This is a story from Mark Biasotti on his journey of advanced surface modeling in SolidWorks, from a Senior Industrial Designer at IDEO to a Senior Product Manager at Dassault SolidWorks. SolidWorks Doesn’t Do Trains, Planes and Automobiles originally appeared on the SolidWorks forum. Republished with permission. Back in the fall of 2002, while working…

The acquisition of HSMWorks by Autodesk, Inc. created some temporary uncertainty about the future of HSMWorks for SolidWorks. We have been relieved to get many direct and unambiguous commitments from the highest levels at Autodesk on continuing to offer HSMWorks and develop for the SolidWorks Platform. I am glad to report that everyone else I…

Today, the biggest news for CAD/CAM in years happened. Autodesk announced it has acquired HSMWorks. That Autodesk acquired another company isn’t surprising. What is surprising is this–HSMWorks is a CAM Solution for SolidWorks. If you use it, you also know it’s the best integrated CAM solution for SolidWorks. Obviously, Autodesk sees this, loves this, wants…

Last week, while many off you were getting the kids off to the first week school or recovering from an intense, sun-infused vacation, SolidWorks snuck up behind you and launched a new version of their SolidWorks viewing app for the iPad right in your face. This one has ‘Pro’ slapped on the end of it…

The Internets is about to become much more active with 3D viewing of your exported 3D data. Sunglass.io has just announced the release of plugins to import your models into the web-based collaboration and CAD-app platform. There are a set of plugins available for SolidWorks, Rhino, Processing and SketchUp along with direct integration of both…

If you’re part of a minibus fanclub or have often thought of joining an electric minibus revolution, this new concept from design group Entastudio, may make the cut to go on all your event flyers. Oktay Türkoglu and Ramazan Kaya are the founders of the studio, heading up the five person group based out of…

Go ahead, say it. No, scream it. SUBD to NURBS! Better if it’s done two inches from the secretary’s face immediately after you’ve chugged a bottle of milk. SubD to NURBS indeed. You may wonder what these strange words are. Or, you may know all about the surface mesh to solid modeling possibilities recently launched…

How does jet setting over to San Diego sound? What if it involved sitting inside a conference center all day, absorbing vast amounts of knowledge about SolidWorks? I know my pasty white skin would appreciate that. SolidWorks World 2012 is coming up in a few weeks, and SolidWorks is interested in launching one of you…

Have a few of these laying around the house? If you’re a fan of Portal or Portal 2, the teleporting escape game from Steam, you’ll probably wish you did. Logan Siahaan and Stephen Hess are a couple of portal jumping fiends and wanted to do just that, so they see out to make their own…

Earlier this week we hear Jon Hirschtick is leaving SolidWorks. Ctrl-C. Ctrl-V. Austin O’Malley. From a tipster early yesterday, we learned a new VP of Research and Development is on over at SolidWorks and received confirmation from SolidWorks that Austin O’Malley, VP of R&D who was with SolidWorks for over 16 years, is leaving.

This is a guest post by Bruce Buck, avid photographer, videographer and workstation geek at MySolidBox.com. There’s one constant in product design – the development of new products. Shocking and unexpected I know, but when that development gets down to all the individual component parts of a larger product, the process gets a whole lot…

Creating amazing looking structures using SolidWorks… Many doubt it, others toy with it and still others know just how to blend the capabilities to make it possible. Project Frog, out of San Francisco, CA, is one of the later. They’ve got sweet looking, highly efficient, modular building systems down in a big way. They do…

Running out of things to give your mother for her birthday/Christmas/Mother’s Day? (hint: you’re late on that last one.) Shapeways, an online 3D printing company which already has one of the largest materials offerings on the net, has introduced Glazed Ceramics 3D printing. One of their trumpeted examples is a coffee mug, so it will…

There are times in life where you think up a design, so simple, so magnificent, it could change the properties OF THE UNIVERSE ITSELF… and then suck everyone into an awesome design crushing vortex. However, if one takes the power of that idea, shares it with some friends and enters it into the Staples Eco…

Sometimes when the sun is shining and there’s a light, misty acid in that air… you run screaming, jump into a barrel with your friends and push yourselves down a hill to escape the skin melt. Inevitably, the conversation in the barrel turns to the edgy discussion of Direct vs. Parametric modeling. For good reason…

Earlier today, after sliding down a few escalators head first, I caught up with SolidWorks Product Manager, John Ellsworth, and the team responsible for introducing you to the first tool you’ll use to share, store and manage your SolidWorks data in a collaborative environment. You’ll see it first inside SolidWorks later this year, on the…

We’re just not going to let that “Kill SolidWorks” thing die… ahem. One comment from former SolidWorks CEO, Jeff Ray is all it takes for a firestorm to start whipping our sanity. What most people do not realize is that the is about creating a better product and providing some more options, not about violently…

When collaborating on a design, there are just so many blood vessels you can pop before you scare your co-workers to jaw-tensing tears. It can be frustrating. Collaboration and discussion about a design should be simple, visual, and not leave you feeling completely defeated… Get ready for this. CADFaster is taking on design collaboration and…

There’s been a rebellion of sorts. SolidWorks, to the mild dismay of the regular PR and ad agency channels, has gone out on their own. Not in any permanent way, mind you. Regular programming will soon return, but in the meantime, SolidWorks is getting back to their roots and dishing out a little emotive attitude…

Sometimes there are simply not enough laser beams you can shoot out your eye holes to automatically change how geometry is modeled. They should have built it this way, they should have built it that way, they should have quit and taken a job as someone who jabs lard into large buckets. Stacking model features…

Well, just look how time oozes suspiciously right past us. SolidWorks 2011 launched last week, but you may not have known there have been 15 years of enhancements before it. Today, September 6th, 2011 marks the 15th anniversary of SolidWorks selling the very first seat of their 3D product development software. Over 1 millllliooooon seats…

Blow the beet juice out of your mouth. This week SolidWorks 2011 is launched. We could ask the same questions we did last year and we could also bore 1/4-20 screws into our head. We will do neither. What we want to know is one thing, is 2011 better. Is it better than 2010? Does…

It’s the question we ponder when putting the cat in the dryer, cutting down the neighbors tree or slicing ham with the back of a shoe. What’s 3D good for? Can you answer that? It’s challenging I know, but the first thing that may come to mind….Braballs. I could end the post there, but I…

Most of you only have two fists. One for slamming out 3D geometry in SolidWorks and the other for punching it with pretty sauce using modo. However, if you’re just starting to build up those layers of rendering calluses, you may be looking for some soothing aloe to take the pain away from the workflow…

You might have a dad that builds you cool camera accessories, but what if you have one that attached rockets to anything that moves? Even better. Ron Patrick is Mechanical Engineer that has no problem with jamming jets into tiny vehicles, so that’s what he did. One modified turboshaft engine, one VW Bug, one sweet…

If you’ve surrounded yourself with thousands of lighted spheres like I have, you’ll be interested to learn of the potential for incredibly cool design living within each of the precious glowing orbs. Andre Baran of formendesign.de knows, and has animated a spherical surprise to impress upon you the true nature of transformation as applied to…

Last Week at SolidWorks World, I had a short sit down with Matthew West, master of social media computing at SolidWorks. We talked all about social media this and social crap crap that until everyone in the room around us was hugging and tweeting each other. We didn’t get into it, but I know he’d…

I’m sure of it. Your ankles are swelling with excitiment at the thought. SolidWorks on a Mac? Is this another post teasing of the possibility? Totally. Yes. But this time, you get to find out a little more about what’s going on in the mind of SolidWorks. Particularly, it’s CEO, Jeff Ray, courtesy of a…

They’re a little bit easier to handle than the teething undead, but all the relations in a SolidWorks sketch can make modeling, and specifically concept modeling, a relation re-defining nightmare that is way less interesting than cleaning up after a zombie child. One of the biggest problems you’ll have with relations automatically added to your…

There is really an endless amount of interesting object you can make with SolidWorks and a lot of interesting and unusual way to get there. Some readers on the Most Obscure Feature Combo post had excellent ideas and I even got a few via email. This crazy spiral, by Jeff Mowrey (@idesignhaus on Twitter) of…

This little orange square is raising all sorts of mean looks and a hefty lawsuit from AutoDesk to Dassault Systemes SolidWorks along with a list of other alleged misdeed. Ralph Grabowski brings up the lawsuit (pdf) filed on September 19th that slaps it’s own lovemark, so to speak, across the cheek of Dassault Systemes SolidWorks…

Listen. Is that the sound of a 65% speed increase and 250 eye-peeling enhancements coming at you with the ferocity of a one-eyed lemur? It is, give or take a few percentage points. Suddenly, your ability to blink repeatedly is compromised by the idea that SolidWorks 2009 is speedier. And perhaps you are perplexed by…

We’re in the exhilarating second half of the SolidWorks Press Event and as you can see from the live coverage, PAL Robotics is debuting the Humanoid Robot and striking fear in the hearts of those that know what is to come. Even though they’ll stab their metal jowls through the heart of the ‘peaceful’ societies…

It’s that moment you’ve been waiting for. That moment where your coworker pick his keyboard up, drops it, picks it up again and lifts it over his head. You would like to tell him about a couple SolidWorks Macros that would help him out, buuuuuuuut you’re being entertained and office rage is content YouTube is…

There’s nothing quite like waking up to a new day. The birds singing, the smell of toasty oats, and then a blaze of SMOKIN’ HOT marketing material being transferred directly into your brain cage. To create this special effect for all you CAD junkies in need of being persuaded by direct marketing campaigns, SolidWorks has…

You know what comes out on late at night after your tucked away in bed? A new look for the SolidWorks.com website and some beefy new content for your 3D CAD affliction.

Just look at that nice couple. So overcome with comfort from a sofa designed in SolidWorks, they’re about to smash there poor faces right into each other. Not too uncommon, but furniture designed in SolidWorks, that’s something that’ll make you look forward to bloody noses. Flexsteel has been making furniture for over 100 years. After…

There’s nearly 8 ways to create the same 3D model in SolidWorks… along with the 4 other ways. That’s a lot of flexibility, but many of the features just don’t get the use they deserve until someone shows them how to bring forth the hammer of power that is all the crazy, little SolidWorks feature…

Oh, the tangled web of 3D CAD hardware and software. It spans between the cracks of ultimate compatibility for the software, ultimate confusion for the user and sticks to you right after walking through the door of deciding what computer to buy. SolidWorks uses the OpenGL graphics API. Other CAD companies have decided to use…

Last year, SolidSmack riveted the academic community with some mighty fine tips for students success in SolidWorks. One year later and those measly tips are just not enough. Times are’a changin’ folks and there’s all sorts of things students and ‘the aged’ can do to have more success and more opportunities in 3D CAD and…

There are products that really add to the quality of life and then there are products that can actually help you survive it. Whether its months in the brambles of the desolate Australian interior or days spent escaping robot swarms the Ersa, renewable water and power generator is one item you’ll want in your pack.…

Update: As of noon on Thursday August 28th, SolidWorks has rescinded the penalties that were soon to take affect. You can read the email that went out to the resellers and customer here. Good move on the PR side. SolidWorks is listening to the customers, plus the resellers don’t look like bad guys to the…

Getting just the right detailed drawing view of a model can take immense amounts of time. More than they really should for products designed in 3D. When you open a drawing and nothing is there but the dimensions, that can really make you throw blunt objects. So, you stare real close at the computer screen.…

I know. You’re just screaming, “I work with the CAMERA. Striking a pose this way and that.” *whoosh, whoosh* I’m actually talking about how you model your 3D design in SolidWorks. Ah, now this post is suddenly boring. No tips to get that gritty engineer look on film, just stuff about drawing lines and extruding…

And when I say TeamUP, I mean TeamUP with a capital UP a two giant arm motions that scare you into a flared fetal position. SolidWorks and Luxology are rockin’ the 3D rendering scene with a whole new technology that is gonna FLOOR you. Rob Rodriguez has all the bits of detail in his latest…

Have you ever seen pictures that move? I hear they call it ‘Video’ or something. I also hear that there are some snazzy ‘video’ demos of the new SolidWorks 2009 functionality at a place called ‘the YouTube’. Sounds kind of personal to me, but I checked it all out and I think you’ll like what…

I’ll tell you right now, get ready to break into song if you are a SolidWorks user. In a few months, you are going to wake up, putter off to work and see that familiar splash screen pop up when you start SolidWorks. But this time it’s different, this time it says SolidWorks 2009. Can…

I know you all get excited when you have the chance to read about CAD news and the excitement happening around our tiny globe. This week has been chock full of interesting tid-bits of info. There’s so much in fact, that I didn’t even get a chance to tell you about them earlier, so I’ve…

Twitter = accessibility. It has opened up clogged lines of communication and expanded personal and community networks around the world and it just keeps getting bigger, I tell ya. When some of us were on months ago, there’s wasn’t much buzz on the 3D CAD side of things. That has changed big time in the…

“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.…