It’s fall y’all, and that means football, hot wing juice on your keyboard, and a new version of SOLIDWORKS comin’ atcha fast. This month, SOLIDWORKS held their SOLIDWORKS 2020 launch event/sportscast online. And, let me tell ya, SOLIDWORKS 2020 is a shift. Maybe they don’t want you to see it like that, maybe they do, but along with a lot of great features like Large Assembly Drawing acceleration, Assembly Defeature, Faster Sketching and Simulation, there’s a shift in how you will access new features and gain more capabilities. But more on that in a moment. What about SOLIDWORKS 2020? What’s New in SOLIDWORKS 2020 Just prior to the launch event…

Since Apple’s new cheese grater-looking Mac Pro was announced last June, the company has released a statement that the new PCs will be made in the U.S.A., specifically in Austin, Texas – the same place where Mac Pros have been made since 2013. This new Mac Pro will include parts sourced from 36 states; including areas in Arizona, Maine, New York, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Vermont, and of course, Texas. According to Apple, the company is able to manufacture in the U.S. thanks to a “federal product exclusion” for some of the computer’s components. With this, this upcoming Mac Pro is said to have American-made components which are worth 2.5…

Huddle around the computer a little bit, your digital detox is a farce! How can you stay away from great stuff that you can read and chew on … mentally that is! We got you covered, while you were away, busy with your digital detox diet. Don’t be shy, take a look at the week that was, right here on SolidSmack. Cause we are ROCKIN! The Future of Work: Telepresence Robots Finally Get Interesting Though a remotely-controlled telepresence robot on wheels with your face on it may help assert one’s presence in a meeting room on the other side of the world, there’s no denying that the people on the…

Do you know what’s cooler than watching a YouTube video of a person build something? Being there yourself as the artist makes their creation, that’s what. Thanks to a collaboration with Oculus and Tested (a website run by Adam Savage dedicated to showing off his works as well as those of other creators), owners of Oculus Quest and Oculus Go headsets can get a front-row seat to their favorite creators as they work on their latest projects in Tested VR. Upon starting the app, you choose from among several episodes; each featuring a different workshop and creator. The creator then gives you an intimate step-by-step guide on their work ethic and process as…

When it comes to sketching and communicating your ideas well, nothing beats a good old-fashioned pencil and a keen sense of perspective. That said, adding simple depth to your form sketches with light and shadow is a natural next step in taking your sketches to the next level. And when it comes time to cranking ideas out fast, our favorite go-to is a fistful of 2-3 Sketching Grays from Copic that give us great contrast. These ultra-blendable, low odor, alcohol-based inks deliver rich and smooth strokes that are ideal for quickly communicating product concepts. And unlike water-based inks, which tend to pill and oversoak paper while blending, Copics mix on…

Ever since Elon Musk took to Twitter to ask his followers what they would like from a Tesla pickup truck, the world has waited with bated breath. Of course, this was back in 2018, and as we all know, he never really followed up on his promise—yet. This left a lot of Tesla fans hungry for the infamous ‘model P’; so much so that some of them have actually started making their own designs for the pickup truck. While most of these are high-level concept proposals—such as Istanbul designer Emre Husmen’s CAD design concepts—maker and robotics enthusiast Simone Giertz (along with some friends) made a fully-functioning Tesla truck: Cleverly dubbed…