DISQUS

I have a SpaceNavigator at the office, and another one at home. I've been dying to get my hands on a SpaceExplorer but so far it's not in the budget.

On my SN, I created a macro that just hits the 'S' key for the Shortcut Bar, and I have the other button set to 'Fit'. I could really use the extra keys the Explorer offers =)

Ive had a Sony Reader for about a year now (similar to the Kindle), and absolutely love it. Currently I only have about 130 books loaded, but I have many many more on my computer that can be loaded in a heartbeat. It's terribly convenient and easy to read, and I can carry thousands of books in the physical space of less than one.

To Charles' point about hardcopy, I make sure that my books get backed up regularly alongside all my other data to redundant storage.

All that said, I still have 4 completely packed 5ft x 3ft bookshelves at home in my office. Many books aren't available in digital format, and others such as reference manuals or anything else where you flip quickly back and forth are better suited to paper than my Reader (you can go forward/back 1 page at a time, or move through the book in 10% increments using the history keys).

For reading a novel, I grab my Reader. For anything that I'm studying or referencing from, I still prefer paper copy.

Grats! My wife and I have two boys of our own, ages 4 and 2. Wouldn't trade them for anything!

I tried to register to take a look at the samples after browsing their catalog, unfortunately I get caught by a link referencing "//index.php/" that IE and Firefox choke on.

It happens after you're logged in and click on Samples in the navbar. It prompts you for your name as you'd like it printed on certificates for courses, and won't go any further.

I like the sound of the instant dimensions while sketching, the magnifying glass, and I'd give a minor appendage for that title block wizard NOW since I'm converting all our blocks manually over to SWX from AutoCAD

You know this sounds like it would be entertaining, but the fact of it is, I already know everything there is to know about Solidworks. In fact, after my month or two using it now, I'd comfortably say that I am a "Master Modeler", not just in SolidWorks, but in every program there is. So I really don't stand to gain anything by humiliating you all in public with the massive fountain of knowledge that is my brain. While I'm sure it would certainly be entertaining to see you struggle with such difficult feats as adding a convex radial slope at the intersection of two perpendicular planar facial entities, there can be no satisfaction in it for me. In fact, I'm so hopelessly intelligent that I've even come up with a patented name for the fore-mentioned procedure which even such ignoramuses as yourselves might comprehend. I call it a "fillet". Please, please, hold your awe and applause. Yes, you may bask for a short time in my glorious presence... don't worry, I won't tell.

Disgusting. How can you people even think of something as mundane as VIDEO CARDS when there are people dying of something somewhere?! You should be ashamed. That $1200 could buy enough condoms to keep 10% of Africa from getting HIV for another 3 hours! Seriously, get your priorities in order, it's the Christmas season after all!

Great advice, I've already got it printed off to pass around the office. We're currently in the process of evaluating SolidWorks as an AutoCAD upgrade, and I've been tackling exactly these kinds of questions over the past couple of months.

I can't emphasize enough the importance of breaking down your goals into achievable tasks, especially in a busy department. I've been taking the lead on learning the basics, then bringing the other two guys that will be working with me up to speed, that way we're not all blundering along on the same things at the same time.

We're looking at overhauling our standards (which we JUST got finally documented), our file management, and our revision processes. One step at a time.

Too right about different methods. Our company CAD standards for instance are completely backwards from most traditional methods in regards to scaling, plotting, etc, but it seems to work for us. When someone with CAD experience comes in they often go "..." because nearly everyone in our Engineering department has been self taught and basically standardized the exceptions over the decades.

As we look at moving from AutoCAD to SolidWorks we're having to rethink the way we do a lot of things, but as with any kind of change there's a period of adjustment.

Even with our quirky standards, it's nothing that someone with any amount of aptitude can't adjust to in a week or two, or start on from scratch and be productive inside a month. To get an instinctive feel for what we expect out of our products, and our associates... that can take years before it really clicks with someone, and quite honestly many many people wash out before they ever have that epiphany.

We run into some of the same issues, and with Cobalt being a boat manufacturer in the middle of the country sometimes it can be difficult to find a readily available pool of talent with industry experience.

It's much easier to teach a software package in my opinion, than to "teach" someone the culture of our business. That's something that they need to grow into whether they have previous experience or not.