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“Stop. You’re killin’ me. My models are immaculate. It’s the software that’s the problem.” A lot of people get riled up about bad performance and poor stability, blaming it on the SolidWorks software. I have too. But who would of thought it could actually be the way the models are created… by ME?
Great, huh. You were probably skipping through the fields of 3D CAD model euphoria and now I’ve gone and ruined it all by telling you the way you model affects your load times and how many crashes you have in SolidWorks.
Should it matter what you do?
Today, I’m going to say ‘yes’ to that question. What you slap across the screen can affect performance. So, let’s talk about some of the initial options you have in SolidWorks that make your models suck the ever-living resources out of the pit of ‘puter processing power and what you need to do to make SolidWorks life more stable.
Continue reading ‘Why Your SolidWorks Models Suck… Memory Out of Your Computer’
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Thanks to Ricky Jordan, I’ve been reminded of one of the most frightening man-made beasts and have been glancing over my shoulder at the sound of any loud, mechanical whirring sound all weekend. If you thought humanoid bipedal robots were nightmarishly creepy, wait till you see the video below.
I remember pictures of the DARPA ‘BigDog’ military troop support robot year ago, but this is the first time I’ve seen it in ACTION.
Continue reading ‘DARPA BigDog Robot Designed in SolidWorks: Scares Paranoid Doomsdayers’
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We’re doomed. The robot armies are massing. As if simple non-humanoid robots were bad enough, now tiny, toddler-like and highly functional robot are coming to the market very, very soon people. Start packing.
Aldebaran Robotics is bringing on the dream that many have of a personal robot companion to romp around with and they just so happen to be using SolidWorks to design Nao, the two-legged, wi-fi totting mechbot with swappable heads. *shiver*
Continue reading ‘Nao Humanoid Robot Designed in SolidWorks: Farewell Human Race’
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I occasionally choose to point the fire hose of SolidWorks tips and information into an unsuspecting person’s face without realizing how overwhelming it can be.
A few hours later I see the the expressionless blank stare of a skinless and slightly tattered face gazing, begging me to stop.
A few tips to simply get started will do just fine, thank you.
The Top 12 SolidWorks Tips
Some of you have a bunch of tips for new users, and some of you wish those people would stop the flow of info for a few minutes while you catch up. So, I stopped, sat down and wrote out my top 12 favorite SolidWorks tips. The first tips I thought of that I would want anyone to know that is just starting out or wants better results out of SolidWorks.
Group project
Ya know what… for a little fun, I may turn this into a group project. If you have better tips that make more sense, I’ll replace some of mine or add yours to the rest. We’ll keep it under twenty for now and keep the fire hose at a small trickle. Here are the top 12.
Continue reading ‘The 10+ Best SolidWorks Tips to Teach Someone Else’
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Why, it ws only a few weeks ago we did a comparison of the Twitter talk about SolidWorks and AutoCAD. Jeff Clark at Neoformix is at it again with their stream of consciousness version that shows the density of words used in for a term over time. What do you think the most used word when discussing SolidWorks is?
“The Twitter StreamGraph shows the usage over time for the words most highly associated with the search word. One of these series together with a time period are in a selected state and coloured red.”
Continue reading ‘More SolidWorks and AutoCAD Data Visualization on Twitter Plus Extra’
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Way back, in a recent post that showed all you Mac-ophiles how to use SolidWorks on a Mac a commenter named Peter Privitera was having graphics issues with his MacBook Pro when using SolidWorks.
His MacBook Pro uses a NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT video card, a low-end 512MB card that runs around $130 and up. He did a simple soft-mod (modify in software) to turn it into a beefy NVidia Quadro crankin’ beast and now has the graphics performance you would expect on a Mac.
Continue reading ‘Run SolidWorks on a Mac: Soft-Mod Your GeForce into a Quadro’
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“That storefront looks spectacular. I’m tellin’ ya, it looks like it’s sizzlin’ right up from THE GROUND.” Yes, the colors are mesmerizing your eye holes and you grasp for word to explain how structures can seemingly float curvaceously in front of you.
Steel, screws and a little SolidWorks magic, I say, and Feature Factory has got loads of magical magic-ness - by which I mean, they’ve got some engineers, designers and fabbers that know a thing or two about creating fine architectural features using parametric modeling.
Continue reading ‘Feature Factory: Product Design and Architecture in SolidWorks’
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Your SolidWorks drawings are standing out in the open like a very large and overly dressed target of 3D ninja violence. Hey, I’m just sayin. It’s actually a secret society of defected and very agitated ANSI and ISO standard authors that have passed this info on to me.
Your fancy drawing is filled with more views than you can throw a 6-pointed shuriken at and that is exactly what we’re going to do, but real secret ninja-like. PREPARE TO WITNESS, the 5 ninjas to unveil a righteous fury upon your drawings.
Continue reading ‘The SolidWorks Ninja Guide to Reducing Drawing Views’
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I had a conversation with someone yesterday about how to create really great looking images without using the SolidWorks rendering add-in, PhotoWorks. I told him it was simple and you can do it in just a few steps. ‘No way, show me.’, he said.
If you have PhotoWorks, great; you can create some very slick graphics. However, if you don’t have PhotoWorks or the time to learn and create those fancy images using rendering programs like Blender and Hypershot (which I would recommend), this is for you.
A few extras
You can do all your work in SolidWorks and get an product image good enough for any portfolio, website, magazine or brochure and there are just a few steps to make it happen. On top of that, if you have Adobe Photoshop, there’s a quick trick you can do to make it look extra good. I’ll go into that at the end.
Continue reading ‘Create Stylish SolidWorks Graphics without PhotoWorks’
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Feast your eyes upon this odd lookin’ chair. Some products you can just look at and know it was designed with SolidWorks. The The Dreeben Billet Chair is one of those. It’s as if you are looking right at the model and recognize the features used to create it.
Micheal Dreeben is the designer and was recently one of the winners of the Design Within Reach M+d+F show for his Chaise style version of this fine chair. Much more comfy lookin’ don’t ya think?
The Billet Chair was designed a few years ago with the aid of Todd Courtois, an independent designer and engineer. Micheal Dreeben himself is an independent furniture designer.
The Ponoko Blog has an excerpt from a recent interview with Dreeben about the design process from sketches and prototypes to CAD and CNC. It’s a must read, if you are interested about the dynamic life of independent design and what materials are used to make it happen.
Continue reading ‘Michael Dreeben Billet Chair Designed in SolidWorks’
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