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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.