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SolidWorks World 2012…The final big stage.

Lars Christensen — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:00:09 +0000

Sitting back in the snow covered Upstate New York, it is time to wrap up the 4 day tour to SolidWorks World 2012 in San Diego California.

(Previous SolidWorks World 2012 posts SolidWorks World 2012…Hold up your rookie card ~ SolidWorks World 2012…Sunday: Partner Pavilion and Fabulous Tweetup ~ SolidWorks World 2012…The Midway:The boat and the conference)

Like I stated in my 1st post, I have never heard anyone complaining about that it is that time of year again. SolidWorks is defiantly more than capable to throw a awesome engineering event, and I can assure you that I will do my best to attend next years event in Orlando Florida.

The 3D Experience…
As I am tearing up my rookie card I have concluded that SolidWorks World is a 4 stage event.
1). SolidWorks gets to address a few thousand of their users, their reseller channel and the imported press. With CEO Bertrand Sicot, Dassault’s(The mother company)CEO Bernard Charlès and former SolidWorks CEO Jeff Ray all present at the event. My general take from this events general messages “We are looking out in the feature…”(The next generation CAD) “We will continuing developing…”(The current generation CAD).

2). Technical break-out sessions. I believe I read at one point that there was 150 sessions available for conference attendees. These sessions are presented by SolidWorks employees, reseller application engineers, SolidWorks bloggers and SolidWorks power users. The amount of tips & tricks and priceless SolidWorks knowledge a user can obtain here is simply magnificent.

3). Partner Pavilion. SolidWorks has a big trunk of products that runs inside or right along with SolidWorks. The partner pavilion gives attendees an opportunity to see how possible to enhance their business with these add-on’s. Here is a link for the partners from SolidWorks Partner Site

4). SolidWorks and their partners gets to throw their users some social get together and networking opportunities.

Wednesday, the final and most exciting…
The final day is when SolidWorks announces what is in the horizon for next years release. SolidWorks is not disappointing when it comes to adding new features to their product. Ricky Jordan has done a fantastic job covering this years SolidWorks World. His SolidWorks World 2013 Sneak Peek does an excellent job covering what SolidWorks is working on. rickyjordan.com on SolidWorks 2013 Sneak Peek

Picture worth a 1000 words, video then equals…
To wrap it all up I came across these fabulous videos created by the Solidbox team.

SolidWorks World 2012…The Midway:The boat and the conference

Lars Christensen — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:15:53 +0000

I have made it past the halfway mark of this fantastic event. As in my last blog post I am going to cheat. I am just going to hand you pictures (The 1000 word thing, right ). and throw some comments in there.

General Sessions
The general sessions are fantastic. Over 5000 people entering what feels like a rock concert.

CSWE/CSWP Event
On an aircraft carrier. Wow how awesome! The Midway has served in Korea and Desert Storm. The evening was fantastic. Just a heads up, we are some that need to get our certification going. Next year this event will only be for CSWE… Cutting the heard from this years 800 attendees.

Presentations…
Then of course there is all the presentations. This is defiantly where most people get their moneys worth. I got my presentation out of the way “Dumb Solids: How to make them your friend in SolidWorks”. The session was recorded, and should be available later this spring on SolidWorks website.
I have to thank everyone who took time out of their busy schedule and attended. I am so grateful.
I also had a chance to sit in on one of Jeff Sweeney’s presentations on EPDM, Simply fantastic. And also attended one of Charles Culp’s presentations, Awesome.

SolidWorks World 2012…Sunday: Partner Pavilion and Fabulous Tweetup

Lars Christensen — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:28:23 +0000

Good morning
As my eastern standard ~apparently well adjusted~ body things 4am. is rise and shine on a Monday morning. Tooo early to really give a good and well thought encounter of my 1st. SolidWorks World Sunday afternoon and evening. I thought I would do the old trick of a picture is worth a 1000 words, and attach as few comments along the way.

The Partner Pavilion opens…
I am sure you have been to a car show or maybe even a trade show in the past. A lot of sparkling lights and smiling faces. The SolidWorks World Partner Pavilion is located a couple of floors above that. If you walk in here with any thought of CAM on your mind, you are for sure going to have a big smile on your face. Simplest way to say it is that they are all here.

I did not have time to talk to each of them, and some of them defiantly deserve a revisit. But one thing is for sure, these people came prepared and ready to show some cool stuff.
There is of course many other partner product here at SolidWorks World, luckily for this rookie I have a few more days, and therefore also more Partner Pavilion stuff I can share here.

Fabulous Tweetup…

I have learned from reading all the great SolidWorks blogs in the past that it is not just what happens at the convention center that makes this the huge success of an event. 8:00pm at Hilton and the opportunity to meet old and new faces from the social media tool twitter.

Ya! I’m @Lars_cadcam on twitter but be careful of following me there, as Mr.Gebo, SolidWorks Eastern User Group Representative and last years SolidWorks User Group leader of the year experienced, I am the guy who want to shake your hand and say hi once or twice . You have to promise me that if you are here at world, you will say hello if our path crosses.

SolidWorks World 2012…Hold up your rookie card

Lars Christensen — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:12:09 +0000

So the question for you is how many times have you been to SolidWorks World?…2…4…8…or are you like me, a 1st timer…Newbie…The Rookie.

If you are going you are in for a treat. How do I know?…Well, I have never heard anyone complaining about that it is that time of year again.
Seasoned SolidWorks bloggers, forum users and User Group attendees praising this yearly event.
Not going?…sorry…The good news is that this event is always greatly covered. My intention is to shot a couple of blog post while I am there. Especially am I excited about the CAD/CAM goodness Im preparing to face in the partner pavilion. They are all there, Mastercam, Delcam, CAMWorks, Solidcam, HSMWorks etc.
So why am I there…
Because my employer, CADimensions, is willing to fly me across the entire continent and on top of that provide a comfortable bed.

To add to that I will also be challenging my rookie trip by doing a presentation at this years event.

Now I would actually never ask you to spend your valuable time attending my presentation, but please promise me that if you spot that face in the crowd you will come and say hello.
Did I say that I have a couple give a ways doing my presentation?…

If you are going I surly hope we get a chance to meet. If not, as I stated earlier this event is very well covered. Picking through the blogroll to the right you will for sure find a lot of good content. I will also be tweeting @Lars_cadcam and that will filter to Facebook and linkedIn.

5 Productive SolidWorks Tips (REV-16)

Lars Christensen — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:00:59 +0000

5 SolidWorks Tips that may possible be helpful kick starting your 3D day.

1.Click the Show in Folder icon next to recent documents in the File menu to browse to their location.

2.You can pin files in the recently used documents list in the File menu.

3.You can pre select a specific entity type (e.g. faces, edges) and then use the Select All command (Ctrl+A) to select all instances of that entity.

4.You can change a documents units directly from the status bar.

5.You can Auto Insert Center Marks for all holes, fillets, or slots in an entire view.

How to save back your shop knowledge to CAMWorks TechDb

Lars Christensen — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:08:27 +0000

The truth is that there is about 6-8 serious CAM program creators on the market. They are all trying to make a product that fits every CAM programmers needs. It is also a fact that every CAM programmer have their own preferable way of doing things.

One of the things that can really rock your toolpaths in CAMWorks is when you start adding your knowledge to the customizible database.
As a new user it is hard learning a new CAM product while you still are having a “every minute growing” work load to deal with, so luckly you don’t have learn how to customize your database in CAMWorks to start with. It will run fine out of the box.

However if you are looking to make some of those 1′s and 0′s in you computer help making your day easier (~It is ok being lazy with this kind of stuff when working with CAD and CAM~), getting to know your CAMWorks database will be some good time invested.
We are going to deal with some blog post in the future showing some of the neat things that can be stuffed into that CAMWorks database. Today we are going to go through the simple steps of getting some of the repetitious stuff out of the way.
The skinny is that Operation sequences and parameters for each unique feature is stored in the Technology Database, such as you depth of cut, step over distance, lead in/lead out etc. When the Generate Operations command is run, the operation sequence and associated parameters are extracted for the matching feature condition found in the Technology Database and then added to the CAMWorks Operation tree.

The cool thing is…
The way cool thing is, as you will see in this video, you can stuff some of your knowledge and experience into those fancy sequences and parameters.

Conclusion…
So if you have CAMWorks on that CAM machine of yours, I’ll recommend you start putting your thumbprint on some of that CAM data of yours

5 Productive SolidWorks Tips (REV-15)

Lars Christensen — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:00:51 +0000

5 SolidWorks Tips that may possible be helpful kick starting your 3D day.

1.You can specify the defalt line font for many types of drawing items. Click Tools, Options, Document Properties, Line Font.

2.A sketch has a minus in front of its name in the FeatureManager desing tree if it is under defined, and a plus sign if it is over defined.

3.If you drag a part into the the FeatureManager design tree of an assembly, the origin of the part is made coincident with the assembly origin, and the planes of the part are aligned with the assembly planes.

4.When lofting between similar profiles, it is often useful to copy the sketches. Select the sketch from the FeatureManager design tree, or select one of the entities and use Ctrl-C to copy it. Then select a plane or planar face and use Ctrl-V to paste the sketch.

5.You can zoom to Fit by pressing the ‘F’ key.

5 Productive SolidWorks Tips (REV-14)

Lars Christensen — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:00:40 +0000

5 SolidWorks Tips that may possible be helpful kick starting your 3D day.

1.When editing a part in an assembly, you can force the other components to become transparent, making it easier to select the part to be edited. Right-click components and select Change Transparency.

2.Sketch relations (suppressed or unsuppressed) can be controlled on a per configuration basis

3.Feature definitions (like end conditions: Blind, up to surface, etc.) can be controlled on a per configuration basis.

4.You can check the degree of curvature in a spline. Right-click the spline and select ‘Show curvature.’ If the degree of curvature is too small or to large for the spline, you can change the display by selecting ‘Modify Curvature Scale’ on the same menu.

5.You can select the faces, edges and vertices that are created by section views created in a SolidWorks part or assembly. You can not open a sketch on the newly created faces.

5 Productive SolidWorks Tips (REV-13)

Lars Christensen — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:00:04 +0000

5 SolidWorks Tips that may possible be helpful kick starting your 3D day.

1.You can use Interference Detection to make sure components in an assembly don’t intersect one another.

2.You can use Hide/Show Items on the Heads-Up View Toolbar to toggle the display of various types of items such as planes, axes and origins.

3.You can move, rotate or scale an entire sketch. Select the sketch and click Modify Sketch (Sketch toolbar) or Tools, Sketch, Modify.

4.You can create a customized drawing template, then save it by clicking File, Save As and specifying a template type for Save as type.

5.You can override dimensions when dragging sketch entities by clicking Tools, Sketch Settings, Override Dims on Drag/Move.

5 Productive SolidWorks Tips (REV-12)

Lars Christensen — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 12:00:20 +0000

5 SolidWorks Tips that may possible be helpful kick starting your 3D day.

1.You can use the Split Part feature to remove geometry from an imported body. This can be used in the place of trying to create a cut feature, which might alter the model geometry. It can also help simplyfy the model for use with FeatureWorks.

2.If the Ctrl key is held down while creating sketch entities, automatich Inferencing is disabled.

3.You can change a solid body to a surface body by deleting one of the solid’s faces.

4.You can specify a break in a dimension’s withess line if it overlaps another withess line. Select the dimension, and in the Property Manager select ‘Break Dimension Lines.’

5.Using the Reload/Replace tool, you can replace a part with an assembly, or an assembly with a part.