The Solid Edge version of SolidWorks World is now being called Solid Edge University, although Dave Ault is holding out for last year’s name, the Solid Edge Summit. Whatever you call it, you can get registered now. It’s only $350 to attend if you register before Feb 24, that’s a serious bargain (SolidWorks World is a ridiculous $995 just for admission).
Let’s say you want to start a business. The easiest way to start a business is to get other people to do the work for you. And even easier than that is to get other people to just collect stuff they find from anywhere and everywhere, and put it up on your site so you can say you’ve got a lot of cool content. Whew! Sure beats work, and having to know or do something! Brilliant business strategy. And no, I’m not talking about Megaupload. I’m talking about GrabCAD. Sorry, no link.
Going through and testing 3D formats is kind of a wild ride. 3D pdf works, except in Chrome because Chrome uses the Foxit viewer (which I also had installed separately), and Foxit doesn’t display 3D PDFs. You can disable/enable the Foxit/Adobe plugins by typing “about:plugins” in the address bar, and just clicking the right links, which should be obvious. But the weird thing about the finished PDF is that it is backwards (opposite handed) from my original, and seems to rotate backwards as well.
Read more on Testing, Testing, thmb thmb thmb Is this thing on?…
The Freeze Bar was my favorite feature in 2012. Until, that is, I started using it. It was one of the things that was supposed to show up in 2011, but reportedly wasn’t ready. It got a lot of scrutiny in the Beta forums, but what was delivered is not, in my opinion, usable in real-world modeling.
I know I’ve posted 3D-enabled blog posts here before – one using 3Dxml from DS and one using a tool from Autodesk. They were both pretty slow. With everybody messing their pants about mobile computing, it really confuses me why we don’t see a lot more of this – why can’t we just put 3D content into a website as easily as a 2D image? With both of those methods I used, the person viewing the website had to install a special viewer plugin. The web and 3D seem like a great match, but you don’t see it much out there.
Indent is one of those features that has been out for several releases, but you don’t hear too much about it. To me, it is one of those magical features that I don’t use much, but when I use it, it usually saves me a load of time. I can’t say that I’ve taken the time to understand everything it’s supposed to be able to do, but when you need to create a shell or thin wall feature around a shape, this is a great tool.
I don’t usually comment on general news items on this blog, but the Stop Online Piracy Act is relevant to anyone who creates or owns patents or copyrighted data, which includes anyone who uses CAD software. Just as a warning, this post is a bit of a political rant, where my profession intersects politics, which is rare enough.
SolidWorks Trim function does a lot more than just trim
In the course of my day-to-day work, I often come across stuff I like, or that I think works particularly well. The Trim sketch tool is one of those things. This was updated several years back, and the new functionality has been very welcome.
This is creating a bit of noise. So far I’ve seen comments from Anna Wood and Devon Sowell, two of the more stable and conservative of the defunct SolidWorks Blog Squad who have both made positive comments about this move.
There’s a bit of a conversation over on the Top10 site going on about the Shell feature. The conversation is worthwhile, and I just wanted to share some specific cases I have.
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