Disqus - Friends of cadfanatic

Re: What types of SolidWorks 2007 features are YOU interested in?

Ricky Jordan — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 11:25:06 -0000

Hi TJ,

I'll see what I can whip up on the belts & chains enhancements. I've played with it a little bit and have been REALLY impressed so far. (Both sketch & assembly) As a former machine designer, I really can appreciate a feature like this.

As far as the assembly mirror issues go, I am right there with you. It still has a ways to go before it is where I feel it should be. All I can say is keep putting in your enhancement requests. If you know other people who really need this as well, have them put an enhancement request in as well.

Thanks for the feedback!

Best Regards,

Ricky Jordan

Re: SolidWorks 2007 SP0.0 is OUT

Ricky Jordan — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 08:08:00 -0000

Hi Neil,

Don't sweat it. You are not "polluting" the blog at all. One of the reasons this blog was started was to create some good discussions. :-)

While I share your concerns on the quickness of the availablity, I'm not ready to say it isn't fit for release. I haven't logged many hours using the EV SP0 or SP0 yet, but Beta4 & Pre-Release 1 were very stable for me. (Of course this is just my experience thus far :-)) There are a lot of areas in the software I haven't touched much.

I will do some testing over the next couple of weeks. After that I will be in a better position to judge it's status.

Overall, I'll say that 2007 has had the best program stability versus beta/pre-release programs in recent memory.

Time and usage will tell. Keep the comments coming and thanks for reading the blog.

Ricky

Re: SolidWorks 2007: ScanTo3D Part 1

Ricky Jordan — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 07:29:59 -0000

Hi Neil,

Thanks again for the nice comments on the blog.

I'll talk a little more about the whole Premium bundle topic in Part 2 of the review. I understand where you are coming from on this.

Best Regards,

Ricky Jordan

Re: SolidWorks 2007: ScanTo3D Part 2

Ricky Jordan — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 23:01:10 -0000

Neil,

In this example, the fitted planes were parallel to one another. The STL file that I started with was an exported file from SolidWorks, so that helped it quite a bit.

If you are working with point cloud or scanned data, there is a chance that fitted planes may not be parallel. Ways around this would be to extract faces on half the model and then mirror it. The split plane step in the surface wizard helps with this. You can always adjust fitted surface bodies after finishing the surface wizard using the Move/Copy command.

If the scan is off axis, you can adjust that as part of the mesh preparation wizard. Even if you open existing mesh data, it can still be run through the mesh prep wizard.

Thanks again for reading the blog.

Best Regards,

Ricky Jordan

Re: Steve Wozniak to be Keynote Speaker at SolidWorks World 2007

Ricky Jordan — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 15:47:02 -0000

Hi Devon,

That is an interesting question. I guess only time will tell.

I still see SolidWorks ties with Microsoft Corp. and the Windows OS itself as huge hurdles to making this come true. I'm not saying I wouldn't like to see it, but with them having to support x32 and x64 bit editions of SolidWorks already, it could be very hard to support a third "current" OS. (Although 32 bit could be gone in a few years...we'll see.)

After looking at his website I get the impression that Mr. Wozniak does speaking engagements like this from time to time, so I'm not sure how much we can read into it. Nonetheless, I think it will be a very interesting speech.

Best Regards,

Ricky Jordan

Re: SolidWorks 2007: Relative View

Ricky Jordan — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 15:19:17 -0000

Good point Vince!

Very cool new functionality for COSMOSWorks!

Ricky

Re: Your Favorite SolidWorks World Story

Ricky Jordan — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 22:08:31 -0000

LOL! Guilty here too on the serial number thing!

Great posts so far....let's get some more going!

Re: SolidWorks Labs

Ricky Jordan — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 20:49:53 -0000

Lin,

You are right. It is ZoomIn. That is what I get for typing my articles so late at night!

Brian,

Sorry for the mixup there. I have corrected the post. I figured I was bound to garble something up this week as much as I have been typing.

For those of you who don't know, Brian is part of the team putting together the products shown on the SolidWorks Labs website. He gave me a quick demo of all four items and they are all VERY impressive.

Ricky Jordan
http://www.rickyjordan.com

Re: SolidWorks World: Wednesday General Session

Ricky Jordan — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 06:39:17 -0000

Hi Luis,

I think I have the correct information on who won but I have to double check. I would hate to report the wrong company. I'll have the updates for you shortly.

Ricky

Re: SolidWorks files shown in Windows Vista Demo

Ricky Jordan — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 21:04:09 -0000

You have some good points. At the time of this blog post, much of the information about Vista's performance was not yet out. I'm not totally sure of the true numbers yet, but almost everything I have read says it is a resource hog!

I am curious if CAD users will be able to turn off some of the fancy graphics in an effort to increase performance.

I guess only time will tell. I know at this point, I'm certainly not ready to use it for everyday work.

Thanks for posting the links.

Best Regards,

Ricky Jordan
http://www.rickyjordan.com

Re: Vista….and more Vista

Ricky Jordan — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 12:55:20 -0000

Wow!

Thanks Brian. I've been wanted to modify that for quite some time. I'll have to give it a shot.

Ricky

Re: Paper Pilot Game

Ricky Jordan — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 22:01:24 -0000

Are you ready for a rematch Gary? :-)

Ricky

Re: SolidWorks Tip: Single Sketch Driving Design

Ricky Jordan — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 00:21:41 -0000

Tom,

I guess it depends on which areas or functions you would like to become more proficient in. The first place I would look for the 3D Sketcher would be the help files and the tutorials. Carefully study all the data in the help and then work through the Online Tutorials for "3D Sketching" and "3D Sketching with planes".

Jason Pancoast had a breakout session at SolidWorks World on 3D Sketching that I heard was very good. I found a link to a PDF copy of his presentation (see the link below)

http://www.capinc.com/pages/support/documents/pancoast-3dsketching07.pdf

Best Regards,

Ricky Jordan
http://www.rickyjordan.com

Re: SolidWorks Tip: Single Sketch Driving Design

Ricky Jordan — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 22:15:42 -0000

Tyler,

If I understand correctly, you want to draw an oval shape consisting of two lines and two arcs.

There are a couple of ways to draw the oval shape. This gives me a good idea for a blog article so stay tuned. Anyway...Unless I misunderstood, I take it you would like to make the 2 lines and 2 arcs a single entity. You can use the Fit Spline tool to do this. You can find it on the Splines Toolbar or you can go to the menu system and find it under: Tools->Spline Tools->Fit Spline

I hope this helps!

Best Regards,

Ricky Jordan
http://www.rickyjordan.com

Re: SolidWorks Tip: Delete Face

Ricky Jordan — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 08:52:52 -0000

Hi Dave,

First and foremost, thank you for asking the question.

With a feature like this I can think of 3 common situations in modeling where the use as I have shown it would be beneficial. (I'm sure there are more, but these are the three that popped into my head :-))

The first situation would be where you have an imported model that has no features. Your entire solid model comes in as a single imported feature so you don’t have the luxury to delete any individual feature.

The second situation would be where you are looking at a feature that may have multiple references further down the feature tree. To remove or suppress this feature would result in the suppression of additional features. You could remove the relationships and proceed with deletion of the feature but in some cases the removal of this geometry might be temporary, (like for FEA analysis) so it is sometimes easiest to handle it down at the bottom of the feature tree using Delete Face without having to modify multiple features.

The third situation deals with instances where you design multiple parts using the multi-body functions in a single part file. If you are designing a plastic housing assembly it can be advantageous to use this method if the geometry of one “half” need to have curvature continuity or share features with the other “half”. For use in assemblies the Split Part command can be used to separate the multiple bodies into individual part files. In cases like this the separated part files of the case halves will not have individual features. It will have a “Stock part” feature that ties it parametrically to the multibody master file. If you need to use this individual part externally for FEA analysis or export to another system, you can remove features with the delete face command without having to mess with the original geometry. Again, in this situation this would be for temporary changes.

For situations 2 & 3 if the removal of the feature is permanent, I would remove the feature altogether by deleting the feature.

I hope this makes sense to you. If it doesn’t, let me know and I can elaborate more.

Thanks for the comment and thanks for reading my blog!

Best Regards,

Ricky Jordan
http://www.rickyjordan.com

Re: NASWUG & COSMOS FloWorks

Ricky Jordan — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 20:30:05 -0000

Hi Steve,

I will check with Dana and see if we can get a copy of the PowerPoint presentation. If I can get it, I will post it on the NASWUG website.

Thanks for your interest!

Best Regards,

Ricky Jordan
http://www.rickyjordan.com

Re: SolidWorks Tip: Sketch Slot

Ricky Jordan — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 15:25:21 -0000

Nice addition Matt! I didn't think about including that one!

This is one of the things that I really like about blogging. Blog articles can be enhanced with comments containing more excellent content!

If anyone else knows of any others we've missed, feel free to post more comments!

Best Regards,

Ricky Jordan
http://www.rickyjordan.com

Re: SolidWorks Tip: Sketch Slot

Ricky Jordan — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 07:22:11 -0000

Excellent tip Josh.

I still feel like library features are under-utilized overall. Maybe a blog article talking about the advantages of library feature/Design Library usage will find it's way to this blog soon. :-)

Keep the comments coming!

Best Regards,

Ricky Jordan
http://www.rickyjordan.com

Re: An ALL NEW LOOK!

Ricky Jordan — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 20:40:07 -0000

Thanks for all the nice comments! I'm really happy with the new look. I can't take credit for the banner image. That was Mary's creation. It really turned out nice!

The stock car in the banner is a SolidWorks surface model & drawing. Here is a test for some of you NASCAR fans...what make and model is the car??

Best Regards,

Ricky Jordan
http://www.rickyjordan.com

Re: An ALL NEW LOOK!

Ricky Jordan — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 08:37:02 -0000

Steve,

You are correct! It is indeed a Dodge Charger. The model actually started life as a Monte Carlo. With a little change to the nose and window lines....it became a Charger.

Best Regards,

Ricky Jordan
http://www.rickyjordan.com

Re: SolidWorks Tip: Single Sketch Driving Design

Ricky Jordan — Tue, 01 May 2007 22:48:25 -0000

Hi Dave,

I'm sorry it has taken me so long to respond. Another method that comes to mind is in-context modeling of parts within an assembly file. Assembly references to parts in general slow the overall performance of the assembly and results in many files as compared to the multi-body method. The assembly performance thing may not be a big deal if your assembly isn't that big.

Another method was brought to my attention by Jason Capriotti. He posted an example model at Sean Dotson's MCAD Forums site. Here is the URL to read the discussion:

http://www.mcadforums.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7544

Hope this helps!

Best Regards,

Ricky Jordan
http://www.rickyjordan.com

Re: SolidWorks Tip: Unabsorb Sketches

Ricky Jordan — Wed, 02 May 2007 08:40:42 -0000

Hi Alexei,

I'm not quite sure I understand your question. The image you show demonstrates the ability to SHARE sketches or use already absorbed sketches for additional sketch based features. The action of unabsorbing sketches deals more with the tree order of the sketch and the ability to create new sketches between the original sketch and its feature for additional use with that feature. In the video you could see the first guide curve I created was not available for use in the Loft command due to the fact that it was created after the Loft feature. If I misunderstood the question, please let me know and I will be happy to explain further.

Best Regards,

Ricky Jordan
http://www.rickyjordan.com

Re: COSMOSudoku Game

Ricky Jordan — Thu, 17 May 2007 23:45:56 -0000

LOL! I'm glad you like it Brian! Hopefully I'll get some time to play this weekend!

Ricky Jordan
http://www.rickyjordan.com

Re: SolidWorks 2008 Announced!

Ricky Jordan — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:26:31 -0000

Hi Josh,

Not too many questions yet, but I'm sure they will be coming. :-)

Yes...there are always some that will be sarcastic even if it is the best release ever. SolidWorks will probably catch some flack for the new Realview graphics from some folks, but there are some useful things that can be had from that besides just pretty pictures. (More to come later on that...)

Overall I think SolidWorks did a very nice job with this release. The User Interface is quite a bit different but in my opinion has some speed advantages to the current version once you get used to it. I'll elaborate more on that soon.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for lots of content on SolidWorks 2008!

Best Regards,

Ricky Jordan
http://www.rickyjordan.com

Re: What you want to know about SolidWorks 2008: The Interface

Ricky Jordan — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 15:19:07 -0000

Josh,

Very nice job with your review. You went into some great detail. I'll be preparing a user interface post for my blog and will be linking to your post.

I can tell the UI change will be a big topic of discussion. I have had an experience similar to yours. I find myself looking for the new right click menus now in SW2007!

Matt brings up some good points. It is disappointing that a 1.5 year old high end graphics card cannot run the new Realview very well. If I was in his situation, I would feel the same way. There are going to be quite a few users that are stuck in the same situation.

Looking forward to all the posts to come in the next few weeks/months.

Best Regards,

Ricky Jordan
http://www.rickyjordan.net