SolidWorks Tips and the Coolest Technology, Product Design, and Social Media in the entire world of 3D CAD.
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Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.
Go have fun spending time with your family and eating.
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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 a Carmel Macchiato.
Oh, and if you forget to sign up after December 14th, you’ll pay an extra hundred dollars because you’re a your boss is a procrastinator. I would try to entice him with this and also offer to give the company an overview of all the things you learn at SolidWorks World.
There’s an agenda here.
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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, especially when it shows up on sites reviewing your competitor. See video below.
Via TechCrunch
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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 kind of technology company, enabling a new generation of engineers to tap their creativity and build any type of device they want, without having to solder, learn solid state electronics, or go to China.
Open-Source Hardware?
At first I thought this was a kooky idea with not a whole lot of possibilities, but think of some gadgets you’ve had ideas for, but didn’t know how or what you would need to put it together. This can make it possible. I have no idea what goes into something to create a speed-plotting-video-amplification device, but with BUG I can take a few modules a turn it into a fully-optimized web-based piece of hardware. From a tech side, that’s cool. It pretty much pummels Radio Shack into the ground.
Here’s a photo and video that explains the inspiration behind the madness.
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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.
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 something cool for Christmas.
You can get Ice-T to turn on the charm, Estell Harris to tell it like it is and there’s some other b-movie personalities. I went with Burt Reynolds since Cannonball Run I and II were pretty decent movies in their day. Check out the dell promo and get your own actor at yoursishere.com.
If you like the blog go on and chip in!
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So I went to a SolidWorks user group last week. The Tulsa SolidWorks User Group (TULSUG). It’s the first one I’ve been to since, oh, since I was a reseller and I had to go. That was a few years ago. This one I’m not only a user, I’m helping out where I can as co-founder.
For those of you involved in a user’s group, you know what it’s about. For those skeptics and uninterested you may want to know what the big deal is. One thing I wondered is if it would be worth my time. I knew from previous experience it would be, but I know others who think differently. In helping get things together, I came across some myths, in the form of insightful opinions, about users groups that I’d like to debunk.
Continue reading ‘SolidWorks User Group Myths Smashed to Tiny Bits’
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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 TV and Video - Like Joost but open source, DRM-Free and a lot more content.
Greg Petchkovsky CG Portfolio - Creeeeepy 3D CGI goodness. Thanks Shawn!
Cyberhomes - An online real estate MLS. It’s like Zillow, but with some cool charts and graphs.
40 free professional fonts - Sick of me posting links to fonts? I’m not. I like these.
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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 example files and further explanation on how you can get a more robust assembly.
What’s in the box?
Three example of how to create assemblies. They’re super simple and all use simple commands. You get:
Download them here - assembly methodolgy.zip (880kb)
Are you ready to mix this up? Cue the music maestro.
Continue reading ‘3 Ways to Make a Robust SolidWorks Assembly’
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Have you ever wanted to lock your SolidWorks model in a certain spot to keep it from rebuilding and save some time? Well, you can’t do it. But you can be part of making it happen.
Deep in the heart of Wisconsin, a guy named Lloyd told a guy named Lenny, “You gotta help me out. SolidWorks needs to add a way to put a ‘Geometry Lock’ on a SolidWorks model that would reduce rebuild times. Can you dig it?” (embellishment added)
I can dig it Lloyd and we’ll help out. An enhancement request sound like just the right medicine.
Continue reading ‘Make Your SolidWorks Model Stop Rebuilding’
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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 are a lot of engineering and design professionals that find themselves on one side desiring more involvement in the other. This is especially true for engineers that have a bit of a creative tendency. Like when you see a product and smile because you know how it goes together and what it took to manufacture it, but still, your amazed at the appearance and wonder why that aspect seems familiar yet somewhat foreign. Then you see something that is completely hideous and wonder who they drug out of the potato factory to design it. Either way, the design has caught your attention and you get that twitch called inspiration.
“The Engineer who can Draw”
I recently read an article talking about the disembodied engineer. Poor guy. Confused about life, secretly wanting to add a curve here or there, unable to add an ounce of industrial savvy inspiration and constantly foiled by the whims of bracket-happy stress engineers.
…this can end up producing a working engineer or recent graduate with the dull, sinking feeling that they’ve spent the best years of their life struggling up the wrong professional ladder.
Don’t tear up now. It’s a revealing article from a design perspective. But guess what? Just because you enjoy Prismacolors and Balsa wood more than adding numbers and brackets doesn’t mean you have to pull up your roots and switch to being a designer. You’re actually in a better spot. You have the training in engineering, and the interest in design. But how do you find that balance you desire to be involved in design and engineering?
Continue reading ‘Designing the Engineer’
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