DISQUS

You took the words right out of my mouth. One of my buddies, Kyle (who has also posted on here) and I have a class called Design for Manufacturability. We think our teacher has a certain affinity for Autodesk products. He spent the better part of a three hour lecture showing us the webcasts for this "new" digital prototyping. We just kind of sat there and looked at each other. We were dumbfounded as to how they could just ignore the last 15 or so years of productive 3d modeling. It was hard not to laugh in his face...

I fart in your general di-rection... But seriously, measure is one of my favorite commands. Especially when one of the engineers or the machine shop needs a specific dimension that isn't called out on the drawing. It's also a great command to make sure a fillet won't tear out when they go to mill it or throw it on the lathe to shave a couple thousandths off. Yeah it took me almost a year to realize that was there. Good post Josh!

I was watching the new videos on SW '08 and that centered rectangle tool looks like it will make things even easier. On another note, I started using cross-part equations as an experiment on some of my parts. One thing I've noticed about referencing other parts or assemblies is sometimes the equations fail and can't find a solution. Before you go and delete all your hard work, check and see if the referenced part is loaded lightweight. And if it is still set to resolved, edit the part in place and just give it a quick rebuild. That usually gives SW a chance to figure out what's going on.

My first year of college, I didn't really know a bunch of people at my school, so I had some free time... I figured, I have CAD software, lots of time, and an apartment full of funky stuff. So I looked for something that had some curves, had some bits and pieces and something that everybody has to have in a college apartment. Alas, I saw my TV remote. Let me tell you, nobody really understands how complex those curves are until you try to reproduce it. So if you want practice, want to get better at CAD or just want to waste some time, try your lofting skills on something around the house. That helped me a lot.

I thought this was kind of an interesting article. Now before anybody jumps down my throat for that comment, let me explain. I've been using AutoDesk products for about 7 years now. That's what I was taught on and that's how I was introduced to 3D CAD. Although, last year, when I started my new job, we were (and still are) using ProE. But we're making the move to Solidworks. We've been using SW for about six months I guess and I've fallen in love all over again. I've had limited experience with SW for the last two or three years, but never really had any prolonged exposure. Now, it's the only thing I use. It makes you wonder why it wasn't more wide-spread before Inventor "opened the market". Just food for thought...

Thanks a lot! I got started on a new project at work a couple weeks ago. My assembly has about 1000 parts in it with fasteners included. I was looking for a way to keep track of it all. Like Ron said, I was already using some of these ideas, but now I'll try and incorporate a couple more. (I had forgotten about the folders, haha)