Archive for the 'Product Reviews' Category

SpaceClaim Taking on More Interests

Published
by
Josh
on July 9, 2007
in Business, Product Reviews and Tech to watch
. Comments

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spaceclaim logoSince their launch in March of 2007, SpaceClaim, out of Concord, Mass. has been making some waves with their new solid modeler. I’m even starting to hear more talk about it amongst the casual uninterested CAD users. Their assertions to a “highly flexible design environment” make some wonder if this is a fresh approach to solid modeling.

What’s creating the interest in this new CAD system?
It seems one of the largest assets pushing interest in the subject is by people through word of mouth. Matt Lombard is one who has put up an incredible review that looks at the fundamental difference in philosophy between SpaceClaim and SolidWorks.

Personally, I’ve been interested in it for two reasons. One, it was co-founded by Michael Payne. He was part of the group that started SolidWorks and was previously VP of R&D at PTC (Pro/E) where the parametric modeling philosophy was developed that SpaceClaim goes completely against.

Two, it’s new and different. This is where I wish I could try it out. I dislike being confined to sketches and feature history. Bottom line, it limits things I’d like to do. However, I don’t like nurb modeling either. But, from what Matt says, this sounds like it may be a happier medium - create things with sketches and then finish it off with edits. In other words, form it how you want it to look. I like it.

Is there anything not to like about it though?
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Top 5 questions for SolidWorks 2008

Published
by
Josh
on June 22, 2007
in Product Reviews
. Comments

solidworks 2008 logoI was gonna go through some more new features for SolidWorks 2008, but after the last two post on the interface and sketching I started feeling like a demo jock again doing a What’s New spiel, so I’m gonna dig down to the bone in the following…

Top 5 questions for SolidWorks 2008

These were the most frequent questions I was asked after talking to a number of my colleagues.

  1. Did they change a bunch of stuff that didn’t need changing?
  2. Will we have to upgrade hardware?
  3. Will my old settings be affected?
  4. Is there a make engineering button?
  5. Is it faster?

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What you want to know about SolidWorks 2008: Sketching and Features

Published
by
Josh
on June 20, 2007
in Product Reviews
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solidworks 2008 logoMonday we took a look at the interface enhancements for 2008. While there are things that can be improved, like being able to customize menus, I generally see it as an improvement because it gets you closer to your design. This is particularly important when you’re starting it out and that’s what we’re cooking up today.

SolidWorks 2008 sketch features

SKETCHING AND FEATURES

Sketching is at the core of SolidWorks. It’s a sketch-dependent modeler. Everyone knows that right? You need 2D to make 3D. Sometimes I wish that wasn’t the case, because your feature is limited to what that sketch can do in the orientation it was created and the sequence in which they are created has to be well thought out.

I say all this because SolidWorks aim for 2008 is to, “focusing less on CAD and more on design.” How do you do that? I would say by completely eliminating sketches. I know, sounds crazy, but we still use them for now, so, while there is no evident shift away from SolidWorks being sketch-dependent, there are some great additions to make your sketching go faster and your features more robust.
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What you want to know about SolidWorks 2008: The Interface

Published
by
Josh
on June 18, 2007
in Product Reviews
. Comments

solidworks 2008 logoThe launch of SolidWorks 2008 is quickly approaching and even though you may just be getting use to some things in 2007, the new version has some features that could bring you to the edge of your seat. If you’ve seen the preview demo, the new interface may be the first thing that stands out, but the focus on functionality and how you design makes this new version all the more interesting.

Over the next few days, we’re going to plunge into the depths that are SolidWorks 2008. We’re going to go over the major functionality shift in the new version of SolidWorks and show you how you’re going to be doing more of your work on the screen with less lag. This is gonna be the meat. I’ll save the What’s New for you to look at, you can download that right here.

SolidWorks 2008 screenshot

Today we’re gonna look at

THE INTERFACE

This, in any program for some reason, is usually a big complaint when it changes. I’m just gonna say it. It’s better. Take 30 minutes to play with it and you’ll like it. Here’s why…
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Using Acrobat 3d for Data Exchange from SolidWorks

Published
by
Josh
on May 25, 2007
in Product Reviews
. Comments

adobe 8Ok, I’m at the end of this series (Part 1 and Part 2) on Acrobat 3D and I’m going to finish it off with how it would work for data exchange of an assembly. I’m going to do what most would probably think of doing first and open up a SolidWorks assembly directly into Acrobat 3d. I’m gonna use data exchange as the method of conversion for a 2MB file.

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Adobe Acrobat 3D and SolidWorks Revealed

Published
by
Josh
on May 24, 2007
in Product Reviews
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adobe acrobat 8There’s nothing more enjoyable that seeing what a piece of software can do… except for maybe not doing it and going out with friends, but since all my friends are behind a computer like me, I’ll try to break me some software. I’m continuing today from yesterdays Adobe Acrobat 3D overview where we took a quick look at what you might expect. Today, we’re gonna get dirty.

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Product Review: Acrobat 3D Version 8

Published
by
Josh
on May 23, 2007
in Product Reviews
. Comments

acrobat 3dAfter being chained in the basement for a few weeks to check out the brand spankin’ new Acrobat 3D I found the good, bad and some things that made me just barely fall out of my chair. I’ll leave out the part where I saw flying monkeys. I think that had to do with the lack of sunlight.

In less than a couple minutes, I can share a small model with the Design group and get feedback. This is typically the bottleneck in a very iterative design process. Acrobat 3D makes it easy and secure to share stuff, but there’s also some things that could be improved. Let’s have a look.

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