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November 2007

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If CAD was like drumming… the Swiss would be the 3D pummeling force of a 5000 lb. gorilla. I lived in Basel for a little bit, but didn’t get to see the Top Secret Drum Corps. If you like drums and junk, you’ll love this. This is exactly what I would be doing if I…

Wow, so thats how many times you can poke a dead cat until it actually moves. These links have nothing to do with that. Icons for your Desktop and More – If you told me there were such a thing as too many Icons, I would never believe you. Layout-o-matic – I wish I had…

In a recent poll I held, some of you were waiting to upgrade to SolidWorks 2008 till SP1.0 came out. Psst, hey, it’s out. Whatcha waiting for?I just installed it with the Installation Manager and had no problems at all on my XP machine besides what Jason also came across with the full installation download.…

You may recall a post about the Koenigsegg CCX being the fastest street legal car designed in SolidWorks. Now they have the fastest biofuel car designed in SolidWorks, and it doesn’t look ridiculous and slow. It’s called the CCXR. “… the ethanol in biofuel has the positive side effect of cooling the combustion chambers, as…

There’s a new blog in town and it’s sporting a crop of writers. SolidWorks Legion has come on the scene and plans to give you the huzzah on SolidWorks. You may recognize the authors if you frequent the SolidWorks Yahoo group. FCSuper, and his two compatriots, are sporting a Wordpress Blog with a nice blue-gray…

Getting through a project in a multi-user environment is one of the greatest challenges an engineering company can face. There’s this PDM and that PDM, this process and that process, and it quickly turns into a community of gopher-heads popping up to have each other check stuff in ‘real quick’ while schedules dwindle into the…

One of the speakers at SolidWorks World 2008 is going to be Dr. Don Norman. His book The Design of Future Things just came out last Monday. “It’s meant to be fun to read, but it’s meant to be a little bit scary and cautionary.” Sounds good. The book is a continuation of a previous…

You know that feeling you get when you look out over a drop off and you’re like I could jump that and you get that funny feeling? These links are kinda like that. Flickr Related Tag Viewer – Take an interactive journey through Flickr. from the maker of SimpleViewer. World of Warcraft Commercials – Mr.…

Register for SolidWorks World…check, Get free weird Lookin’ mouse…cheeeck. The quickest 100 people who register for SolidWorks World here will get a shiny new Space Navigator 3D mouse. Just look at it in it’s ubiquitous model-manipulating glory. It cost $59 retail. You could swap that for half a barrel of oil or 11.8 cups of…

I’m not to keen on Macs, even though I was raised on them years ago, along with meat, potatoes and iodized salt. You may have seen the Apple ads on TV. Now you may start seeing some even more creative ones online. Macs don’t run SolidWorks (for shame), but you can’t beat a good ad,…

You know that open-source software like Apache or OpenOffice that actually makes it possible for you to do things on your own? Some bright guys applied that to hardware and have developed BUG, an open source, web-enabled, modular software + hardware platform. Sound cool? Here’s what they have to say. Bug Labs is a new…

I’ve hired Burt Reynolds to convince you to chip into a fund to buy my wonderfully supportive and extremely cool wife a Dell XPS. Here’s the video from Burt. Mad-cap Consumerism at its best This is actually a pretty cool promotion from Dell. Get someone famous to convince people to chip in and buy you…

I just ate five different kinds of chili, one was a seafood chili and it was disgusting. please stop that. Search by Color – Search websites designs based on color. I like red. The Feidad Building – a high rise building created using the dynamic forms and patterns of hair. yeah hair. Free Open Source…

A little while ago I did a cannonball into the serene waters of assembly design and gave you 3 Unique Solutions to Modeling in SolidWorks. It was almost a taunt, because I just jabbed at the concept. Well, here’s a little bit more of a jab. Something with a little more pepper… and some delicious…

The light spills in through the windows of your studio. You’re sketching things up, importing illustrations, optimizing models here and there, and making the most beautifully designed product a consumer has ever seen. You have a perfect balance between a love for esthetically pleasing design and what you went to engineering school for. However, there…

Keep the video game addicts back. There’s a new game (about to be) in town. Crayon Physics. A game where you draw 2D shapes that turn into physical objects to do your bidding and solve the puzzles. Yeah, I know it’s 2D, but I’d call it Cool-D. That’s like 50 levels above 2D. Check out…

In case you’ve made a comment and didn’t see it show up, hold tight. I am using a shiny new plugin called Defensio that tightens and controls the spaminess of comments. It’s in the process of learning so it may accidently quarantine a comment here or there. If you have a Wordpress blog, I highly…

I love the industrial, mechanized late 18th century kinda look. That whole LXG or hellboy visual of a bunch of mechanized parts and oversized components that give something a rough and gritty but highly engineered feel. Love it. That’s why you gotta check out SteamPunk’s Flat Panel LCD Mod. It’s everything an avid collector of…

I’ve had a poll up for a couple months to see when you plan on upgrading to SolidWorks 2008. It was started during pre-release and SP 0.1 is the latest Service Pack. To date, there’s been 151 responses and it seems close between those that already have upgraded and those waiting for bugs to be…

What’s up with knuckle skin? Why’s there got to be so much? Same with elbow skin, what’s that all about? These links may answer your question. Joshua Davis Art – I love this guys art, it’s very bubbly deco-mechanicorganic. Call of Duty 4 – Released this week for, ya know, playing at work during lunch.…

Don’t you just love some seriously beautiful wallpaper to customize your programs with? Sure, you can customize your SolidWorks background, but that’s so SolidWorks 2007. Now, in SolidWorks 2008 you can even add a custom image to your drawing background. In fact…are you ready… it already comes with… a crinkly paper background. Yeah, pretty hard…

I finally know what I want for Christmas. An ASR Carbon mountain bike from Yeti cycles. It’s only $6149.00, fully loaded. These high-end bikes are just plain tough looking and make my purple GT Outback look wimpy. Oh yeah, and they are designed in SolidWorks. My favorite one from their line-up, the ASR Race/Trail bike,…

Do you remember those little prizes in Cracker Jacks you could flip back and forth and see two different pictures? The team down at Big3D have been busy making a much more complicated, 98 foot wide by 13 foot tall one of those. The Lenticular Mural at the Mandalay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas…

Just wanted to let you PDF-on-crack users know I recently did an article for the Adobe Acrobat User Community to show the throngs of people out there using Adobe Acrobat 3D 5 Time Saving Benefits of Adding Acrobat 3D to Your Engineering Workflow. I literally take a standard workflow, tear it apart and neatly locate…

There’s usually a lot of change in a new software release that doesn’t get reported. There’s also most likely an equally sad employee that doesn’t get to bask in the brilliance of that small “mediocre” addition. Well, that’s about to change. Whether you’ve been noticed or not, we know you’re in front of your computer…

And I definitely mean that in a rock-your-cad-soaked-gourd kind of way. I’m always impressed by the articles on the MCAD magizine website and the diverse topics they cover. They’re based out of the UK, but you can see the current issue and back issues online. This month particularly caught my attention because they cover a…

Them anteaters are huge. I was eatin’ my lasagna and all of a sudden they come stompin’ through the livin’ room like it’s a naturally inhabitable arid grassland. These links saved my life. 100 awesome hi-res Photoshop brushes – My search is over. These are all the brushes I’ll ever need… maybe. What are your…

Gone are the days of your typical PDF. Adobe is cranking up the possibilities with Acrobat Version 8 3D and they’re on top of the issues to make you look as cool as possible. I wrote previously about Acrobat 8 3D. At that time it was great with small to medium size models, but there…