitment to product excellence and innovation.”

About Surfware, Inc.

Surfware, Inc., the developer of SURFCAM Velocity CAD/CAM systems and the award-winning, patented TrueMill technology, provides optimal solutions for today’s manufacturing challenges.  SURFCAM and TrueMill are cost-effective solutions that provide measurable productivity gains.  Surfware, Inc. traces its roots back to three generations of Diehl family members involved in machining.  For additional information, visit www.surfware.com.