Dezignstuff SolidWorks Blog

If your reading muscles aren’t sore by now, here are some miscellaneous pieces of information that didn’t fit in other places.

Training materials for sale?

Ok, this must be another miscommunication, but I’m quite sure I heard from the main stage that the new website http://store.solidworks.com will sell the standard SolidWorks swag along with training materials. It is possible that they meant stuff like the Photoworks or Animator books, and not the reseller type course materials, but since what we do here better than anything else is stir the pot, I’m looking forward to buying an Advanced Assemblies training book. SW could put eBay out of business if they allowed people to buy training books.

Feature Lock

I’m gonna keep mentioning this one. They announced from the main stage that you will be able to put a Feature Lock on the Feature Manager to prevent features from rebuilding. YEEEEHAAAAW! “My name is Matt Lombard, and SolidWorks 2011 was my idea.” Ok, so feature lock wasn’t my idea, it was some one else’s idea, but I like the idea a lot.

Cloud Poll

I did an informal and non-scientific poll at my surfacing session at SWW10. I asked how many people were excited about the cloud stuff, and about half raised their hands. Then I asked how many were terrified, and half rose their hands. Not sure if they were the same people or different people, but this is neither a slam dunk nor a total waste in terms of public opinion at this point.

Quote from Jim Wilkinson of the Usability group:

“Escape is the most used key in the software”

User Groups

This year I resigned from leading the Central Virginia user group, stopped giving all the presentations at the Blue Ridge user group, and didn’t run for re-election for the SWUGN committee. To this point I haven’t really issued an explanation for why. Essentially, I was putting a lot of effort into SWUGN that was straight out of my pocket, and not reimbursed. In good times I can afford to do that, but I can’t subsidize that kind of user group activity long term, especially when the company benefitting from that activity doesn’t seem to appreciate or acknowledge the effort. Even as a part of the committee, I felt that personal and corporate politics trumped everything else. I believe that with the same amount of effort and at lower personal cost to me, I can have a bigger and more positive impact on the SolidWorks community with my on-line activities. The user groups will in time take care of themselves, and Tony Cantrell has been elected to replace me on the committee. Tony has a lot of energy and enthusiasm to contribute, and I hope that is harnessed and allowed to produce good things rather than discouraged.

If I can offer some parting advice, the “SolidWorks Community” includes all users connecting through all media. You can’t lead the community and not believe in certain types of media. You can’t demoralize volunteer labor, fail to reimburse when it is your policy, or lead campaigns against individuals. You can’t be devisive and bring people together at the same time. You can’t listen selectively and pretend problems don’t exist.

Is this cool? Yes, it seems like it will be useful for a certain range of work, but certainly not all work. It may be something I would like to use with customers who don’t have CAD.

But here’s the funny thing. Or funny to me, anyway. SolidWorks already has this thing called 3D Instant Website that people already don’t use. It exists now, and does probably 70% of what his new thing does. The big difference here is storage of actual models in the new stuff. Did I mention that no one uses 3DIW, even though you don’t have to pay anything for it if you have SW Professional.

I personally like, or liked 3DIW. But I couldn’t get people to use it. Doing the same thing and then putting your files up there on an unknown server doesn’t sound to me like a big improvement. I’m just curious why if it failed the first time, why they want to call it new and try essentially the same thing again (and possibly charge you extra for it?!?!)

The highlight for today was the top 10 list for SW2011. These are things that have a higher likelihood of actually being implemented. Remember we did a Top 10 list here? I think that this year, SolidWorks did a great job with the Top 10 list. This is in part because of using the Brainstorm method of transparently collecting and voting on enhancement suggestions.

Anyway, here is the top 10:

10 simplify video card requirements

9 exploded views for weldments

8 option to dangle children instead of deleting

7 graphical map of references

6 allow more types of assembly features

5 better utilize all processor cores

4 on the fly equations and dialog boxes

3 file compatibility between versions

2 increase stability

1 solidworks should cleanly uninstall itself

The ones in bold are ideas that were also part of this blog’s Top 10. I think the #1 spot is a bit odd. Why would uninstallation be a #1 request?!?

In addition to the Top 10 list, they also showed some features that will be found in SW2011. Some of my note taking was done quickly, so I may have missed some things:

• revolve up to surface, vertex, body
• defeature tool to remove stuff based on size- shows an imported body at the end
• appearance is customizable, lights, display manager, reflections
• rendered animation. with pv360.
• 2d planar simulation projected back to 3d model for symmetrical analysis
• dimension placement on drawing is cleaner and in the correct view staggered and spaced automatically
• dimensions in the hole table
• cut sweep and fillet in assembly
• welds in part or assembly  - lightweight welds
• triad to position piping parts rotationally
• add gaps throughout the piping skid
• piping walkthrough with arrow and mouse
• etching feature for text on parts
• feature lock to avoid rebuilding features

In case you didn’t catch it, that last one says “Feature lock to avoid rebuilding features”. Yes, it does. In 2011. Ok. I’ll upgrade. That is another enhancement that this blog is going to take credit for. It came up here during the direct edit discussions.

Oh, yes, and they announced the location of SWW11 – San Antonio, TX. Sounds like fun. Still, it might be time to take a year off.