Summer vacation is almost over and school is just around the corner, actually since these notes are a little late, school has actually started. Our July 31, 2008 NASWUG meeting showed a slight increase with 33 in attendance at Dynetics HQ. Ricky Jordan began the meeting with the usual announcements. SW009 Beta is in full swing and Ricky mentioned that the NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) would be removed soon, so watch Ricky’s blog (http://www.rickyjordan.com/ for lots of good stuff on the upcoming SW2009 release. Speaking of SW2009, emails have gone out to subscribers announcing SW world 2009 early bird registration. You can save some bucks if you can plan this far ahead and get in on the early registration process. And finally, here is another reminder that SP4 for SW2008 is now out for subscribers.

Ricky Jordan gave a presentation outlining Tips and Tricks in SolidWorks Sketching.  The first part of the presentation outlined some uncommon options in various Sketch tools in SolidWorks that can often be overlooked.  Details for Rectangles, Ellipse, Polygons, and Sketch Text were highlighted along with the Fully Define Sketch command.  The next part of the presentation included a list of recommended sketching methods.  Those items included customizing the CommandManager, working with relations visually, offsetting geometry, trimming geometry, dynamic mirroring and leveraging Sketch Blocks for large 2D data sets.  The last portion of the presentation outlined some Sketch Troubleshooting techniques which included the usage of Display/Delete Relations and SketchXpert.

Richard Hall was next presenting on the topic, Using Design Tables. Design tables can be used to control several different items.  Richard demonstrated a set of models touching on some of items controllable with Design Tables.  For a full set of details pertaining to Design Tables, be sure to check the SW help file under the search heading “design tables”.

A design table can be used to control dimensional changes by configuration in a part file.  A Mil spec bulkhead connector example showed that several dimensions in different features can be controlled by name with a configuration.  This allows each “shell” size of the connector to be controlled by the Mil spec value.  As many or as few variables as needed or required can be controlled.

The Assembly file example showed another use for design tables.  In this example of the connector, the o-ring seal and the attachment nut are added in normal fashion.  The difference is that each configuration by “shell” size is controlled by changing the part configuration in the design table configuration.  This allows you to set up multiple “read that infinite” variations for both connector size and material thickness.

Drawings can also take advantage of models using design tables.  A general table can be created and linked to a variable dimensional variable such as length that is driven by a design table.  This will take some practice to get the syntax correct but it is fun and frustrating to try.  Try your hand at this and let Richard know how it turns out.

For any questions concerning design tables or the models used as examples you can contact Richard at: rich@naswug.com

Brian McElyea presented on Using Equations.  The presentation focused on how equations can be used in Solidworks, including conveying design intent and creating animations.  Brian covered the different types of variables that could be used in SolidWorks equations and how to use comments to document what the equations do.  The supported operators, constants, and functions were shown, as well as a few undocumented functions to help with more advanced equations and adding logic.  The presentation was wrapped up with a SolidWorks demonstration showing how to enter and edit equations, and some basic functions.  Brian also showed a couple of animations of parts (a spring and a hydraulic cylinder) driven by equations.

Ricky wrapped up the meeting thanking everyone for coming. The next meeting should be the NASWUG RSA meeting some time in August.

The North Alabama SolidWorks Users Group (NASWUG) is proud to announce our July 2008 meeting!  The meeting will be held on Thursday July 31, 2008 from 5:00pm to 7:30pm at the Dynetics Corporate Headquarters Building.  

Come join us for a Tips and Tricks presentation featuring Sketching, Design Tables, & Equations in SolidWorks.  The presentations will be given by NASWUG members Ricky Jordan, Rich Hall, & Brian McElyea.

Dinner will be provided along with LOTS of Door Prizes to be given away at the end of the meeting.

RSVP for the event today by following the link below to sign up on our online registration form.  http://www.naswug.com/index.php/meeting-rsvp/

Don’t miss your opportunity to network with fellow SolidWorks users, gain valuable information, get free food, and pick up some cool prizes!

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

The North Alabama SolidWorks Users Group (NASWUG) would like to announce our June 2008 NASWUG-RSA meeting.  The meeting will be held on Tuesday June 24, 2008 from 11:00am to 1:00pm 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.

CLARIFICATION: If you signed up for the meeting on Friday, the confirmation e-mail incorrectly states that the meeting is at the SELA auditorium.  This has been corrected, but just to reiterate, the meeting is at the PIF.

NASWUG-RSA President Gary Hall will give a presentation on SolidWorks Templates.  The presentation will focus on the features and options found in Part, Assembly, and Drawing templates.

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 out the form.  Don’t forget to hit “Submit” when you are done!

http://www.naswug.com/index.php/meeting-rsvp/

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!

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 materials If 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.

Google Reader (http://www.google.com/reader)

As popular as Google is, you know their reader gets a lot of use.

My Yahoo (http://my.yahoo.com/)

Another popular site with very good feed capabilities.

Congratulations to the 2008-2009 NASWUG Officers

President - Ricky Jordan (incumbant)

Vice President - Rich Hall

First Secretary - Michael Langley (incumbant)

Second Secretary - Jim Clyburn

Any members interested in the NASWUG Advisory Board needs to e-mail me (ricky@naswug.com) ASAP.  I only have one taker so far which leaves one spot open.

We will have a complete write up of the last meeting posted soon!

The May 2008 Meeting is tonight!  This will be a meeting you don’t want to miss.  Along with our previously announced presentation we will hold Officer Elections.  Each position requires a self nomination.  If more than one person runs for a position the winner will be determined through online voting.  Below is a summary of the four positions along with a brief description.

President

Responsible for scheduling, coordinating, and running User Group meetings.  Responsible for group website and any related user forums.  Maintains user contact database.  (President’s note - I have and continue to enjoy serving as your User Group President.  I am more than happy to continue in this role and will be running for the position again.  I believe in open elections for ALL positions which includes this one.)

Vice President

Assist President in planning, coordinating, and running User Group events.  Responsible for running User Group meetings in the event the President is unable to attend.  Represents NASWUG if needed in local SolidWorks related events.

First Secretary

Primary responsibility is to take meeting minutes for all NASWUG meetings.  Assist in greeting new members to the group at meetings.

Second Secretary

Assists First Secretary in taking meeting minutes and serves as backup in the event the First Secretary cannot attend the meeting.  Also greets new members to the group at meetings.

NASWUG Advisory Board

Consists of the four NASWUG officers plus two volunteers.  Meets once every two months to discuss meeting topics and ways to improve the User Group.  We will take names of members interested in this position.  Final selection of the two volunteers will fall to the NASWUG officers.  One of the first topics of the Advisory Board will be getting more educational institutions involved in the User Group.

Here are a few additional items that we will be discussing during the May 2008 meeting this Thursday.

Officer Elections

We will be holding Officer Elections during the meeting.  We are going to try and make the process simple and fast.  Four positions will be up for election.  President, Vice-President, First Secretary, and Second Secretary.  The meeting floor will be open to nominations from attendees.  A member CAN nominate themselves for one of the four positions.  If more than one person is nominated for a particular position, the winner will be determined via online voting.  I am working on a list of “duties” for each position and will post them before the meeting on Thursday.  We will also be implementing a NASWUG Advisory Board.  I’ll have more on that later as well.

Stay tuned to the NASWUG site for all the latest news!

Welcome to the ALL NEW NASWUG website!  This new site offers additional features while keeping most of the features of the old site.  If you haven’t caught on yet, this new site offers more of a “Blog” feel to it.  You will now be able to leave comments on posts which includes meeting announcements, meeting notes, and other NASWUG related news items.

One of the major benefits of a site like this is the use of RSS feeds to stay up to date.  If you are not familiar with RSS you can add a feed to your favorite news reader (Netvibes, MyYahoo, Google Reader, Live Feed) that keeps you up to date will all posts to this site.  The RSS link is located towards the upper right corner of each page.

With this site myself and the other NASWUG officers will have better tools at our disposal to keep you up to date on all User Group happenings.  Check out the Downloads Page for links to some of the presentations and donated models from the previous site.  If you received a May 2008 meeting announcment, the RSVP link will take you to a page directing you to the new RSVP page.