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.
The North Alabama SolidWorks Users Group (NASWUG) is proud to announce our January 2009 meeting! The meeting will be held on Tuesday January 27, 2009 from 5:00pm to 7:00pm at the Dynetics Corporate Headquarters Building.
Come join us for a presentation on Custom Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Design using SolidWorks. This is the presentation that will be given by NASWUG president Ricky Jordan at SolidWorks World 2009. It covers recommended processes and feature demonstrations in the development of Custom PCBs in SolidWorks. This presentation covers pre and post ECAD layout. ECAD layout itself is not performed in SolidWorks.
You can read a little more about the presentation HERE.
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.
Another successful NASWUG year wrapped up in style. Our year end meeting benefited from two very interesting and informative presentations. Jim Wilkinson, Director of User Experience for SolidWorks, provided an insight into the development process for SolidWorks usability and SolidWorks User Interface Customization. The stated goal of Jim’s team is the User Experience mission. So just what is the “User Experience mission”? In a nutshell, it is everything that goes into providing a SolidWorks experience that continuously improves upon Ease of Use, Ease of Learning, and Product Consistency. Where does SolidWorks get its customer input? Glad you asked … each and everyone of us, the users, have direct input into the process with such things as enhancement requests, bug reports, phone calls with the VARs, customer visits, surveys, user forums, etc. Many factors come into play as to what is included in the final decision to make changes to the User Interface. For those of us involved in rapid prototyping, the process seems familiar. Prototypes begin with paper layouts that can be reviewed quickly and easily, followed by a flash simulation, and then a prototype release that gets the scrutiny of a focus group of users. This focus group is representative of all SolidWorks users and from a user viewpoint probably the most important. After Jim educated us on the interest and effort that SolidWorks puts into providing us with a good CAD user experience, he then walked through several examples. Many thanks to Jim for a most rewarding presentation.
Next up was Bruce Holway, the Manager of Product Definition for SolidWorks. Bruce brings 17 years of experience in the CAD industry to the table. The Product Definition team he manages is responsible for developing new functionality specifications in SolidWorks. Bruce presented on Using Blocks and Layout Sketches for Mechanism Design. Now some of us may already use sketch blocks to produce quick concept layouts or at least have completed the block exercise in the SolidWorks tutorial. But Bruce takes this idea to a new level. He showed us how sketch blocks can be used to quickly produce parameters for mechanical mechanisms to achieve a desired physical motion. Next was probably a very little used method of Layout Based Assembly Design. This method begins with a new assembly. On creation, click on the “Create Layout” button on the Begin Assembly Property Manager. This opens a 3D sketch from which you can create various blocks of the intended mechanical mechanism. This method allows you to switch back and forth between top down and bottoms up design. You can create, edit and delete parts and blocks at any point in the design cycle without any history-based restrictions. A great presentation, Bruce.
Ricky Jordan briefly reminded everyone about SolidWorks World 2009 coming up in February. To save time and avoid duplication here, meeting announcements are published on the NASWUG website. Thanks especially to Ricky for being the driving force for what this writer feels has been our most successful year yet. And our group would not survive if it were not for the valued support of our VARs, ModernTech Mechanical, MLC CAD, Concepts in Production and particularly the financial support of SolidWorks for the free food each meeting. As before we had some great year end prizes including our grand prize a Harmony Universal Remote Control from 3D Connexion who sponsored our year end event.
Here’s hoping each and every one of you have a great Christmas and holidays and we will see you back in January. Ricky will be presenting on circuit board design and circuitworks which is a warm-up for his presentation at SolidWorks World 2009 in February.
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.
The North Alabama SolidWorks Users Group (NASWUG) is proud to announce our 4th Annual NASWUG Year End meeting! The meeting will be held on Tuesday December 2, 2008 from 5:00pm to 8:00pm at the Dynetics Corporate Headquarters Building.
We are excited to announce that we will have TWO excellent speakers in attendance from DS SolidWorks Corporation.
Jim Wilkinson, who is the Director of User Experience for SolidWorks, will be giving a presentation on User Interface Customization. Jim manages the usability/user interface team as well as documentation and localization teams for DS SolidWorks Corporation.
Bruce Holway, who is the Manager of Product Definition for SolidWorks, will be giving a presentation on Using Layout Sketches for Assembly and Mechanism Design. Bruce has 17 years experience working in the CAD industry in various technical positions. The Product Definition team he manages is responsible for developing specifications for new functionality in SolidWorks.
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.
In addition to the earlier announcement for the September 2008 Meeting. I would like to add some exciting details for the meeting.
Matt Lombard will be in attendance at the meeting and will be presenting some of the What’s New in SolidWorks 2009 content. Matt is the author of the SolidWorks 2007 Bible which is the best selling book on SolidWorks. Towards the end of this year he will be releasing the SolidWorks 2009 Bible which I had a small part in as well.
Due to some scheduling conflicts, there will be a LOCATION CHANGE for this meeting. The meeting will be held in the Dynetics Systems building which is located next door to the Dynetics CHQ building where we normally have our meetings. Below is a map of the Dynetics campus showing you how to get to the proper entrance for the meeting. I will post information on the front doors of the CHQ building in case there is any confusion.
I will be sending out an update via e-mail to everyone tomorrow morning. See you at the meeting!
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!
