By now, many of you have probably been playing with the new PhotoView  rendering application for a while, enjoying its ease of use, and creating all kinds of cool photo realistic images with it, haven’t you?  Well, how about sharing  what you think about it with SolidWorks?  By filling out a small survey, you can  let them know not only how you like it, but also what you...

Ever since Kenneth mentioned the “missing part” about the vacuum chamber, I’ve received a few emails from people requesting the video, so, by popular demand, here it is. In this video, Kenneth is showing us a few very interesting things he did with weldments, including, of course, the vacuum chamber and the use of 3D sketches in weldments too.  Hope you find it useful! ...

I got inspiration for this little tip from a question sent to me while I was in Barcelona, last week.  It wasn’t until now that I got a chance to take a look at it and send a reply, so I hope it wasn’t too late for the person that asked the question. Anyway, this person had a simple assembly in which a couple of pneumatic cylinders were mounted on two identical pillars (one on the left and on...

Just as I promised before, here is the video of Kenneth Barrentine’s presentation on weldments, from the last Tri-Valley SWUG meeting. I hope you find it useful. I haven’t ventured into weldments myself. So far, I’ve only used the weldment symbols in drawings, but I can’t deny they sound really interesting. ...

I had a great time in Spain, but it’s always good to be home. This little trip also served the purpose of a “walk-in-your-shoes” experiment for my husband and me, since it’s usually him who gets to travel the world. I’m glad to report that the experiment was a big success. I was empowered by a deeper understanding and respect for my husband and all the travel that his job requires, and w...

While this has been an extremely interesting week in Barcelona, I’m certainly glad it is now time to go back home to my family in California. I miss my husband and kids terribly, and, to tell the truth, I don’t think I am as extrovert and/or as intensely social as the rest of the bloggers. Unlike me, those guys seem to thrive on social interaction, cool gadgets, blogging and twittering… an...

Thursday was a long day of presentations. I took lots of pictures and all kinds of notes. Ten pages of notes, to be precise… I feel I have so much that I want to say about this day, but, alas, I’m tired and it’s late here in Barcelona. My whole internal clock is completely messed up. This afternoon, after the presentations were all finished, I came up to my room to take a long nap. I slept a...

Wednesday night’s dinner at the Xalet was amazing and a whole new experience for me.  I must confess that I was feeling a bit out of place, among so many strangers, and that includes my fellow bloggers, since I had never seen them before in my life. Even more intimidating for me was the fact that, for some strange reason that I still don’t understand, I was sharing the same table with Bernard...

So here I am, in Barcelona. Finally, after nearly 14 hours of flight from San Francisco, I’ve arrived to the hotel, and even met with a few of the SolidWorks bloggers. Here in this picture you can see, from left to right, Jason, Josh, Mike, Brian and Ben. Yes, we met at the hotel bar, but I was drinking Coca-Cola.  They are such great guys; a lot of fun to talk to. I’m really looking forw...

OK, second part is here. This is the part that includes the discussion on lenght of release cycle, number of service packs and backwards compatibility, among other issues. I don’t know if I’ll be able to edit the rest of the material or if I’ll have to wait for a few days, until I come back from Barcelona to take care of that, but, at least, I’ll leave you with this. Enjoy!...

I finally got a first part video together. I’m still working on the rest. For some reason (probably something I did wrong) the audio doesn’t seem to be completely in sync with the video, and the image seems to stutter a bit from time to time. Oh, well, at least the sound is still clear, which is really the important part. I hope to have at least the rest of the developers round table e...

What a great meeting it was! I wish everyone could’ve had the opportunity to be there last night, at the third meeting of the Tri-Valley SWUG, in Dublin, CA.  It was one of the longest meetings we’ve had so far (from 6:30 to a little after 10:00 pm) and one of the best ones yet, mainly due to the presence of the members of SolidWorks R&D team, that came all the way to California with the ...

Err… Well, I should say “It’s live”, instead.  I’m talking about my new SolidWorks blog in Spanish, “SolidWorks Para Todos”.  I just finished setting it up today and, although it still needs some work and content (obviously), I consider it’s really not such a bad start. My goal for this new blog is for it to be a place filled with tips, tricks, tutorials and videos that m...

If you remember, back in the month of June I wrote about the second Tri-Valley SWUG meeting, which was all about automating SolidWorks. During that meeting in particular, we were graced with a visit by Brian Titus, from Zeometric LLC, who shared with us several strategies and tools that could help us in achieving our goals for design automation,  whatever big or small those goals may be. From...

SolidWorks World is getting closer by the minute. If you are planning on attending for the first time (or at least hoping you will, like me), and even if you have been there before, you can always use a little advice on how to “survive” and make the best of the event.  If you read the SW forums, you may have noticed already that Mr. John Ferguson (aka Muggs) has put together a very han...