Hello! if you're new here, you may want to subscribe to the SolidSmack RSS feed or to the free email updates. Thanks for visiting!
BOM’s. Bill o’ Materials. That list of parts that moves across the disco floor like only you wish you could. DID I really just compare a BOM to a dance genre we long to forget? Yes, yes I did, and I’m feeling the nostalgic and stomach-churning affects of doing so.
Nevertheless, a BOM provides that dose of stretchy-pants flexibility that makes a drawing filled with isometric views and obscure callouts more understandable, but just setting one up can have you flailing all over the place like when you try to show your co-workers that new move you learned over the weekend. Let’s fine-tune your BOM moves and get that drawing grooving like you mean it.
Continue reading ‘SolidWorks BOM Superstar: 5 Moves to Avoid and How to Groove It’
If you haven't already, consider subscribing to SolidSmack so you can easily receive updates when new articles are published or announcements are made.
Despite the fact that it looks like a very large, very colorful, yet well designed, doily, this is one of the winners of the lucrative 2008 Red Dot Design Award. This year alone 3,203 designs were entered ranging from textiles, like this fancy rug, to technology and just about anything else that spans product, conceptual and communications design.
MohoDesign from Poland is the outfit behind these unique rug designs, and yes, they are made from 100% pure wool pile.
Making a rug in SolidWorks.You gotta be kidding.
I know, a futuristic electro-mechanical trap floor with automated balance control and sensory absorption relays would be much cooler, but what I found interesting about these rug designs in particular, is how simple the idea is and how easy (and fun) it can be to create something like it in SolidWorks. Want to know how to do it?
Continue reading ‘Inspired to Design: Could You Create A Rug Like This in SolidWorks?’
If you haven't already, consider subscribing to SolidSmack so you can easily receive updates when new articles are published or announcements are made.
They didn’t attack at first, but then Earl threw one of his gravy biscuits at’em and right after they made some real weird screeching noises, they devoured all these links.
Dale Mathis Gear Sculpture - Yes, you too can make gear sculpture, but not like this guy.
101 Photoshop Tip in Five Minutes - Try to keep up. A lot of shortcuts you may know, but all the basics you need to know.
100 Personal Branding Tactics - Chris Brogan breaks down building rep via social media in a hundred common sense steps.
10+ Free Magazine Style Wordpress Themes - Great for your kids new summer blog project or if you want to spiffy up your own site.
11 Tenets for Maximum Profitability in 3 months - Eat it, breathe it, take it all in and chewww on these crispy success nuggets for a while.
How is Tech Changing the World in D.C. - Scoble makes the trips, see the sights and what’s changing. Interesting conversation in the comments.
If you haven't already, consider subscribing to SolidSmack so you can easily receive updates when new articles are published or announcements are made.
MCAD is running like heck from the desktop. The possibilities of where CAD data is accessed from and where you are when you access it just keeps on growing I tell ya. First you have laptops coming out sporting the AMD Turion X2 Ultra to integrate processor and graphics card capabilities. That equals more power, anywhere.
Now you have HP bringing thin-client workstations to MCAD, workstations that move that box right off your desk and into the depths a server room.
That’s right, all the 3D CAD data is accessed, not from your hard-drive, but from a data-center somewhere else. Can it possibly work? Lets take a look.
Continue reading ‘Rule Your CAD with the Ultra-Secure HP BLADE Workstation’
If you haven't already, consider subscribing to SolidSmack so you can easily receive updates when new articles are published or announcements are made.
As if our soon to be robot overlords are not scary enough, now there’s a Robot University for them to systematically learn how to take over the minds of small children and impressionable young college students.
I exaggerate a bit. This is actually a place where the academics and the automaton-interested can gather via an online campus to pursue the dream of eventual human destruction creating neat robotics solutions. Kids… get off the couch.
There are structured lessons, tutorials, event calendars, photos, videos, forums, blogs, chat, personal pages, and instruction for using SolidWorks® 3D CAD software for robot design.
You can get in if you request an invitation via SRURequest@solidworks.com and the robotic counterparts on the opposite side accept you into the collective. If you want to keep you’re distance and just play around with building robotic stuff in SolidWorks, check out all the parts at 3d Content Central that will give you everything necessary to build a bio-mechanical suit able to fend off any type of robot mutiny in the future.
More info at the SolidWorks Education Site and the Robot University Press Release
If you haven't already, consider subscribing to SolidSmack so you can easily receive updates when new articles are published or announcements are made.
Oh man, your SolidWorks assembly is looking a little crooked my friend. In fact, I’d say it’s just about to tip over and probably hurt a small family of mice or a vagabond waiting for you to set some scraps out on the porch.
I’m going to suggest a way to improve assembly creation, so take a couple slow breaths, have a pot of coffee and avoid the loose boards over in the corner by the shedding dog.
With SolidWorks 2008 came the ability to add Sketch Layouts to drive all the parts in your assembly. Sound formidable? Well, there’s not much in the SolidWorks Help, so here’s all you need to get up to speed with the amazingly sturdy world of SolidWorks Sketch Layouts.
Continue reading ‘Smack! The Complete Guide to SolidWorks Layout Sketches’
If you haven't already, consider subscribing to SolidSmack so you can easily receive updates when new articles are published or announcements are made.
That atomic rubidium vapor you’ve been storing in those old canning jars may soon be put to good use as a storage medium for images which, in turn, could allow 3D data storage, display and possibly manipulation.
A group of physicists from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel… yeah, that place, warmed up some of that naturally occurring isotope, added some light pulses, shifted some phases and got an image to stick for about 30 microseconds. That’s… not long, but hey it’s progress.
Possibility of 3D in vapor?
You add some fancy lasers to provide some volumetric recognition, a couple light sources with different wavelengths and a bit of IR feedback to a control device and you’re pretty much there. A couple million in funding wouldn’t hurt either. The next step beyond this could even be using water vapor as a 3D display medium.
This may not seem all to practical, but it’s one avenue of data visualization research that could make the display technology we actually would use in the near future more likely. 3D holographic displays would be a perfect transition for the display of 3D data via water or gas vapor. The trick is taking it from static to dynamic.
Via PhsyOrg
Photo: CISL
If you haven't already, consider subscribing to SolidSmack so you can easily receive updates when new articles are published or announcements are made.
I was working on a somebody’s computer this morning and their email notification kept popping up asking you to choose to go to the email or not. For one thing, that was incredibly annoying, and incredibly inefficient for another.
A little experiment
So it made me want to offer up a little experiment to show you how to get rid of the biggest time consuming and utterly destructive tool that is… email.
Continue reading ‘The 2 Step Trick to Kill Email and Take Back Your Day’
If you haven't already, consider subscribing to SolidSmack so you can easily receive updates when new articles are published or announcements are made.
Last week on June 20th, Google Trends for websites was launched to allow a look into competing sites and aid your plans for worldwide domination. Similar sites, like Compete (my favorite) and Alexa already exist, but this leverages the power of Google’s simple, yet masterful use of analytical data.
Anyone can use it to find out the keyword or website competition for a site they want to start, but what’s really quite interesting is the competition going on in big industry. In our case, that would be… the CAD industry.
Continue reading ‘Google Trends for 3D CAD Companies: Whose Competing?’
If you haven't already, consider subscribing to SolidSmack so you can easily receive updates when new articles are published or announcements are made.
I’ve been playing with the Spore 3D Creature Creator for the past couple days and I gotta say it is one of the funnest, most addictive ways to create creatures that I’ve ever seen. Not only that, the 3D controls and manipulation are just amazing. It’s drag-n-drop-n-modify creature makin’ hilarity at it’s best… and it’s FREE.
What really fun is making them move around, dance, roar, punch and yes, have cute little babies that mimic the big creature.
So, check it out this weekend, have some fun and think about what 3D CAD would be like if it was this simple. Here’s my very own creature and the new SolidSmack mascot. His name is Timothy and he has a level 14 attack so be WARNED.
Download DirectX
If you haven't already, consider subscribing to SolidSmack so you can easily receive updates when new articles are published or announcements are made.
