Social media and CAD take 2
Someone commented that the previous article was too long. And it was. But it didn’t include everything I had to say. So that means that I have to do a part 2. Sorry.
The only software that I think at this time is a really practical approach to combining SM + CAD is SolidJott. Ben Eadie is a tireless idea machine. You can ask a question about SolidWorks right in the Task Pane.
You can associate a lot of buzzwords with this, but the fact is that it solves a real problem. Ben is also developing Jott systems for other CAD products. The idea just makes sense. Simple. Easy. Works. Of course when you’re a CAD giant already, you can push this sort of stuff out and make an instant success. Ben relies on less traffic and probably zero cooperation from SolidWorks to get stuff like this out. So go visit Ben, and get the SolidJott SolidWorks add-in.
Another new social media / CAD product is Vuuch. This one is less simple, but still has a useful concept. Vuuch (rhymes with pooch) essentially turns your CAD program into an email client. You can go here to see a demo. You can see that they are trying very hard to make this look simple and useful. To me it seems like you are simply duplicating the email function in a place where it doesn’t belong. I can’t articulate why I’m less excited about this one than about SolidJott. Maybe its that Vuuch is from the guy who brought the world Seemage or nowadays better known as 3Dvia. First of all, it seems to be a name-challenged lot. Second, 3Dvia has been called overpriced MS Office functionality. I don’t have any real experience with it, but it’s a DS product that is supposed to do documentation. SolidWorks is a DS company that needs a lot of help with documentation, but they use software other than 3Dvia. If the company that bought Seemage and renamed it 3Dvia fails to see the value, then so do I.
Of course to me, my all-time favorite social media for CAD is the SolidWorks forums. The participation of other users is what gives this the most value. There are so many users that you can get an answer to just about any CAD or mech engineering related question. Hands down better than anything else out there. With the new edition of the forums, SW has had some questions about their concerns for user’s privacy, with emails exposed, and in one bizarre case even an image of a guy’s house ??!? Anyway, it wouldn’t be SolidWorks if it didn’t have some serious flaws in the execution. Still, the new forums are a huge benefit for users, and even accessible by non-subscription customers.
The ability to post images, videos, links, surpasses usenet by a longshot, and most other social media formats as well.
Aside from the privacy issues, and obvious implementation mistakes, I like the new forums. Privacy is one of the huge issues confronting people in the whole social media world. Social media right now seems to be about just letting it all hang out right there for everybody to see. It won’t take long for the culture to mature and realize that this isn’t a great idea. We’ve all heard about the people burglarized by a Twitter follower who knew exactly when they were out of town, or about identity theft made easy because all of your details are everywhere.
The new forums are fueled by Jive Software, focussed on bringing social media to business. The main relationship social media and business usually have is marketing. These days social media people are coming to understand that marketing IS content. Or “should be”. Traditional marketing through advertisements is too tacky for words. Manufacturers using content to draw people find more enthusiastic and less cynical participation.
If SolidWorks is actually using the forums as a marketing exploit, it’s one I don’t mind. It provides real value to all users, and is the best resource of its kind.
Matt my comment about the length of part 1 was intended to be a joke.
Part 2 is a good read too
>it wouldn’t be SolidWorks if it didn’t have some serious flaws in the execution.
This is the key.
People have become passive and accepting of stuff that shouldnt be.
We can maintain an uncomfortable self delusion that there is nothing wrong or better even though we know differently.
We can even make plausible excuses like ‘SolidWorks is a DS company that needs a lot of help with documentation’ when we know its actually a lack of will and willingness to face truth that is the problem.
If I write that GoldmanSachs wouldnt be GoldmanSachs unless it robbed people blind with high freq trading and by farming interest free money from the Fed. people would say yup thats the way its supposed to work..market exploit, though its one I dont mind. The Fed provides real value to all abusers and printing money is the best resource of its kind…
ok so the world didnt end with the launch of the new forum and its not entirely a dud (just a little slow and leaky) but honestly wasnt what eventuated somehow what observers familiar with SW might have expected?
and of course the world wont end with the scuttling of the dollar but honestly isnt what is transpiring somehow what astute participants might have expected?
The SW company pipeline is amazing in that insures the fairly obvious things not to do are always those that get done and to the best of their ability, and the things that need doing are lost sight of or perpetually on hold because they arent as marketable.
It does sound a little like another story of poor government.
Dont be burgluarized by following Twits.
Simple. Easy. Works.
ok cynical participation over
keep the posts coming…
Where SolidWorks refuses to be creative (or at least responsive), others step in. Ben’s solution is amazing—simple and effective. I can only WISH I had access to tools like this when I was teaching myself SolidWorks back in 1997 (of course AOL was still the norm for Internet access back then). Got a question? Someone’s got an answer. Faster than VARs, too. And it even works over night. In Australia! Or Mozambique! Or the mountains of Colorado!
So SolidWorks gets bombarded by experienced and non-experienced users alike with certain patterns of requests and they refuse to budge. With the Ben’s Jott line, and forums like those at SolidWorks or Eng-tips, anyone on subscription service with a VAR is asking themselves why they need it? For program upgrades? Yeah, that’s all it is anymore. No offense to the VARs, either, but it has nothing to do with them any more. They’ve been utterly bypassed by faster, better, and less expensive means of gaining help on demand. Certainly VARs have other things to offer, but those are also for additional cost.
You’d better watch it, Ben—you’re looking like competition more and more each day.
What is wrong with the guy that was behind Seemage? I have worked with him and find him to be very compelling. How can you say a product is no good and then say in the same sentence you dont know much about it?
Interesting but incorrect twist of what I was saying. What’s wrong with the guy behind Seemage? I don’t know, you tell me. Who said there’s anything wrong? “Compelling” would be overstating it a bit, I think. Which product did I say was no good? I don’t like either product. 3D Via seems overrated by people selling it. I’m not hearing any customers saying much about it other than its too expensive, and is somewhere between powerpoint and acrobat in functionality. Vooch is far from compelling. He’s just rebranding email. In fact, Google Wave is one better than Vooch, and its still just rebranding Facebook. This is not innovation, its immitation.
I have been away from using Solidworks for a couple of months. I got back into my amphibious airplane project this weekend. I had forgotten about the error dialogs, features that will not rebuild, hangs, and crashes. We have developed Solidworks reflexes that help us avoid these annoyances. I use SW2007. These are my favorite superstitions:
1. launch Solidworks, then open files from within.
2. do not touch the spaceball until the assembly is completely rebuilt.
3. when editing in context, have the part open
4. save before making an edrawing
5. turn off realview for large assemblies
6. if anything acts funny, save, quit solidworks, terminate soffice process, clean out temporary files, reboot, think nice thoughts about the quality of software.