Jeff's Tool Shed

After an uneventful flight on my current favorite airline, Virgin America, I arrived in Anaheim to the welcoming committee that was Alex Ruiz. He’d run into Mr. Christy Jordan (nee Ricky Jordan) and Rich Hall, so the twosome became a foursome and off we went to the hotel.  (Tangent here – more swag just came my way courtesy of Al Dean and Develop3D. I love swag) After a quick shower, it was time for an informal tweet-up in the lobby of the Hilton. After a bit of discussion, a group of us were off to Chubby’s for dinner. You can see said group over at Deelip’s blog.

As seems to be the norm, a large contingent of SolidWorks World attendees, employees, bloggers, VARs were congregated around the bar. With this being my fifth SWW, it was a time to reacquaint myself with friends from years past. One of my favorite parts of the evening was when I was approached by three gentlemen. They wanted to know if I was Jeff Mirisola. Though the temptation to say ‘no’ was there, I admitted that I was. Turns out, they were from AMV and wanted to thank me for my review of SteelWorks. Phew! You’re welcome, guys, it’s a great product!

The night ended quietly, unlike last year. I’m quite happy that I don’t feel compelled to apologize to anyone I may have spoken to. Today is a mellow day. Tonight, well, that may be a different story.

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 damn clear, especially where they’re translated from Italian. All too often, translated instructions aren’t much easier to understand than the language they were originally written in.

I was very happy with the interface, especially how it so closely resembled SolidWorks. This makes complete sense as they are a SolidWorks Certified Solution Partner. SteelWorks has built in libraries for both domestic and foreign steel standards, complete with fastening systems. It also includes a SQL engine for order management.

I don’t work in the steel industry but, from what I can tell, this is a complete program. After creating your 3D assembly, you can get all of your 2D drawings including view, sections, general arrangements and fab drawings. All of it associated with the 3D models as you’d expect.

It’s too bad I didn’t have this when I was working on that processing facility last year. I can only imagine how much easier my job might have been. If you’re working in steel construction, you’ll want to give SteelWorks a look. I think you’ll like it.

First, I’m back to work. It was a long two months, but I survived. I’m thankful that I didn’t have to go without employment for as long as so many others. Believe me, I didn’t take my job for granted before and I certainly don’t now.

Just like the previews you see, here are some teasers of upcoming reviews that I’m working on:

• SimpoeWorks – Easy to use injection molding software from Simpoe, a SolidWorks Gold Partner. It’s actually installing while I write.
• ElecWorks – Software to help ease the pains of routing. From your friends at TraceParts
• SteelWorks – This hasn’t even been released yet, and they’re gonna let me get my filthy hands on it!
• TactonWorks – I’ve been talking, peripherally, about TactonWorks for a long time. You’re familiar with knowledge-based engineering, right? Well, so are they and they claim to really know what they’re doing. Time will tell.
• Adobe – Acrobat 9 Pro Extended. The full-meal deal. There’s a ton of stuff to mess around with here, so it’ll be a bit on this one.
• There’s also a couple of things brewing from my (solo) trip to SolidWorks. Unless I was lied to, even my fellow bloggers didn’t see/hear some of this <evil laugh>.

I’ve asked this before, but if there’s some companion software that you’re curious about let me know. I’ll see what I can do about trying it out for you.