Something I’ve been really enjoying about PhotoWorks is being able to save your own appearances, those you have modified from pre-existing ones, and then use them in a totally different project. I had a bit of fun altering the colors in one of the marble appearances available in PhotoWorks to create my own funky looking ones. It all starts in the render manager, by right clicking on the appearan...

Just yesterday, I had the pleasure of resuming a conversation with Mrs. Marie Planchard that had begun several weeks ago, in Barcelona.  As you may know, Mrs. Planchard is DS SolidWorks Director of Worldwide Education Markets; in other words, she’s the one responsible for bringing SolidWorks to thousands of students all around the world. She’s also very passionate about education and irra...

No, I don’t mean vote for the next president of the United States, but for your favorite image in October’s PhotoWorks Rendering contest at Rob Rodriguez Blog. Go and cast your vote today!  I submitted an image myself; can you guess which one is mine? The image for the next contest is Ricky Jordan’s Mach 4 Racer, so make sure to download the model and start working on it!   ...

The SolidWorks World 2009 agenda is here!  And to help you make the most of this year’s event, they’re making it easier for you to search for the sessions you want to attend with a day-by-day calendar and the ability to search through the sessions by track, speaker or any other relevant keyword that comes to mind.  Oh, there’s also a printable version of the calendar, by the way!  So, if ...

So there I was, seating in a meeting room with my older son’s SLP, his two teachers and the principal. We were discussing what his progress in speech therapy had been so far, and what other areas of concern would be addressed this year. One of the teachers then proceeded to describe my son’s behavior in class and what she considered a source of potential trouble. “The boy seems a little too ...

This may be the chance you were waiting for to be able to afford your own seat of SolidWorks!  SolidWorks is now giving you an alternative to finance your software AND subscription service, and start reaping the benefits today.  That’s right! Instead of paying a big amount upfront, you now have the option of purchasing the software and then make 36 very convenient monthly payments, tha...

If there’s one thing I’m learning is that, for the most part, it takes a good model to produce a good rendered image. Even with the greatest appearances and scenes, if your model’s features look out of proportion or have oddly sharp edges were there should be smooth transitions, then the rendering is not going to look very realistic. As an example, take a look at this model of a soda can tha...

Earlier, this afternoon, I submitted what will be my entry for the 32nd Rendering Contest, hosted by Rob Rodriguez.  I wish I could tell you which entry is mine, but that would be against the rules, so you’ll have to wait until after the winner is announced to find out.  This is very exciting for me! It’s the first time I ever enter a contest like this one and even more exciting is the fact ...

Back in August, just a few weeks after finally getting my CSWP, I decided to start my very first search for a job in this country using several on-line job search engines.  If you’ve ever done this, then you know how it goes: you upload your resume here and there, and receive quite a few emails every day, each with a long list of all the fascinating job offers that match your search criteri...

This is a free plug-in for SolidWorks, offered by Print 3D Corporation. I learned about it just last night, and I wanted to share with you here because it does seem like a great tool that can save your sanity, as well as your time and money.  Print 3D allows SolidWorks users to get secure and offline quotes for plastic and metal prototypes directly from SolidWorks, without having to upload any ST...

If you’ve ever attempted to layout a tile floor at home or create a garment out of a piece of plaid fabric, then you may have an idea of what editing and mapping textures in PhotoWorks feels like, and, especially in the case of the garment, how difficult it is at times to make the plaid pattern match exactly at the seams. You usually need extra fabric for that! Lucky for us, in PhotoWorks we don...

People in Latin America love SolidWorks!  Even before starting the new blog in Spanish, I used to get lots of emails from students and people all over Central and South America, fascinated with the software, wanting to know more about SolidWorks. What I hadn’t realized until now is that for many of these countries there is no local authorized distributor where to buy SolidWorks from.  ...

One of the things that I enjoy the most about writing this humble blog is having the opportunity of helping others through the blog posts and also answering questions other users may have. However, there’s one particular kind of question that I get every now and then that always leaves me wondering: when people ask me about how they can manage to make SolidWorks behave just like AutoCAD by using...

My first render ever was made in PhotoView 360. That was also the day I fell in love with rendering applications, because seeing how good that rendered image looked like made me feel that I could also be a creative (even artistic) person after all. This is big news if you are like me and grew up with a sister that could draw incredibly realistic images with her hands by the time she was nine years...