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.