At the meeting tonight I promised to post a link to a page that lists SolidWorks users on Twitter. Below is a link to a post that Josh at SolidSmack is keeping up to date. Josh also lists other folks from the CAD Community that are also on Twitter.
Stay tuned to the NASWUG site and if you are an e-mail subscriber, watch your Inbox closely as we are getting closer to announcing the details for our 4th Annual NASWUG Year End Meeting.
We should be back at our normal meeting location and the meeting will be sometime in November or at the latest the first week of December.
If you missed our September meeting you really missed out. We met in the old Dynetics HQ building and had 42 in attendance. Last minute scheduling permitted Matt Lombard (author of SolidWorks 2007 Bible, SolidWorks Surfacing and Complex Shape Modeling, and soon to hit the bookshelves, SolidWorks 2009 Bible) to join us and share in the SW2009 What’s New presentation with Ricky Jordan. But to digress, the meeting began shortly after everyone filled up on pizza and soft drinks. Among the usual announcements, Ricky pointed out that SW2009 has been officially released. It is available for download now at the SolidWorks Customer Portal for those on subscription service. Word of caution, don’t try this on dialup or even DSL. Ricky pointed out that the installation from download worked perfectly and one advantage to installing from the download … you won’t need the DVD to install later service pack releases.
Next, a show of hands for those planning on attending SolidWorks World 2009 International User Conference and Exposition in Orlando, FL at the Swan & Dolphin Hotel Feb 8-11, 2009. Anyone needing help with justification give Ricky a shout. If you have never been to a SolidWorks World it is truly an adventure with more training presentations in a short 4 days on subjects from everything SolidWorks and then some.
Now to try and give a Reader’s digest summary of the rest of the meeting. Ricky first presented on the new Photoview 360 which is included in all flavors of SolidWorks except SolidWorks standard. As with any new release of SolidWorks there is plenty of material for a What’s New presentation. Ricky and Matt did an outstanding job of cramming as much into the remaining two hours ( after the eating) of our meeting. Actually Matt was kind enough to extend the presentation an extra 30 minutes for those that could stick around. With all the new enhancements in SW2009, there have been some significant terminology changes. Once you get past that it is nice to see that emphasis has really been placed on improving performance, speed and stability. Now just to mention the main highlights. User Interface enhancements includes a movable Command Manager, a Property Tab builder, hyperlink capability with BOM and custom properties, dual dimension display, triad functionality to quickly change model orientation and a magnify tool. Sketching enhancements includes new slot tool (oooh, ahhh!!), numeric sketch input, Instant 3D Resize, stretch entities and move/copy/scale in 3D sketch. Sheet Metal enhancements include convert to sheet metal from solid. cross break, and a combined gauge - bend table. Weldment enhancements include groups, weld gaps within groups and between groups, improved end caps and gussets, trim extend tool. Assembly enhancements include large assembly performance improvement, assembly features propagating to the parts, a new BOM in assembly and speed pack, and Drawing enhancements. Speed pack basically allows you to take an assembly/subassembly and identify faces/features for mating and then use the assembly/subassembly in another assembly with huge performance gain.
Matt took over with his take on Visualization enhancements, the new plastic features, surfacing and spline enhancements and free form As expected, Matt presented his likes and dislikes of the new release but the general consensus is that the new SW2009 is a very impressive release and should prove to be much more stable with better performance.
Thanks again to Ricky and Matt for an outstanding What’s New presentation. We should see the VAR rollout presentations of SW2009 sometime in October.
As referenced in the September 2008 Meeting announcement, I am looking to our user group members to suggest which enhancements in SolidWorks 2009 you would like to see in the presentation! To suggest an area of the software or specific function, all you have to do is leave a comment to this post. Its that simple!
I have included a reference list below of a few of the areas of SolidWorks 2009 where there are multiple enhancements. Please feel free to use this list or suggest OTHER areas that might not be on this list!
User Interface
Materials & Appearances
Features
Parts
Weldments
Sheet Metal
Assemblies
Drawings & Detailing
SolidWorks Professional Add-ins
SolidWorks Premium Add-ins
Below I have included some specific enhancements to areas of the software which might impact users the most. Again, if there is something specific that is not on this list, please feel free to suggest it.
Custom Properties
PhotoView 360 (New Rendering Solution)
Automatic Dimensioning of Sketches
Title Block Wizard
Sketch Slot
Appearances
Ok…It’s all up to you! Please leave your comments below and help shape this presentation!
Hi everyone. I regret to inform you that we will not have a NASWUG-RSA meeting for the month of August. We have run into some scheduling conflicts with the meeting facilities and won’t be able to get the meeting in this month. NASWUG-RSA WILL be meeting (FOR SURE) in October. We should have a date and location announced soon. Stay tuned for a meeting announcement soon for the September 2008 NASWUG meeting. I can guarantee you it will be sometime after September 22nd because I don’t get back from Disney World until then!
Starting tonight I have begun the changeover process to switch server providers for this site. Over the next 72 hours you may experience disruptions in accessing this site as the new name servers propagate across the internet. IF YOU ARE SEEING THIS POST, then you are looking at the site on the new host.
E-mails to anyone with an @naswug address could be limited for the next couple of days as well.
Don’t worry! Everything including the Forum will be kept in the changeover. I’ll let you know when everything is fully back online.
Our NASWUG RSA meeting took place at the Redstone Arsenal on June 24, 2008 with 17 in attendance.Looks like summer has kicked in fully with schools out now.A few minor hiccups were weathered while waiting for the food to arrive.Pizzas were a little late … something about an oven breaking down, and a cable issue required some scrambling to get Gary Hall’s laptop to display via the projector.Nothing that everyone couldn’t handle though.After the food arrived Ricky Jordan began the meeting with the announcements and general questions.A few people raised their hands in response to “who is participating in the SW2009 Beta test?”SW2009 Beta1 is available to anyone on a current SolidWorks subscription.Someone asked about running SolidWorks on Vista.It turns out that Microsoft has begun to phase out the Windows XP operating system, BUT they have also said they will continue to provide support until 2014.And SW2008 SP4.0 is available at the SolidWorks Customer Portal.Ricky mentioned the newly integrated CircuitWorks which is included for anyone with an Office Premium seat.If you upgrade to SW2008 SP4 (Office Premium seats) you will automatically have CircuitWorks. It is not a separate download.We still need one NASWUG member to complete the NASWUG Advisory Board.AS mentioned at the last meeting, the Advisory board will meet once every two months independently of the NASWUG meetings to discuss meeting topics and ways to improve the User Group.
Gary Hall presented on the subject Templates.The presentation touched on several aspects of Solidworks templates (Dwg, Part, Assy). Templates defaults were covered along with where the files were and could be stored. Answering questions about templates was part of the presentation such as, “Can a design table be stored inside of a SW template”. Doing a multi-sheet drawing template was presented. The difference between a drawing format and a template was covered. Other templates were discussed such as BOM, Hole Table, Rev Table, etc… Lastly, a quick demo of 3Dawn.com’s Template Wizard was discussed.This is a relatively inexpensive tool (discovered at SolidWorks World 2008) that can make creating templates a less painful process.Thanks for a great presentation, Gary.
Concluding the meeting the names of Bhisham Lall, Ledwin Mercury, Drew Riley, Patrick Nickel and Gerald Tuck were drawn for door prizes (to be picked up at next meeting).Again, due to a minor hiccup, the usual enough door prizes for everyone did not arrive on time.The next meeting topic has not been confirmed yet but there were several expressions of interest in a presentation on CircuitWorks.If you have any ideas or requests for topics be sure and forward them to ricky@naswug.com
Summer is upon us and we had a great meeting on May 29, 2008 with 36 in attendance.I guess summer vacations haven’t kicked in that much yet … or maybe everyone is vacationing closer to home, or maybe it’s just the FREE food (that always brings out the engineers).Actually, we always look forward to the main event and this was no exception with Matt Rece, SolidWorks Territory Technical Manager, presenting on 3DVIA Composer (more on this later). Ricky Jordan made several announcements of interest to us all.The new revised NASWUG website www.naswug.com incorporates a BLOG format where anyone can now post comments. Also check out the NASWUG website to get more info on a RSS feed that Ricky mentioned.SolidWorks 2009 Beta program kicks off in early June and anyone that is on a SolidWorks subscription is eligible to participate. Go to the SolidWorks customer portal website.And in case you haven’t heard, SolidWorks purchased CircuitWorks recently and it is now included with your SolidWorks Office Premium subscription.You can download and install it now but it will be fully integrated into Office Premium with the SP4.0 release.
We had a short nominating process, actually self nominating process, to establish the new NASWUG officers.Congratulations to Ricky Jordan, continues as President, Rich Hall – new Vice President, yours truly Michael Langley – continues as First Secretary, Jim Clyburn – new Second Secretary.For our NASWUG-RSA group, Gary Hall continues as President.Also established is a new NASWUG Advisory Board, consisting of the NASWUG officers and two NASWUG members.We still have one member position open, so anyone willing to help out contact Ricky Jordan (ricky@naswug.com) The Advisory board will meet once every two months independently of the NASWUG meetings to discuss meeting topics and ways to improve the User Group.
A little more about the main event.Matt Rece presented on 3DVIA Composer, a new offering from SolidWorks.3DVIA Composer is a product documentation solution that allows your organization to create 2D and 3D images and animations for technical publications, assembly instructions, marketing presentations, and other customer materialsIf your company has such documentation requirements, this is a go to package that improves these outputs and is highly dynamic.To make changes in your documentation images and animations you only need to update the CAD from which the images and animations were created.3DVIA Sync, a separate component, integrates 3DVIA Composer with a full range of CAD systems, so you can automatically synchronize and schedule updates to BOMs and other types of data. There are other 3DVIA Composer add-on products as well as a free 3DVIA Player that allows 3DVIA content creators to distribute 3DVIA Composer content to any end-user.Many thanks to Matt for an excellent presentation.
And finally, thanks to Terry Ray and Tom Young from ModernTech for joining us for this meeting.It is always good to see reps from the VARs.The next meeting will be near the end of June at Redstone Arsenal (watch your email and the NASWUG website for the announcement).It is now easier than ever to RSVP for the meetings and this really helps us out in planning for the free food.
In the meeting last week I mentioned the fact that this new NASWUG site now includes an RSS feed. When I asked how many folks use a reader to monitor RSS type feeds from various sites there were only 2 or 3 hands that were raised. Below I have included some links to a few of the popular readers out there for your benefit.
Netvibes
Here is a link to the NASWUG Forum that explains Netvibes which even includes a way for you to hit the ground running with a SolidWorks themed feeds page.
