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 my point here you ask? DJO uses SolidWorks to design their products. Actually, they do more than just design with SolidWorks, they do all their surfacing, rendering and analysis with SolidWorks too. They create a wide array of braces, some of which I’ve used. That’s even more to the point for me. I love finding out that something I’m using, or have used, was created in SolidWorks.

Do you know about the Dynamic Mirror tool in SolidWorks? No? Well, stick around and I’ll show you.

The Dynamic Mirror tool is a sketch tool that allows you to dynamically mirror (duh) as you’re sketching. To use it, you first have to find it as it’s won’t be on your sketch toolbar, or ‘S’ key menu, by default. Hit your ‘S’ key, RMB on the menu and select customize. Go to the ‘Commands’ tab and select ‘Sketch’. There you’ll see the Dynamic Mirror icon:

Just drag and drop it to either the ‘S’ menu or to the sketch toolbar.

Now that you’ve got the button, let’s talk about using it. It’s quite simple, actually. Just like the regular ‘Mirror Entities’ command, you’ll need a centerline. It can either be a sketch, or an existing edge. Simply highlight it and click on the ‘Dynamic Mirror’ button. Start sketching and with each click of your mouse you’ll see a mirrored entity of what you just sketched. While you can, in fact, sketch on both sides of your centerline, you’ll want to stick to one side or the other to prevent overlapping geometry. Once you’ve finished with whatever you wanted to mirror, you can turn off the dynamics but clicking on the button again.

Dynamic Mirror is a great way to quickly, and easily, create symmetric sketches.

I’m constantly amazed at the stuff that’s designed in SolidWorks, or 3D-CAD in general. The layers of complexity, the swoopy surfaces, the level of detail; it all amazes and awes me. Then there’s the “everyday” stuff that it never even crossed my mind that it was designed, period.

How about this, from Crayola:

Yup, your kids’ markers may have been designed by 3D mechanical design software.

Then there’s this offering from Hamilton-Beach:

For you hunters out there, Federal Cartridge is in on it, too:

See those lights in the Nashville Symphony Concert Hall? Yup, SolidWorks:

What’s my point to all this? It’s two-fold, actually. One, the next time you look at something maybe you’ll wonder a bit about who/what/how when it comes to designs of every day items. The second point, and this is directed more towards the beginners, is take those everyday items and reverse engineer them. It’s one of the best ways to learn SolidWorks.

Warning: this is going to be another of my opinionated posts. I welcome any, and all, well thought out comments. However, should you make things personal, I’ll be forced to call for the immediate removal of all your body hair so that you end up looking like this (yes, it’s safe for work). You have been warned.

A couple of months ago I was training some engineers on SolidWorks. Their company had been using SolidWorks for a bit and a couple of them had brought their laptops to the session. After going through one lesson, and having them start the examples, I was walking around and saw a screen similar to this:

I say similar because I’m pretty sure he had every possible toolbar turned on and I got tired going that far. I stood behind him for a moment, slack-jawed. Bear in mind, this was on a laptop with a 17″ screen. I’m not sure how he was ever able to design anything in the 6 square inches of usable graphics area , but I digress. So I asked him why he still had his setup looking like something from 2006. He gave me that look. You know, the look that says “why are you such an ass?”. Anyway, he went on to explain that it’s what he was comfortable with, that he didn’t have to search the command manager, he knew where everything was, yada-yada-yada. That was when I noticed that he didn’t have the command manager turned on either. I’m thankful that I didn’t hit anything when I fell over…

I took a deep breath and asked him about the ‘S’ key. He asked, a bit arrogantly, what I meant (thankfully, I was sitting down at this point). I then went on to explain to him the wonder that is the ‘S’ key and how it was customizable. How it was there only when you needed it. How, in his case, it could provide ten times the available graphic area, which garnered me “that look”, again. How his mouse travel would be greatly lessened. How all the cool kids were doing it. How, had the technology been around, there’d be 11 commandments instead of 10.

What it all boiled down to was this: it was outside his ‘comfort’ area. Now I don’t want to go and start belittling people who are uncomfortable with change. I’ve been there, I get it. However, there are times when not changing really isn’t the best course of action. I believe this is one of those times.

I know there are those of you out there who have a macro mapped to every single key. That’s awesome. Honestly, I’m jealous of you; I don’t have the brain capacity to remember what macro was mapped where. The ‘S’ key, though, I can handle. With one keystroke I have 95% of the tools I need at that particular moment. That, in my not so humble opinion, rocks! As I explained to him how versatile the ‘S’ key was, I could see that his mind was beginning to engage, that he was beginning to see the possibilities. That totally made it all worth it for me. I love teaching SolidWorks, especially when I see the light come on.

Here’s the thing, I know that there are still a number of people out there who still have toolbars active. There are those who don’t use the Command Manager much less the ‘S’ key. I want to know why. I want to understand what it is about toolbars that makes you stay with them.

When it comes time to deciding whether you’re going to attend your upcoming SWUG meeting, what topic(s) would compel you to go? I know that everybody loves Tips & Tricks presentations, but how many can you actually see before they become mundane? SolidWorks employee speakers? Much easier to get for the east coast groups than anywhere. That doesn’t stop me from trying to get them, though. How about local users presenting on what they’re creating with SolidWorks? Is this something that interests you?

What would your ultimate SWUG meeting involve, outside of pizza and soda?

How does one go about reviewing a book, without bias, when said book was written by friends? Well, if you’re me, you just do it. I’ve never had a problem separating business and pleasure and, in this case, this is all business.

Alex Ruiz, with help from Gabi Jack, has written a SolidWorks book for beginners. SolidWorks 2010: No Experience Required is, truly, written for the beginner. It starts you off by going through system requirements, then into how to start the program once installed, to the UI. They go through the UI in great detail which, I suspect, is highly beneficial to new users. Alex does a good job of explaining what the toolbars do, what the Feature Manager is for, and what shortcuts are available out of the box. (Though I didn’t see any mention of ctrl+1 (front), ctrl+2 (back), etc.)

With step-by-step instructions, the book walks the reader through each phase of part/assembly/drawing creation and, in the end, the user will have created a desk lamp. With tips and tricks throughout, the user will not only learn the basics, but can glean info that will help speed up their design processes.

SolidWorks 2010: No Experience Required is a highly detailed manual, and would seem to be perfect for the beginner. I think adding a section on repairing/understanding errors would be highly beneficial, though. Being able to handle errors early on makes life so much easier for the newbie, if you ask me.

I also disagree with showing Instant3D. Frankly, I think it can cause the new user more problems than not. It doesn’t take much for someone to inadvertently drag a face and not fully realize what they’ve done. Instant3D, in my opinion, should be shown at an intermediate level or, at least, have some sort of disclaimer in bold about the possibility of hosing things up quite easily if you’re not paying attention.

Overall, I think the book is laid out well. It’s written clearly and concisely, if not a bit too simplified. I can see this book being extremely helpful to students especially. I give it a solid B.

By a show of hands, how many of you have tried SimulationXpress, or any of the ‘Xpress’ products available in SolidWorks? Sure, they’re meant to be like gateway drugs, tempting and teasing you into purchasing the full-blown product, but that doesn’t mean that they’re bad for you.

SimulationXpress is a decent, first-pass, analysis tool. It’ll let you know if your part is in the ballpark, though I wouldn’t base my final design off of it. You can find it on the ‘Evaluate’ tab of your Command Manager, or under the ‘Tools’ dropdown. It’s a simple tool to use just by following the prompts. The wizard walks you through the necessary steps to run an analysis of a part so that you can have an idea of how it’s going to react.  It is limited to force/pressure analysis but, again, you’re just going for a ballpark idea here.

Where SimulationXpress, and its fellow Xpress tools, are already in every seat of SolidWorks, don’t you think you owe it to yourself to try them out? As I’m so fond of saying, if I can do it, anyone can do it.

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 us lucky enough to be invited to the event Thursday morning (meaning the Thursday after SWW), it was more than a just pre-screening. We were going to not only be able to see what they’d done thus far, we were going to be involved in more of the filming. That’s right, yours truly is an extra in what is sure to be a blockbuster. I foresee Oscars, Golden Globes, Emmys, SAGs, the whole gambit. Ok, fine, they won’t even qualify for a Razzie but that’s not the point.

With Glen setting up the scenes, we were walked through a fictitious company’s introduction to DriveWorks from DriveWorksXpress to the complete DriveWorks package. While the movie spanned the whole product line, the main focus seemed to be DriveWorks Solo, their newest product. A step below the complete package, DriveWorks Solo provides plenty of features to make it attractive to a wide swath of SolidWorks users. The interface is as simple as DriveWorksXpress that all SolidWorks users already have (2008 and up). Couple that with a powerful form designer and you end up with a simple way to automate your designs. They’re so confident in this new product that they’re offering up a free 30-day trial. Just go to www.driveworkssolo.com and sign up.

What makes DriveWorks Solo so powerful is that this incredibly intelligent team undertook the monumental effort of creating their own rules engine. One can’t help but wonder if there wasn’t a bit more drink involved in that particular decision as well, especially where it ended up taking 3 years to complete it. The results are obvious though. This new engine is capable of doing 20,000 calculations simultaneously in seconds. It’s a pretty damn incredible feat, and quite apparent when running DriveWorks Solo.

While the rules engine is pretty compelling unto itself, there’s more! How about multiple language forms? Pick your needed language and all forms will be created in said choice. The needed currency will also be included. Still not enough? How about pervasive search? Mini-wizard for every function? Accept/reject capabilities so some lame-brain idea by sales doesn’t get crammed down engineering’s throat. As soon as I get my system cleaned up, I’ll be trying out DriveWorks Solo.

DriveWorks didn’t stop there, though. They cleaned up DriveWorks Pro, too, making it more user friendly. The form mapping UI is much easier to navigate and provides a clearer picture as well. They even include ePDM integration. It would appear that the team at DriveWorks spent a lot of time thinking about the end user and how they interface with the products available. Quite honestly, I think they did an exceptional job.

The other thing that got me was the presentation itself. I enjoyed Glen’s humor during it all. While it was a sales presentation, it didn’t have that sort of vibe. What I took away from it, aside from insight into all of their offerings, was a company that was comfortable in its skin. They have a great product, know it’s a great product, but aren’t going to sit on it. They don’t put on a false face, willingly act human and make you feel like you’re more than just a customer. It wouldn’t have surprised me if Glen had pulled out a few bottles of whiskey and asked us all to join him in a nip. I can’t wait to see the complete movie once it’s done.

My apologies for the delay of this post. Things have been rather hectic lately.

This goes out to anyone who attended my SolidWorks Crashes & Slowdowns presentation. I’m sorry. I just watched the video of my presentation and I’d have to say it was, without a doubt, one of the worst presentations I’ve ever seen. Even though I was nervous as hell, coupled with the fact that I couldn’t view my notes, you, the attendee, deserved better. So it is to you, the poor attendees who sat through my rambling presentation, that I offer my apologies. I promise that I will do better in the future, should anyone ever allow me to speak again. If anyone reading this apology was at the aforementioned presentation, any constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated.

The one bright spot about this apology is that I think it applies to a lot fewer people than the apology I extended at SWW ‘09.

Many people, including me, were disappointed with the special event at SolidWorks World this year. It just seemed ‘less’ than years past. So, to satisfy my curiosity about the ‘why’, I reached out to Kerri Dunne. For those of you who don’t know who Kerri is, she’s the brains behind SolidWorks World. If you want to know more about her, you can read the interview I did with her last year.

I sent her some questions, and she kindly responded. Below is the email that will hopefully answer some of the why:

1. I already know that you pick the venues years ahead, due to the amount of planning involved, but how far ahead do you plan the where and what of the events?
We are booked until 2014, so at least 3-4 years in advance. We look at venues to see if they can accommodate the amount of people we expect, the amount of technical sessions we need, with room to grow. This year we added another Hands-on room, which allowed us to add 11 more hands-on sessions, which we know people want, We also scope out places for events like CSWP and the Special Event during the selection phase for venues.

2. Why was the special event so “scaled down” this year?

If you were in General Session on Day 1, you heard Jeff Ray say that we are still in a recession and at SolidWorks we had to make difficult decisions in order to not have any layoffs. With that being said, some areas of SolidWorks World were affected. Some not so apparent, but others, like the Special Event were a little more clear. To set the story straight, I’ve read some of the comments on the blogs about what we were going to do ect… we were not going to hire Santana for one. We were considering Disney or Knott’s Berry Farm, but due to having to scale back, we chose to do something onsite. This did save money in terms of not having to transport thousands of people.
Now, I know there were comments on the layout of the event and when planning something from scratch you have to visual how people will move about the event. You are also limited to what the event hall can do as well, like the lighting for instance. Lights are set up in sections, not each individual light, so you have to pick and choose areas.  Since we didn’t want to do full lights up as that would be like walking though any hall, we did our best to do low lighting. What we could have done better was the lighting on the buffets, which I agree and mentioned during the event to add light. Unfortunately there was nothing we could do at this point and the convention center would not allow candles on the buffets due to fire hazard. In regards to the layout, we choose to place the cars in the back so we could do full lighting for people to see and also to move people through the venue. If we placed them cars in the front nobody would have walked through the hall and we would have had bottlenecking issues.  For the band we wanted them in the middle for the sound to travel throughout the venue.

3. With regard to this year’s special event, how was the decision reached to have a live rock band play versus some other form of entertainment (comedian for instance)?
From previous communications with the community, we know the group likes music and Aerosmith was a band that was repeatedly named. Now, I did look into getting Aerosmith for real, but at a cost of $1MIL++  – obviously way beyond my budget AND with the band broken up it wasn’t a possibility. As for other forms of entrainment, a band is a good choice to go with, with a group this size as it provides background music or if you want to be entertained you can watch the band. There were people crowding the stage at the end of the night. They even made the band come out to do one more song. As for having other types of entertainment, to have something like a comedian would be difficult for a group our size.

4. In years past, there has been a much wider variety of food to choose from, why not this year?
The range of food wasn’t too different than previous years. It just may have seemed more obvious due to the fact that everything was closer together.

5. Without stating hard numbers, can you estimate what percentage of the overall cost of hosting SolidWorks World is offset by attendee and vendor fees, as well as corporate sponsorships? This relates to how some feel “ripped off”.
I know I feel bad that some said they felt like they were “ripped off”. Without getting into specifics, I can say attendee fees and sponsorships cover less than half the cost of the event. Therefore, SolidWorks does take on a lot of the cost in order for this event to be held. This year we also wanted to be sensitive to the fact that we did have the special event onsite this year, so we reduce the guest fee for the special event to $50. It was difficult trying to find the areas to cut some items that were up for discussion were the giveaways like t-shirts and backpacks, or eliminated beer and wine, but knew that would be a huge issue. Therefore we had to cut elsewhere.

6. How big of an effect did the recession have on this year’s SolidWorks World?
Although our total numbers were great, we did have a lot more people opting for the “Expo Only” pass (cost $199), which allows an individual to get into General Session and the Partner Pavilion only, versus the full conference pass which allows attendees access to everything- technical training sessions, meals, partner pavilion, general sessions, special event.

7. While I don’t expect specifics, can we expect similar changes for SWW’11 in San Antonio?
We will see. It all depends on the economy. We appreciate everyone’s feedback and will do our best in 2011 to make up for the areas that people felt were scaled back this year. Please let everyone know to fill out the post conference survey, which will go out this week to attendees, to provide us with more feedback. We want the feedback—good or bad! This is the SolidWorks community’s event and we want to make it the best event for everyone as possible. Everyone at SolidWorks, including the Executive team, read this information and want to have the best event possible for the community.

On a side note, there are a lot of people who work on this event and as crazy as the event is everyone loves the event and pours their heart and soul into it to make it the best for the community. SolidWorks World is very special to all of us who work on it as we want to make it the best possible for the community. I can’t stress that enough. It makes me sad when it is over as it seems to go so fast. We all love meeting up with the customers, resellers, members of the press, our partners and other colleagues.  You put it best, it is like Christmas being over when it is done—all that planning for what feels like 1 hour of unwrapping and eating- then done!!

Thanks again for letting me share my thoughts.

Best regards,

Kerri