Jeff's Tool Shed

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.

Related Posts

• The CSWP Debate
• Me, coming to a monitor near you.
• Whaddya mean it’s not supported?