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.
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 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:
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.
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?
