Disqus - Latest Comments for azonicbruce

Re: NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000: First Look

Bruce Buck — Fri, 08 Feb 2019 13:18:56 -0000

Best new product reveal ever! Baaahhgaaauuk!!

Re: Cool Tools: KingMoore Tactical Military Build Belt

Bruce Buck — Fri, 08 Feb 2019 13:11:21 -0000

Dope

Re: 5 Reasons Designers Shouldn’t Do Their Own CAD

Bruce Buck — Tue, 04 Jul 2017 13:50:57 -0000

Spot on. Point #3 applies to so many aspects of digital design, but especially 3D CAD, and even moreso with PDM/PLM. It's such a hard concept for many organizations to understand when they hire people like me to do a 3D CAD or PDM/PLM implementation. They expect the tool to make the process faster; it's actually the opposite.

Think about it; doing a drawing revision for a simple spelling error with pencil/paper is pretty straightforward: find the error, erase it and correct it, write in a line on the REV block, sign, DONE! Maybe a minute, tops. With a full-fledged CAD/PDM system, it's many more hoops to jump through: open the CAD program, wait for it to load, open the 100-sheet drawing, wait 10 minutes for it to load, then go check-out, only to realize you can't check-out because it's in a locked state, go back find person with permissions who can move to an unlocked state, then refresh, wait to re-get from server, then check-out, then because the misspelling is part of a custom property in the model open the model and check-out, make the change, check model back in, refresh drawing, add rev block notes, check back in, change state to get approvals...you get the picture.

It's why so many organizations still rely so heavily on 2D CAD...because it IS faster/more simple than 3D CAD (in many aspects, not all). But that's not the point of 3D/PDM. The point is to enable you to deal with more complex product offerings and business processes. And even then software is not required to accomplish that. It boils down to people and discipline. The reason a company may struggle with quality issues, on-time delivery, and re-work has nothing to do with the tools/software being used; most of the time it's that the people working there aren't disciplined enough to follow the procedures and business rules they've set in place (and that most likely have already been documented in their SOPs). 3D/PDM is simply a tool to help ENFORCE those rules/procedures so that they can successfully reduce that variability. As you can imagine though, this will only work if people are willing to adopt and properly utilize the new system and tools.

Back to the topic of design though, I've really enjoyed using the new tools like touchscreen tablets and sketching programs to enable me to explore more ideas before ever opening a CAD tool. That being said, I stink at sketching so this has inspired me to reach out more to those who may be better skilled at it for some of my projects. Great article Adam!

Re: Matt Eastin Jumps In with Both Feet

Bruce Buck — Sun, 09 Apr 2017 02:46:54 -0000

Intriguing story and excellent insight on Matt! Enjoyed reading the backstory to all the videos. I even recognized Mallory and Jeremy from Studio C fame in On Top of the World lol!

Re: Onshape Linked Documents Do More Than You Think

Bruce Buck — Thu, 19 May 2016 18:10:43 -0000

All this talk of cheesy-puffy food items has me hankerin' for one of these:
https://youtu.be/uXcKEu72RCk
Perhaps a collaborative design project in OnShape??

Re: The Trinus Full-Metal, 2-in-1 3D Printer/Engraver Will Start at $199

Bruce Buck — Tue, 29 Mar 2016 11:01:39 -0000

Dat shoe...

Re: First Impression Brain Bake: The Lenovo ThinkPad P40 Yoga

Bruce Buck — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 10:54:17 -0000

Been excited about this since its announcement, good to here it's living up to some of the possibilities. It's on the top of my list for next workstation tools.

Re: In the Age of Typewriter Apps, This Historic NYC Typewriter Repair Shop is Running Strong

Bruce Buck — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 14:03:14 -0000

This gives me a lot of hope for my fledgling dot-matrix printer repair business...

Re: This is What's Happening with VR and How it Will Change 3D Design

Bruce Buck — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 13:50:46 -0000

Hopefully the IT policy at companies using this tech will be BYOVR, otherwise I'm investing in sanitary wipe manufacturers.

Re: Model of the Week: 3D Printed Tourbillon Watch

Bruce Buck — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 17:19:50 -0000

So sick.

Re: How Collaboration Works in Onshape (and 5 Reasons You Need to Try it Now)

Bruce Buck — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 10:35:25 -0000

Other favorites:
"when two people make conflicting changes, somebody goes home in tears"
"a mess of clerical Pack-and-Go monkey-work"
"one person driving and the other person pointing, hand-waving and scratching their chin-skin over your keyboard"

Re: Allow Me to Rant: Why Is there a Perception that Design Is Easy?

Bruce Buck — Thu, 14 Jan 2016 16:13:25 -0000

"burrito farts"...nuf said. :D

Re: New Fusion 360 Fast Track Program Aimed at Users Migrating from SolidWorks

Bruce Buck — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 11:33:45 -0000

"Why are you not pitching Inventor as an alternative?" Uh....that's an easy one to answer. Because the people who have tried it do not like how many more operations/clicks it takes to get things modeled in that system.

Re: A Closer Look at G-Shock's High-Impact Watch Assembly and Testing Process

Bruce Buck — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 13:42:24 -0000

Sweet! Love it. The black PVD version would be a nice timepiece to add to the collection.

Re: There Is Now a Video Game Centered around Assembling IKEA Furniture

Bruce Buck — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 09:53:18 -0000

This is pretty much how every engineer dreams of doing their design work.

Re: Art to Part: Designing a Mountain Bike Handlebar for Performance, Comfort – Part 1

Bruce Buck — Wed, 19 Nov 2014 10:12:21 -0000

Yes! They did. Lot's more tweaks and some changes here/there, but the main concept made it through to the final production version. Currently being manufactured by Answer Products. Product page here: http://www.answerproducts.c...

Re: Cool Tools of Doom n' Stuff: Episode 53

Bruce Buck — Fri, 08 Aug 2014 13:07:35 -0000

Nostril fibers... gonna use that one.

Re: Watch the Making of the Iconic Eames Shell Chair With This Series of Mesmerizing Gifs

Bruce Buck — Fri, 18 Apr 2014 12:24:58 -0000

Yes. Quite mesmerizing.

Re: What We Found Out About SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual (and the Future of SolidWorks)

Bruce Buck — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 21:23:04 -0000

"It's the DATA being offsite on someone elses computer, and I don't have a local copy saved on my own machine. I think that's what makes a lot of people nervous"

The only area where I think Autodesk did it right, with PLM360. Data management on the cloud; the actual data on your own servers (via Vault), the two systems integrated and linked.

Re: What We Found Out About SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual (and the Future of SolidWorks)

Bruce Buck — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 21:18:38 -0000

"For a company invested in SolidWorks and EPDM, what choice do we have at the moment?"
You can always switch to Inventor/Vault like we did...oh wait...hold that thought.

Re: What We Found Out About SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual (and the Future of SolidWorks)

Bruce Buck — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 22:55:08 -0000

"...they can’t fix it. The original developers are long gone and it’s such a patchwork of other people’s technology..."

This would confirm my assumption that the coders who are currently in place simply don't have the know-how to deal with overhauling it the proper way, much like most SW/AutoCAD users' mentality of "just start over"

Regarding NX, I admittedly have not used it since NX5, so I can't speak to how much ease-of-use has improved, but that had to be one of the toughest/longest learning curves I've ever had to deal with. There's a reason their GTAC technical support is so world-class...you need it! Those guys know their caca, and I was on the phone at least 2-3 times a day when I first started out. Would you say NX has improved on that front or would you say there's still a steep learning curve starting out?

Re: What We Found Out About SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual (and the Future of SolidWorks)

Bruce Buck — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 22:30:44 -0000

Playing devil's advocate here...plus I just don't know why so many are hating on SolidWorks, but...
Yes, SolidWorks is "old" but so are many of the other CAD systems out there, especially if you include the number of "transitions" each of those companies forced upon their customers/users, so the fact that it has remained relatively constant I think is a testament to how well of an "all-around" tool SW has been over the years. And let's not kid ourselves, SolidWorks has never been the "best" at any one particular thing; it's just been the best "all-around" solution and one-stop-shop package that met most people's needs, especially small to medium sized businesses.

Excel spreadsheets? Yes embedded wasn't as good as editing in native Excel, but it is a whole lot better than the "in-house" solutions that Autodesk has (which also offers the option for using Excel natively btw).

Configurations? That's one of THE #1 reasons to choose SolidWorks over any other CAD package, when it comes to speed and design. Have you tried using iLogic and configuring iParts in Inventor? Good luck. Now, as you mentioned though, its Achilles heel is when it comes to PDM. That I will 100% agree with you that it is a nightmare when dealing with PDM. However, given the benefits on the design side I think they'd be able to work around the limitations of it and come up with solutions, especially with their own EPDM.

"...there comes a time when it's smarter and easier to start over". While I somewhat agree with you, that statement makes me cringe everytime a SW user says that about a drawing or model. 90% of the time it has nothing to do with how crappy the model is, and EVERYTHING to do with the fact that they have no idea how to go about fixing it, and because it wasn't done using THEIR methodology. I'm assuming this has to be the same in the coding world.

Yes, it is old, and we're all SO frustrated with how slowly it took some things to get fixed/introduced over the years, and especially how vague/ambiguous DS has been treating us with what to expect for the future, but again, at the end of the day, it's still a pretty decent product, and if we had a choice of what to work on in our daily work, would prefer it to any of the other solutions out there on the market.

Re: What We Found Out About SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual (and the Future of SolidWorks)

Bruce Buck — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 18:00:57 -0000

"not worth the cost of subscription". Agreed.

Re: What We Found Out About SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual (and the Future of SolidWorks)

Bruce Buck — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 17:46:44 -0000

Ok, but how many years have SW users been crying to stop adding features (that usually were half-baked) and fix bugs/improve reliability? The one silver-lining of all this chaos surrounding the transition is that some of the things we've whined about for years are finally getting addressed.

Re: What We Found Out About SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual (and the Future of SolidWorks)

Bruce Buck — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 17:07:15 -0000

As long as part of that shift doesn't also involve using Inventor...otherwise proceed with caution...