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A few days ago I saw a new discussion that had been started by a SolidWorks user in one of the many groups I follow on LinkedIn. The question that this young man was asking from other members in the group was a very valid one, I think, and one that I believe has been in many people’s head at some point or another.  The question was as follows:

I graduated over a year ago and have been struggling to keep my skills sharp (or at least keep them from not dulling too much). To do this, I need the software. While I found full time work, a full license is a little beyond my reach. Are there other, cheaper (and legitimate) options I’m overlooking, apart from the somewhat dubious “have a friend still in college register a student edition” route?

Only two people answered to this. One of those who answered agreed with him that it was, indeed, hard to do, specially while unemployed. The other person simply suggested perhaps he should enroll in a class at a community college. 

Well, I don’t know but I don’t quite agree with this “solution”. I don’t think it solves anything at all, actually.  Why? To begin with, because this guy probably already conquered the basics, which is usually what is taught at those classes. What he wants now is the ability to practice and increase his knowledge; he needs to grow and go beyond the basics, beyond the introductory tutorials, beyond the textbook. But how can he do it if he doesn’t have the tool? 

While I do think we’re always learning and, in some way, students all our professional life, I don’t think it’s realistic to expect that users should really be perpetually in school in order to be allowed access to the tool they need to grow.  What if you can’t find a way to afford enrolling in school, even if you aren’t unemployed? What if you simply can’t find the time to physically be there? What if your boss doesn’t see the need for you to take a class with your VAR?  So, shame on you for not wanting to grow? I don’t think so. 

Do you read blogs? Watch videos on YouTube? Well, it can only help so much, but it you don’t have a chance to practice what you’ve read or seen, then it’s really not going to take you very far. It would be like trying to learn how to fly a plane by simply watching videos of a guy flying it but never actually setting foot inside a plane or even a simulator. Would you let such a “pilot” fly you to your destiny? I mean he’s got like 400 hours of “flight watching” on YouTube.  I think I’d pass.

The worst of all is that this has the potential of becoming a vicious cycle for professional unfulfillment. If you have a crummy job doing repetitive and boring tasks and you would like to be the one tackling more interesting assignments, you need to grow and perfect your skills, you need to explore those areas of the software that you usually don’t even touch… but you don’t have the tool to do it in your own time and you can’t do it during working hours because that’s not what your boss is expecting from you. Some bosses might want you to grow… not all expect you do it on their time or with their money.

If you are unemployed or a career changer, then you need better skills to get yourself a new job. You need to have really sharp skills to compete with others that are also aiming for that job, specially in this economy, but how can you get those skills if the only way to access the software is through becoming a student again or coughing up a large sum of money for a commercial license? Can you cough it up? Try harder… harder… it may come out… no? Oh well…

I know, some of you may think this is really not such a big issue. “Hey, Gabi, there was that stimulus program not so long ago, remember?” Yes, I do remember. It was helpful. It was an awesome thing SolidWorks did for unemployed engineers all over the country, but it wasn’t enough. I’m telling you, 90 days is not enough. In the time I’ve been writing this blog, it’s the story I’ve been hearing over and over, from real people everywhere.

So, what to do about this? Personally, I think SolidWorks should follow the example of PTC  with Pro/Engineer Wildfire and allow non-students to purchase the student edition of SolidWorks, perhaps at a higher price than the one offered to students. See? PTC sells the personal student edition for like  $100 more than the student edition. They’re both the same thing and they are not for commercial use, but you pay $100 more or so if you’re not a student.  

I mean, I respect DS SolidWorks and I know they have their own reasons to do things the way they do, but I don’t see how it could mean them any harm to allow more people to learn and practice. I think it would actually benefit them. If more people have access to the tools they need to learn, the community of users becomes stronger and more users gain knowledge of those higher end tools that are also available and often overlooked.

What do you think? Am I dreaming too much?

Hi everyone! I’m sure by now many of you may have noticed that SolidWorks 2011 has been officially launched, which simply means that, although still in Beta 3 phase, it is now OK to acknowledge its existence and talk about it in public. Phew, what a relief, because some of us really struggle keeping something secret!  It will still be a while until it’s actually ready to use for production, but if you are on subscription, you can download and try the Beta version as early as today, if only to satisfy your curiosity.

I must admit this time around I haven’t been experimenting with the Beta as much as I would’ve liked. I guess you can say I’ve had a lot on my plate. To those of you who sent emails and other messages expressing your good wishes and prayers for my son: Thank You! The surgery went well and he’s recovering nicely. Even though I’m a bit envious of the other bloggers that got to visit SolidWorks headquarters this year, I’m definitely glad I stayed behind and was able to be here for him.  Anyway, I did get to test one or two things in the Beta version and was hoping I could find some time to blog about it.

I guess it is somehow obvious that since I had spent a bit of time playing with animations of lights in SolidWorks 2010 and rendering the animations in PhotoWorks, I would be curious about how all that would work out in SolidWorks 2011, now that PhotoWorks was out of the equation and PhotoView was the new rendering software. I guess in my mind I had this image of the “old” PhotoView and how it used to work as a stand alone application. I had no idea how it could replace PhotoWorks or even work out with the Motion Manager to produce a rendered animation, for instance.

So,  I tried it and was pleasantly surprised by all it can do now: you can add different kinds of lights and modify their intensity and color, apply special effects, modify the quality of the shadows they produce,  add decals, and much more  . In fact, even though I know it is PhotoView, the capabilities, the user interface, and the fact that it runs inside SolidWorks  makes me think a lot of PhotoWorks… only somehow simpler. It seems faster too, and more convenient. At least I don’t feel so threatened by this change, because what I already knew how to do in PhotoWorks translated really easily into this new PhotoView.

In this image you can see this extra tab called the Display Manager. From here you can access appearances, scene, lights, cameras and decals. If you look carefully, you will notice that each one of my lights exhibits two icons. The one of the left means that the light is turn on in SolidWorks, while the one on the right means that the light is turned off in PhotoView. Turning the lights on in PhotoView won’t show on the screen at all, because rendering takes place on a separate window.

 

So I turned all my lights in PhotoView and proceeded to create a preview render, like you see in the image. Oops! That’s not right!  Well, it makes sense that whatever settings I had for PhotoWorks won’t really apply in PhotoView, so I had to take a closer look to the lights and the new tools available in order to create a similar fog effect as I had in PhotoWorks.  By the way, while the rendering is taking place in this window, you can simply minimize it and continue working. It doesn’t leave you hanging there, waiting for it to be over. Isn’t that cool?

 

So I discovered that I could easily edit the PhotoView settings for each of my point lights. To achieve an effect similar to what I had before in PhotoWorks, I had to uncheck the option Shadows and check Fog. The fog option works in a way very similar to PhotoWorks, allowing the light to be visible as it would be in a room where there’s fog or light rain. 

 It took a little experimentation to find the right values to make this work, but the cool thing is that by leaving the preview render window open I was able to see the result of my adjustments to each setting instantaneously. I didn’t even had to check OK and or finish the command. I loved that!

 

After adjusting some of the settings of my two directional lights, I tried generating a final render using a better quality than the preview. You can adjust the quality of the preview and final renders, among other things, by accessing the PhotoView options. Notice how a second window opens on top of the preview one. In fact, even if you didn’t have the preview render window open to begin with, both windows will open whenever you do a final render. You should, however, still be able to minimize the final render window and continue working in SolidWorks. I think this part needs a bit of work, though. I was able to minimize the final render window, but the preview would not minimize. However, I was still able to open a different file and, after a few seconds delay, the preview window finally got out of my way. It wasn’t immediately, but it did happen.

 

Then I took a look at what happened to my lights inside the animation I had for this particular model. I noticed that all my lights were still off in PhotoView inside the animation and not only that, but the settings hadn’t been updated either.

 

I was a bit discouraged by this because that meant I would have to repeat all my work adjusting the settings, but then I realized that it makes sense that you can have lights for each animation that are altogether  independent from what you have for the model or for a different animation.  I also noticed that if I started a new study, then my lights would inherit the settings I had in PhotoView for my model. Interesting.

Here is another example of the use of fog in lights. This is a spot light that I added to the model of this flash light, remember? See? Too large values for fog distance and quality produce a beam of light that almost makes it look like a ray gun instead of a light. Lower values produce softer, more natural results in this case. It’s a bit of trial and error, I think, and it’s really nice to see it all change practically at the same time you do the changes.

And of course you can also edit the scene. This user interface seems to me like a nice mix between what it used to be with PhotoWorks and what’s new with PhotoView. It’s easy to use. Ah, did you notice that little pink handle near my cursor? I’m not sure what to call it, but if you click on it and drag it you can actually dynamically adjust the location of the floor in the scene.  That’s really neat. And it’s all taking place right in front of your eyes, in real time. No more guessing!

To be brutally honest with you, I was kind of bummed out that PhotoWorks was being replaced with PhotoView because I didn’t quite like the “old” user interface that was first introduced and because I felt kind of cheated for all the time and effort I put into learning PhotoWorks in the first place. I felt it had been a total waste of my time, but you know what? After checking it out I’m actually feeling much better. I really like what they did with it and I feel like my time spent with PhotoWorks wasn’t really a waste, that it will pay off after all. What do you think?

While browsing the Internet a few days ago I came across a funny poem called Ode to My Wife  the Quilter.  I’m not a quilter myself,  but I could see how the same idea expressed by the author could apply to me, if perhaps under different circumstances. I made a few adjustments to the ode… To My Wife the Drafter.

She learned SolidWorks on Monday,
Her sketches all were very fine.
She forgot to thaw out dinner,
So we went out to dine.

She learned about mates on Tuesday.
She says they are a must.
Her assemblies were quite lovely,
But she forgot to dust.

On Wednesday it was a render.
She says PhotoView is fun.
What highlights!  What shadows!
But the laundry wasn’t done.

Then Simulation on Thursday -
Green, yellow, blue and red.
I guess she was really engrossed;
She never made the bed.

It was animations on Friday,
That’s something she adores.
It never bothered her at all,
The crumbs on the floors.

I found a maid on Saturday.
My week is now complete.
My wife can draft the hours away;
The house will still be neat.

Well, It’s already Sunday.
I’m feeling like a dork.
I cursed, I raved, I ranted;
The maid has learned SolidWorks!

 

OK, that was to poke some fun and put you in a good mood.  Did it work out?

You will probably read this very weekend that many of my SolidWorks blogger friends are visiting SolidWorks headquarters in Concord again this year. I was invited and very grateful for that, by the way, but I won’t be there this time. Instead, I will stay here in California, tending to my younger son who will finally get his hand surgery this weekend… at least, that’s the plan so far and, unless something went terribly wrong and they had to cancel, he WILL have that surgery tomorrow morning.  If you are the praying kind, please, pray for him; if you are not, positive thoughts are also welcome.

I will try my best to come back and blog about some of the neat new stuff coming up in SolidWorks 2011, once it’s officially launched, of course, which is happening just in a few days. I will try, but at this point I can’t really promise anything.  I will come back to blog, that’s for sure, I just don’t know exactly when. Until then, well, just try to be strong,  visit other blogs, enjoy life, seek the support of your friends and 24 hrs SolidWorks User Group, practice your SolidWorks skills, stay out of trouble,  and learn something new.

See you all real soon!

 

Dear readers,  you know I’m not the kind to rant about life or even cry “bug” when things don’t go my way with SolidWorks. Well, OK, there was that one time when I wondered about the bug in SolidWorks Motion, and recently when my brand new razors broke,  but other than that, well, you know I don’t usually do it. I just don’t rant… Those of you that have talked to my husband, don’t believe him… he’s just making up stuff…  He’s probably been under the sun for a long time… Yes, let’s go with that!

 Anyway, I guess this is sort of a rant, but mostly a “Huh?!”  moment.  It happened late the other night, when I was trying to complete the animations for my previous post, the ones for the flashlight and the holiday lights. I had already produced an animation using full frames (uncompressed), instead of a compression codec, simply because I liked the way it turned out: much better than with any of the codecs I tried before. I made some changes to the settings in PhotoWorks and was getting ready to render the animations again, but it was late and I was feeling tired. That’s when I saw the “schedule” button in the  Save Animation to File window and had the brilliant idea of scheduling the animations, instead. That way I could go to bed, rest and relax, and find them ready and waiting for me the next morning.  Perfect!

I must confess I had never in my life scheduled anything in SolidWorks. I was a bit worried at first, wondering how it would all get done, but went to bed, anyway, and had a hard time settling down, all full of anticipation for the animations that were being taken care by the Task Scheduler during the night. 

Now I know better. It was not anticipation what I felt, but the premonition of the horrors that awaited me. My AVI files were ready in the morning, but the results were less than I had expected. It seems that, for some reason, the animations had been produced using some sort of compression codec, instead of being uncompressed, like I had specified. They looked terrible! All full of streaks and not at all like the ones I had produced myself previously.  But how could this happen? 

My first thought was that, being as tired as I was the night before, I had made a mistake when I scheduled the animations and used some compression codec instead of choosing for them to be uncompressed, so I went to schedule them again and, after making absolutely sure I had chosen Full Frames (uncompressed), I clicked on a button named “View Settings” and discovered this:

That doesn’t look good, does it? So, does that mean that, despite whatever I may specify, my animation is being scheduled to be produced using  some undetermined codec and 84% compression? Based on the results, it sure looked like it.  Funny thing is that this doesn’t happen when you simply save the animation, when you don’t schedule it for later, and it seems like it only happens when you schedule AND choose Full Frames as the compressor. I checked it out using the Cinepak codec and it seemed to work fine, no settings had been corrupted and the results were as expected.

So, tell me do you use the Task Scheduler for your animations? I wonder if any of you has noticed anything like it. I’m using SolidWorks Premium 2010 SP4.0.  I know it can’t just be me… I mean, why would the Task Scheduler hate me so bad? Right? Right? Just say I’m right…

 

 

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good weekend and avoided making wacky searches you may soon regret. I spent some time of my own weekend toying around with PhotoWorks and the Motion Manager, trying to create some cool animations using lights.

I learned from the book Creating Animations with SolidWorks that using lights in animations is not really hard to do. Basically, you have your lights set up in SolidWorks, then you create a new motion study and the lights show up in the Motion Manager tree. Then, you can move them around, change their properties or even turn them on and off throughout the animation, creating all kinds of different effects.  Like with many other elements in the animation, every time you change something about a light, a key point will be created and you can drag the key point to a different location in the timeline, copy it, or even change its interpolation mode (the way it changes from key point to keypoint), just like you would do for a motor or a change in color or appearance.

So I started with this model of a flash light that I found at the 3DContent Central. The model was made by someone named Matthew Nestor and the moment I saw it I knew it was just perfect for my purposes. My idea was to add a spot light and locate it in such a way that the light seemed to be coming from inside the flashlight, like the light bulb was really on.  Notice the light in the image below.  I made it visible in SolidWorks so you can appreciate what I’m talking about.

 

While you don’t need PhotoWorks to add a spot light to the animation, you do need to have PhotoWorks for what I did with this particular light in this animation, so I’m going to assume you understand that none of this is useful to you if you don’t have PhotoWorks as an add-in and activated.

To create the effect I wanted with this particular light, I made it a fog light. What this does is create an effect similar to what it would be having some fog, mist, or light rain, allowing the beam of light to become visible. I won’t go into much detail on this, but you can learn more about how to use fog lights in the book PhotoWorks, a step-by-step self study guide, also available from the SolidWorks online shop.

 

If you notice, there are other lights, as well: there’s the ambient light, and a couple of directional lights that came with the choice of scene. I turned Directional 1 off and diminished the brightness of both ambient and Directional 2, so they wouldn’t overpower the spot light.  At zero seconds in the animation, ambient, spot1 and Directional 2 are on and Directional 1 is off.  At 1.5 seconds into the animation, however, Spot1 is now turned off, as you can see in the image.  As soon as you turn the light off  in the animation( by dragging the time bar to 1.5 seconds, selecting the light, right clicking on it and selecting Off), a key point will be created at 1.5 seconds. If you hover your mouse over this key point, you will see all the light’s properties at a glance.  The empty light bulb icon indicates the light has been turned off; if the light was on, the light bulb would be colored yellow.

 

Something else to keep in mind is that, unless you specify otherwise, the interpolation mode is always linear, which means that the light will go from on to off in a linear fashion, little by little, instead of turning off all of a sudden at 1.5 seconds. This will become an important factor for this animation. You’ll see that in a bit.

Due to the amount of time invested in rendering every frame for the animation in PhotoWorks and the fact that there’s 7.5 frames being generated for every second of animation, I meant for it to be very short. This particular one lasts less than two seconds, but it took close to 40 minutes to render and complete. I added an extra key point at 1.8 seconds, that was basically a copy of the one at 1.5 seconds. I just wanted to have at least a fraction of a second to appreciate that the light had, indeed, turned off.

One thing to keep in mind is that you will not be able to see the effect of the fog light on your screen when you calculate and run the animation in SolidWorks. You will only see it when you either render the image at a particular time in the animation or produce the animation as an AVI file using the  PhotoWorks buffer.  Taking this information into account, I set up all my options in PhotoWorks and test rendered the image at zero seconds and again at 1.8 seconds. I liked the way the renderings looked, so I decided to save the animation as an AVI file and this is what I got.

If you notice, right at the end of the video, after the flash light has turned off, it almost looks like it’s turned on again.  I tried a few things, tweaking the other lights in the animation and such, but it didn’t help, so I decided to change the interpolation mode for the Spot1 light, instead, from linear to snap. This new interpolation mode makes the Spot1 light turn off instantly, instead of linearly.

 

I rendered and produced the AVI file one more time.

Unlike before, now the flash light turns off instantly and it doesn’t look like it’s turned on again. I don’t know about you, but I think this animation looks a lot better than the previous one.

I know, I know… This is getting long for a blog post, but just before I go, let me show you just one more of my whimsical experiments with lights in animations. Some of you may remember this model. Some time ago I made a cute rendering of some holiday lights using PhotoWorks.  Now I’m going to use the same model to animate those holiday lights. As you can see in the image below, there are four point lights of different colors, strategically located to make it look like the light is actually coming from the light bulbs. I’ve made them visible for you to appreciate them; they appear in the graphics area as dots of color over the light bulbs. The black dots are lights that are turned off at that moment.  I’ve altered the color of each of them to make them look like holiday lights. 

As you can see, these are also fog lights, just like the previous one.

 

For my animation, I alternated turning a couple of them off and leaving a couple on every 0.5 seconds. First, the green one and the orange were on.

 

Then the red and the blue were on, while the other two were turned off. I used Snap as the interpolation method for all the lights.

 

I copied and pasted some of the key points to turn the lights on and of again and make the animation last for 2 seconds, then checked my PhotoWorks options, did sample renderings at zero and 0.5 seconds,  and produced the AVI file. This is what I got.

Not bad for an experiment, huh? There’s tons more to learn about lights and animations in SolidWorks. If you’re curious, check out the books offered by your local VAR or go to the SolidWorks online store and start experimenting today.