Hello fellow SolidWorks users. We had our annual year end meeting on Thursday December 10. The attendance was a little light for a year end meeting with only 26 attending. The meeting was held at the beautiful Dynetics HQ building with Ricky Jordan our president presiding. For those who could not make it you missed out on some great food. We had roast beef, garlic mash potatoes and green beans..hmmmmm…Gotcha, just kidding. We had pizza and coke products provided by Papa Johns.
Ricky opened the meeting talking briefly about SolidWorks World and recently released service pack 1 for SolidWorks 2010. He also talked about Presentation Studio and Treehouse 2 in SolidWorks Labs. Then Ricky turned the meeting over to Matt Rece from SoildWorks and Tom Young from Modern Tech.
They did a presentation on “What’s New In SolidWorks 2010” Some of the functions they covered were sheet metal, mates, visualization, mouse jesters, weldments, drawings, toolbox, and virtual parts.
After the presentation Ricky gave the closing comments, talking about Solidworks education in the local area and asking for volunteers to help in some training classes. Ricky also asked for feedback and suggestions for future meetings.
At the end of the meeting we drew for prizes. Lloyd Philpott won the grand prize of a Logitech Nano cordless laser mouse donated by 3D Connection. MLC Cad Systems also donated 3 gifts cards.
Thanks to Matt and Tom for outstanding presentations. And just a note to all members. Anyone interested in presenting on a topic should contact Ricky Jordan. We always get outstanding presenters from the SolidWorks community and sometimes don’t realize the wealth of experience within our own group.
P.S. Thanks to Jim Clyburn for filling in for me and compiling the above meeting notes.
The North Alabama SolidWorks Users Group (NASWUG) is proud to announce our 5th Annual NASWUG Year End meeting! The meeting will be held on Thursday December 10, 2009 from 5:00pm to 8:00pm at the Dynetics Corporate Headquarters Building.
Matt Rece of SolidWorks Corporation will be on hand to present What’s New in SolidWorks 2010! Matt is a Territory Technical Manager for SolidWorks and is one of the most knowledgeable users around!
As a group we normally like to schedule our meetings with a little more notice, but that wasn’t possible this time due to some challenges beyond our control.
Grand Prize giveaways are in the works, so stay tuned to the NASWUG site for the latest information.
Dinner will be provided along with LOTS of Door Prizes to be given away at the end of the meeting.
RSVP for the meeting today by following the link below to sign up on our online registration form.
Sorry folks about the long delay on the last three meeting notes … but I do have some good reasons. My wife and I were in Australia for our youngest daughter’s wedding when Gary Hall held the June 10th NASWUG-RSA meeting. We then hosted guests from Australia through July 4th weekend. At the June 10th meeting there were 13 in attendance and there were no special presentations just basic Q&A meeting. That being the middle of summer a lot of folks were probably on vacation. Then a power saw incident had my typing ability significantly reduced while a finger healed. I was very lucky to say the least in that I did not lose any digits and the finger is healing very nicely although still sensitive to being bumped.
The August 27th NASWUG meeting was held at our usual location at Dynetics HQ We had about 40 people in attendance (misplaced the attendance) and Mike Puckett was our guest presenter. Ricky Jordan announced the October meeting would be an in-house presentation on What’s New 2010, mentioning that there are over 200 enhancements in SW2010. The CSWP exam covers the basic core modeling specialist. Also available are the Advanced Sheet Metal module, Advance Surfacing module and FEA (simulation). Mike Puckett heads up the SolidWorks certification activities. The online certification testing requires any version of SolidWorks 2008, SP3 or later. Mike Puckett mentioned the online CSWP exam and any SWUGN User Group member in attendance would be eligible for a FREE code to take the test. Now the fun stuff. Mike’s presentation, titled Tips & Tricks (Mish-Mash), was very interesting and as always educational. A big thanks to Mike for sharing his knowledge with us.
This brings us up to the last meeting, NASWUG-RSA on October 1st at the RSA Bowling Alley meeting room. With about 25 in attendance (this attendance list must have taken off with the previous one as well), Gary Hall conducted a general Q&A and demo session. Some of the more interesting points covered were use of fillet expert, use of pattern of points to equally divide a curve and then use of a hole table to extract the coordinate points. The ModernTech Mechanical What’s New in SolidWorks 2010 rollout will be in Huntsville on Oct. 20th from 8-12. All active subscribers should have an email on this but if not you can get the details from the their website. http://www.moderntechmech.com/ Ricky Jordan then presented a mini What’s New 2010 touching on the highlights of what to expect. The main areas to expect include, mouse gestures, reference planes, multi-body sheet metal, multi-body materials assignment, diplay states in parts and drawings, assembly visualization, drawings dimensioning, mirror components, virtual componenets and display states in parts. Ricky mentioned there had been a delay in the CSWP exam codes for last months and this months attendees but he would follow up with an email to everyone soon. As of this writing everyone eligible should have received an email from Ricky to which a response is required to get the codes. Everyone agreed that the meeting room location at the bowling alley worked out very well.
The North Alabama SolidWorks Users Group (NASWUG) would like to announce our October 2009 NASWUG-RSA meeting. The meeting will be held on Thursday, October 1st, 2009 from 11:00am to 1:00pm on the grounds of the Redstone Arsenal. The meeting will be held at the Redstone Bowling Lanes. This is located just to the right when coming in the Patton Road Gate. (see link for location)
NOTE: Due to construction, turn at the light Aerobee Road and Patton and then right on Zeus Dr.
The session will be general Q&A with some specific tips in areas of part construction and modeling. If you have any questions that you’d like to submit ahead of the meeting, we’ll be happy to look at them first.
The meeting is open to all SolidWorks users who have their own pass to get on the grounds of the Arsenal. Buffet lunch and door prizes will be provided.
To RSVP, click on the link below and fill the form. Don’t forget to hit “Submit” when you are done!
After a bit of a break this summer, the North Alabama SolidWorks Users Group (NASWUG) is proud to announce our August 2009 meeting! The meeting will be held on Thursday August 27, 2009 from 5:00pm to 7:30pm at the Dynetics Corporate Headquarters Building.
Come join us for NASWUG Certification night! Mike Puckett from the Certification Group at SolidWorks Corporation will be on hand to give an overview of the Certification Program. For those of you who just can’t get enough GREAT technical tips, Mike will also be giving a Tips and Tricks presentation.
Dinner will be provided along with LOTS of Door Prizes to be given away at the end of the meeting.
Our April 14th meeting has come and also has April 15th We had 29 in attendance at the Dynetics HQ building with Ricky Jordan our president presiding. And thanks to Richard Hall for trying out a new food choice (pizza does get a little old doesn’t it!) Ricky talked briefly about the upcoming SWUGN Summit event near us, this time taking place in Doraville GA(NE side of Atlanta) at the Holiday Inn NE Atlanta on Tuesday, May 19th. For those unfamiliar, this is a great event hosted by SolidWorks and led by Richard Doyle. Registration is only $40 and includes breakfast and lunch plus a full day of technical training. It is very much like a full day of breakout sessions at a SolidWorks World event. Follow the links on the SWUGN website (http://www.swugn.org/) to register online.
ModernTechMechanical (http://www.moderntechmech.com/)has created an “Engineering Stimulus Package” in conjunction with the SolidWorks Engineering Stimulus Package that is available to help currently unemployed engineers. This basically provides displaced engineers and designers with FREE SolidWorks 3D CAD software, training, Certified SolidWorks Associate (CSWA) certification opportunities, and job placement services.
Richard Hall talked briefly about the new look at 3D Content Central and how useful this great CAD source is. If you haven’t visited this site before it is well worth a look see. http://www.3dcontentcentral.com/default.aspx
Brian McElyea then presented on SolidWorks Workgroup PDM. Basically don’t think of this as something for more than one computer/engineer. It is a fantastic tool for file management, and product data management even on a single computer. The sytem keys on meta data and using notes you can build design history tracking that makes it very simple to retrieve previous versions. So you can think of it as a versioning system (i.e. unlimited configuration system) that allows you to go back to any previous design stage. PDM is not restricted to just CAD file/design. You can use it with any type file that you want to manage and control versions and version history. By using the PDM system you don’t have to manually create and store multiple folders and multiple models. The PDM system manages this for you. SolidWorks Workgroup PDM is included in SolidWorks Professional and Premium. If you have a need for PDM for a large group or for multiple site locations and want the ability to control all aspects of your file/design managment then the separate Enterprise PDM version is what you need.
Next up was our NASWUG RSA president Gary Hall presenting on DimXpert. Gary did a warm up of this at the previous RSA meeting so he was fine tuned for this one. Just to reitierate from that meeting, DimXpert differs from Autodimension in that it recognizes patterns and countersink holes and it produces predictable results. For example with Autodimension you typically get unwanted dimensions that have to be selectively deleted. Whereas with DimXpert when you select an edge only the feature represented by the edge is dimensioned. A word of caution with patterns: if a hole pattern was not created as a pattern of Hole Wizard holes then any changes made to the model do not update the hole callout. DimXpert is not just for native SolidWorks parts. Gary walked through this example using an imported model, selecting specific datums and then applying DimXpert. This is a great tool for those that have a need to produce manufacturing drawings.
Thanks to Brian and Gary for outstanding presentations. And just a note to all members. Anyone interested in presenting on a topic should contact Ricky Jordan. We always get outstanding presenters from the SolidWorks community and sometimes don’t realize the wealth of experience within our own group.
The North Alabama SolidWorks Users Group (NASWUG) is proud to announce our April 2009 meeting! The meeting will be held on Tuesday April 14, 2009 from 5:00pm to 7:30pm at the Dynetics Corporate Headquarters Building.
Come join us for a two GREAT presentations that you DON’T want to miss! Brian McElyea will be on hand to give a presentation on SolidWorks Workgroup PDM. If you haven’t yet experienced the advantages of using PDM software, this is a must see. There will also be a Q&A session for current PDM users who may have questions.
NASWUG-RSA President Gary Hall will also be on hand to give a presentation on the advantages of using the DimXpert functionality inside of SolidWorks. This is one of the most underutilized features in SolidWorks. Gary gave this presentation earlier this year at the NASWUG-RSA meeting and it was an instant hit! Gary has updated the presentation to include enhancements to this functionality in SolidWorks 2009.
Dinner will be provided along with LOTS of Door Prizes to be given away at the end of the meeting.
What a great location for SolidWorks World 2009. Orlando weather was fantastic and as always too much to do in too little time. It really is hard to decide between what presentations and what events to attend. Unfortunately we are all back to the daily grind I expect but at least with renewed enthusiasm. We held our 2nd meeting of the year with our NASWUG-RSA group at Redstone Arsenal with 28 in attendance. Ricky Jordan began the meeting with announcements then covered Twitter and who in the group is using it followed by a detailed “Sneak Peak” at SolidWorks 2010. Here is a link to Ricky’s blog and the 2010 quicklist http://www.rickyjordan.com/2009/02/solidworks-2010-the-quick-list.html For those that have attended the SWUGN Technical Summit in Nashville the past two years, it will be held in Atlanta this year. Watch Ricky’s blog and the NASWUG website for upcoming details.
Gary Gall, president of NASWUG-RSA took over with a presentation on DimXpert and GD&T with respect to manufacturing drawings. DimXpert differs from Autodimension in that it recognizes patterns and countersink holes and it produces predictable results. For example with Autodimension you typically get unwanted dimensions that have to be selectively deleted. Whereas with DimXpert when you select an edge only the feature represented by the edge is dimensioned. A word of caution with patterns: if a hole pattern was not created as a pattern of Hole Wizard holes then any changes made to the model do not update the hole callout. DimXpert is not just for native SolidWorks parts. Gary walked through his example using an imported model, selecting specific datums and then applying DimXpert. This is a great tool for those that have a need to produce manufacturing drawings. Thanks Gary for a great presentation.
It’s been a while since our last NASWUG-RSA meeting but I’m happy to report we are back and better than ever
The North Alabama SolidWorks Users Group (NASWUG) would like to announce our February 2009 NASWUG-RSA meeting. The meeting will be held on Thursday February 26, 2009 from 11:00am to 12:50pm on the grounds of the Redstone Arsenal. The meeting will be held at the Prototype Integration Facility (PIF) located just behind Building 5400 off Martin Road.
NASWUG-RSA President Gary Hall will be on hand to give a presentation on the SolidWorks DimXpert and its uses with GD&T. Also included will be a look at the MANY benefits of Mate References.
The meeting is open to all SolidWorks users who have their own pass to get on the grounds of the Arsenal.
Lunch and door prizes will be provided.
To RSVP, click on the link below and fill the form. Don’t forget to hit “Submit” when you are done!
You will receive a confirmation e-mail upon submitting your RSVP.
Don’t miss your opportunity to network with fellow SolidWorks users, gain valuable information, get free food, and pick up some cool prizes! See you there!
We started the new year with 34 in attendance at our January meeting at the Dynetics HQ building. As I write this, I am making last minute preparations to attend SolidWorks World 2009 in Orlando. We welcomed 6 new members in attendance. Ricky Jordan, NASWUG president, began the meeting with announcements and comments about the upcoming SWW2009 and also about SolidWorks Labs new additions. Some of the new additions include Tagger, Treehouse, Collada Export, and Presentation Studio. For more details visit the SolidWorks Labs site, http://labs.solidworks.com
Ricky presented on Custom PCB Design. This was a warm-up for his upcoming presentation at SWW. The presentation highlighted concepts and processes, and specific SolidWorks features useful in PCB Design and collaboration as well as some “gotchas” of which to be aware.. And that folks is the key …“collaboration” You have to closely collaborate with the electrical design folks in a back and forth iterative process. For the mechanical aspects it is important to specify only those requirements to make the interfaces work, leaving as much leeway as possible for the electrical design and layout. For those with SolidWorks Premium, you know you have CircuitWorks and other subscribers have CircuitWorks Lite. At the conclusion, Ricky asked for feedback positive and negative. Good job, Ricky!
Gary Hall mentioned that the NASWUG RSA group is looking forward to starting up their meetings again at RSA, probably near the end of February. That’s all folks … see you in Orlando and if not there at the next NASWUG meeting.
