Learning how to properly do drawing and detailing in SolidWorks isn’t precisely the most exciting thing in the world, but it’s necessary, so I try to keep at it, even when it seems I’m making progress in an extremely slow fashion. Anyway, I was learning how to create Annotation Favorites, when I noticed that something was different about Favorites for SW2007 and SW2008, when compared to SW20...

Well, not precisely… This is just a quick tip on how to edit a cropped drawing view. As you probably already know, whenever you create a cropped view in SolidWorks, the two things you need are a model view and a closed sketch that will define the area of the view that you wish to keep. Everything outside the sketch will be eliminated. But what happens if you make a mistake while creating the ske...

Our vacation time in Florida was awesome, tropical storm and all.  It rained non-stop from the moment we arrived, but that didn’t prevent us from going out and having fun.  As a matter of fact, I noticed a huge crowd in almost every single place we went to, wearing ponchos, or just walking in the rain, getting soaked and making the best of it.  There were even quite a few folks in...

What’s the only good thing about having a spouse who travels the world all year round, I mean besides (emergency) chocolate from Switzerland and gold plated figurines from Japan? Frequent flyer miles! Thousands and thousands of them! This year, instead of me traveling to Mexico with the kids, Keith decided to take some time off from work, take some of those miles, and head over to Orlando, FL, f...

PhotoView 360 was made available for download today, August 12th, and, of course, I had to go and try it out. I must tell you, never before today had I attempted to render anything, but I’m really amazed at how fast and easy it is to use, and how great the results that can be achieved, even by a complete novice, such as me. It was as simple as choosing a material, a scenario, and that’s it, in...

So many things that can be customized in SolidWorks 2009! This one in particular caught my eye, mainly because I’m still learning about drawing and detailing using SolidWorks. More in particular, I’ve spent the last few days learning about the different weld symbols available in SolidWorks and how to position them correctly in a drawing document. I’ll tell you more about that in a future pos...

Due to the upcoming roundtable with SolidWorks Corp. R & D team  that will be  hosted during the meeting of the Tri-Valley SWUG  in September,  our leader, Kenneth Barrentine,  asked each one of us to rate four top topics from a long list of possible ones that we would like to discuss with the R& D  team during the meeting. The list included all sorts of thing...

Wow! A lot can happen in a few hours! I was out this morning chasing a passport in San Francisco, and when I came back everyone was already talking about SolidWorks World 2009. The registration page is live and you can now reserve your spot at the biggest event of the year.  Check it out earlier than later, because there are special discounts for early registration and CSWP’s! Those prices don�...

This hasn’t got much to do with SolidWorks, but a lot to do with women and engineering. It’s about the annual national conference for women in engineering, and that this year will take place from November 6th to 8th, in Baltimore, Maryland.  It looks like something I would like to experience, but unfortunately I will have to miss it this year. I had no idea that such an event took place, ...

SW2009 pre-release 1 is now available for download for all subscription service customers.  So, what are you waiting for? Go to the customer portal and download it today! ...

OK, I must admit that I’m not really an avid user of the Toolbox, but after seeing the “makeover” it went through for SW2009, I think I’ve changed my mind. Have you seen it? It’s so much easier to enable and configure now than it was before, and it even allows the users to create their own custom properties for the hardware in the toolbox! Clicking on the toolbox icon in the task pane, i...

OK, this is not a commercial and I’m not getting a commission to tell you this, but I thought I would pass along this information to whoever is interested. If you are looking to buy the new student edition of SolidWorks 2008-2009, you may consider taking a look at what Novedge has for sale right now. There are great offers on educational bundles that include a copy of Inspirtech’s SolidWorks 2...

Today is Monday, August 4th and the NDA has been officially removed for all SW bloggers.  As a relatively new blogger, I haven’t experienced this particular time of the year before, but I suspect it’s going to be crazy cool, full of information and exciting news for everyone.  I must admit I arrived a bit late to the Beta testing.  After running into a few major problems with...

Last Sunday was a very exciting day for me. Becoming a CSWP was a goal that I had been chasing for several months already, so you bet it was exhilarating to finally achieve it. However, now that the euphoria of the moment is almost gone, I’m finding myself back in the same place I was a few years ago, that afternoon at the top of El Tepozteco mountain, just taking it in for a moment, before it�...