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Archive for October, 2008

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 appearance I wish to modify and selecting Edit from the menu. In this case, it’s the green marble appearance.

This opens the appearances editor and so I’m able to do modifications to the color and other properties of the appearance. If I want to change one of the current colors in the marble appearance (there’s two of them), for instance, all I have to do is double click on it and a palette of colors will open for me to choose the new color to replace this one with, or create my own custom color.

Just for fun, I choose to replace the light green color with orange and click OK. We can also change other properties, such as transparency, reflectivity and surface finish. Notice the difference in the green marble appearance, and also notice that the color orange is now included in the appearance editor as one of the two colors. It is obvious that this is not the same green marble appearance we began with, but a new custom appearance and as such we need to save it with a new name, rather than overwrite the green marble one we started with. So, in the appearances editor we click on Save Appearances, and then choose a new name and location for our appearance. I’m saving mine in a special folder I had previously created where I keep all my appearances, and I’m giving it the new name green orange marble, to be able to recognize it and use it again.

I can then make my folder visible in the appearances folder in the Task pane, for convenience. My folder appears in blue and inside of it you can find all the appearances I’ve been storing, including the one we just saved, green orange marble.

Now, while modifying colors and properties of pre-existing appearances and being able to save these “new” appearances allows for freedom to customize and be creative, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was possible at all to modify even more, and create an appearance radically different to the one we started with. For instance, say I want to add a third color to my marble appearance, or make it look like there’s little metallic sparkling pebbles trapped in there. Is it even possible? Well, I asked this same question to Rob Rodriguez not so long ago, and this is what he had to say: “It isn’t possible.  The procedural materials are shaders (coded) to have certain properties.  You are only able to change the properties PW makes available.  This is a common question.  Some rendering packages give you much more control over material (appearance) creation but PW does not.  This doesn’t mean it won’t be available in the future.  SW would need to decide to give the PW user more tools in order for this to happen.”  Yup, as a matter of fact, if you open one of those appearances files using Notepad or any other word processor you are likely to find a bunch of code that will look pretty much like this.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have any idea how to modify or create code such as this one. I don’t think the average user has that kind of skills. Then, searching for information, I ran into an application called Mental Mill, which is available for download from Mental Images. Mental Mill allows the average user with no programming skills to create custom shaders and export them for rendering in Mental Ray, Maya and even Catia, among others. But, yeah, you guessed it, the shaders created in Mental Mill won’t work in PhotoWorks and it’s because the mental ray libraries PhotoWorks currently uses don’t interpret the MetaSL (the intermediate shader language behind it all).

So, although impossible at the moment, perhaps in a not so distant future PhotoWorks users will be given this ability. That would really make PhotoWorks an incredibly powerful rendering software, don’t you agree?

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 irradiates that same passion and energy wherever she goes. Our conversation took place over the phone, so I’m not going to even try to quote her word by word, but rather summarize what was discussed during our chat. I hope you find this little conversation as inspiring and informative as I did.

The very first thing I asked Mrs. Planchard was how she first got involved with SolidWorks and their educational program.  She told me that it all started several years ago, when SolidWorks was still a fairly new CAD software. She was teaching  Pro/E at a community college in New England, trying hard to take her students from merely drafting into actually doing design, when she was approached by SolidWorks.  They provided her with an evaluation copy, so she could decide whether she wanted to teach SolidWorks in her class or not. She remembers she took the copy home to play with it and, in little time that same night, she had already created her first model: a glass of wine.  She became excited to realize how quickly it was to find her way around the software, and how much more intuitive it appeared when compared to Pro/E, so she decided to teach her students SolidWorks instead, although not without making sure first that her students would, indeed, be able to find great jobs among SolidWorks’s customers after completing their training. So she made the switch and she quickly realized that she had to modify her curriculum radically, because the same concepts that used to take her students a long time to grasp in Pro/E were now easily mastered in SolidWorks in next to no time. She decided then to challenge her students to put their newly learned skills to work right away and model items from real life, things they may find at home, even broken things. And she was delighted to witness what they could do with SolidWorks. Time went by and Marie not only continued to teach SolidWorks, but also became deeply involved in the SolidWorks community through user groups. It was then that, six years after her original first encounter with the software, she was asked to become Director of Education Market for SolidWorks.  I wonder what took them so long!

At this point I asked Marie if she had found any sort of resistance from the college where she was teaching in order to incorporate SolidWorks into the curriculum. She told me that it was actually embraced right away, because this particular community college strived to bring to the students the latest in technology and innovation. Plus, having the commercial backup from SolidWorks was also a big help. She added that this is usually the case in many other schools all around the world. Educators and schools are usually excited to incorporate SolidWorks to their curriculum. Whenever an educator or school adopts SolidWorks, they receive not only the software, but also the whole deal with tutorials, study guides and support, to aid them in the process of teaching.  These tutorials are exactly the same ones included with the commercial version of the software, and the reason for this, as Mrs. Planchard pointed out, is to give the students the best preparation possible for what they’ll encounter out there, when they go looking for a job in the industry.  The curriculum and study guides provided to the educators are prepared taking into account both their particular needs in the classroom or lab and the demands of the local industry. Being an educator herself, Marie understands these needs and makes it a point to provide educational guides and resources that can be creative, challenging and affordable for both educators and students alike. As she said to me “A good engineering kit doesn’t have to be expensive. Educators use all kinds of materials that they have at hand, like balsa wood or even pasta!” Even better is the fact that these tutorials and study guides have been translated to twelve different languages, giving international students the opportunity to learn in their own language, and educators here in the States an amazing tool to approach those students that lack fluency in English. SolidWorks is also considerate of their economical limitations, and for this reason, they do not require educators or schools to be on subscription service, unless they want to offer the certification test at their site. Plus, the academic license never expires!  Mrs. Planchard told me that it is not likely for schools to upgrade ever so often, because doing this would imply upgrading hardware, as well, which is prohibitive for most schools. However, even though the software changes considerably every year, the fundamentals continue to be the same, and that’s why a three or four year old edition is as valid for teaching today as a brand new one. 

But what are the fundamentals? If educators can also create their own curriculum based on the needs of their local industry and/or what is familiar to them, how can you tell if a student has indeed mastered the fundamentals and is proficient with SolidWorks? Well, as Marie also pointed out, that’s why the certification process was designed for; to somehow set the standard on what the basics are that need to be known by all students and users of the software in order to call themselves proficient, not necessarily experts, but proficient in the use of SolidWorks.

So, back to my original question,  it would seem like the only real obstacle there is to the adoption of SolidWorks inside the classroom in middle schools, high schools, vocational schools, community colleges and/or universities worldwide,  is usually related to a more mundane problem we’re all too familiar with here in California: a small educational budget. Marie told me that, unfortunately, this is a real challenge here in the United States, because the curriculum is not the same in all schools all around the country and because the way funding for educational programs is assigned (and thus the way they decide on their software purchases) also varies from one school district to another. This is the reason why while in France 90% of public schools are teaching SolidWorks, the percentage is a lot smaller here in the United States. However, a great advantage that students have here in the United States is that they can buy the student edition for themselves or use a copy from school in their dorms or at home. Students in many other countries all around the world (most of Central and South America for instance) don’t have this advantage. In these countries, SolidWorks is usually sold to the universities and students can use it while inside the classroom, but there aren’t any distributors that can verify their student ID’s and sell them the software. This is the sad part, but hopefully it will change with time and SolidWorks will then become even more accessible to students as the demand for skilled professionals increases worldwide.

And how young is too young to be one of these “skilled professionals”, you may ask? Well, I asked Marie a similar question and she told me that, even though SolidWorks is not really contemplating ways to introduce the software to kids younger than those at middle school level, they have heard of eleven or twelve year old kids, sometimes even younger, that are using SolidWorks and creating sheet metal and plastic parts with it at their school workshop. Young minds are full of potential, full of great ideas, and SolidWorks provides them with the perfect vehicle to unleash their creativity. As Marie says “They may not know how to do it yet, but they know they can do it with SolidWorks and they are not afraid to try.”

So there you have it. We talked about a few other things, such as family, life, college memories and she even gave me some much needed career advice, but I tried to highlight what I considered most important to those that read this blog.  Hope you enjoyed reading! If you are an educator using SolidWorks in your classroom, you can always find ideas and curriculum if you visit SolidWorks Teacher Blog.  Also, this was not discussed during our chat, but almost everyone knows about it, so I’ll mention it here again, Mrs. Planchard and her husband had authored several excellent SolidWorks books, including a guide for the CSWA examination that I strongly recommend to those preparing for the test.  So, if you are in need for a good book or text book for your class,  go check them out!

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 you know you are going for sure, you need to start planning what you’ll do once you’re there. If you are like me, and you are still not 100% sure you are going, well… plan for it, anyway. It can’t hurt!

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 fidgety”, she said, “I can never be sure if he’s paying attention or not, because he’s always doing something, like playing with the pencil, rocking in his chair, etc. Do you have any idea what may be going on with him?” OK… At this point I had to force myself to stop wiggling in my chair and quickly hide all the origami I had been making out of the papers I was given by the SLP when I arrived.  Phew, that was a close one!

Don’t take me wrong, I really was paying attention during that meeting, but I also have to admit that this behavior of his is probably learned, and that it’s not hard for me to get distracted like he does.  One of my biggest distractions is the internet. It’s so easy to get lost in it! You start by reading one of your favorite blogs, then link to the next one, catch up with the latest gossip at the forums or Twitter… Before you realize, you’ve already spent there a good thirty minutes or more! That’s why I’m making a covenant with myself to stay away from it (especially from things like Twitter) as much as I can. I will still read my favorite blogs and check what’s new on the forums, even on Twitter, just not so often.  So far, the plan is working, and I managed to get a lot done just this weekend.

Fellow blogger Brian’s announcement of his big success with the Sheet Metal test made me curious, and so, among other things, this weekend I took a look at the Sheet Metal tools available in SolidWorks. It doesn’t seem as hard as I thought it would be! While I don’t know much about sheet metal outside of SolidWorks (and I would really like to learn), I managed to use a few of the sheet metal features to model a common household item, this cheese grater. I saw this one in a magazine, the one I own is actually flat. If you look for a cheese grater online you’ll probably find dozens of different styles and sizes. 

So, anyway, the fun was in making the “grater” part, because the handle was made with a sweep boss and a couple of extrusions, so nothing new there.  Here is what I used the sheet metal features for. I started by sketching a rectangle centered at the origin, then using Base Flange from the Sheet Metal Tools to create the base feature of my sheet metal part. As you can see, it looks a lot like a common extrude boss, but by using Base Flange instead of Extrude Boss, I’ll be able to use other sheet metal tools on it that otherwise would not be available to me.

Next step was using Hem to curl two of the edges of the sheet metal flange, to simulate the way in which the edges of the “grater part” wrap around the handle’s wire frame.  The rolled kind of hem worked the best for my purpose. I specified a radius and an angle big enough for the hem to wrap around as much as possible, without touching the rest of the flange.

Next stop was creating my own forming tool. A forming tool is what you use to make any kind of dent on the flat sheet metal part. The dents you create this way have the same thickness as the rest of the part. SolidWorks provides a few in the design library, but you can easily make your own. I started by creating a part with the basic shape I wanted to punch on my cheese grater, and then transformed this part into a forming tool by using Form Tool from the Sheet Metal toolbar. The face in green is the Stopping Face, this one corresponds to the face to which you apply the forming tool. You need to have a stopping face when creating a forming tool, that’s why I modeled the shape of mine using a "plate" base. The face in pink is the one that will be removed from the sheet metal part when the dent is made. The direction of travel of the tool is always going to be normal to the stopping face, so it’s important to give some thought to how you want the dent to look like. When you’re done, save the part as a forming tool (*.sldftp). You can add it to the other forming tools in the design library or create a separate folder to keep all the forming tools you are using for your project.

To use this forming tool in a sheet metal part, you simply drag it and drop it, then rotate and position the orientation sketch as needed.

The next step was patterning the dent I just made with the forming tool.  By the way, I know, I could’ve used just one pattern for both instances of the forming tool, but well, it will have to be next time.

I tried bending the part using sheet metal features, but that didn’t work out well with the dents I had just made to it, so I ended up using Flex to bend it slightly, taking care to position the triad correctly at the center of the part.

I must point out, though, that because I used Flex, I can’t obtain a flat pattern of this part, unless I suppress the Flex feature, but there didn’t seem to be any other way for me to bend it this way and still have the dents added to it. At least not one that I know of. If you know of a different way to do this with the sheet metal tools, please, do share!  Anyway, here is the grater part as it looks finished.

OK, so perhaps this wasn’t the most conventional example of what to do with the sheet metal features, but it’s what grabbed my fancy at that moment, and it was fun too. I still have a lot to learn about sheet metal and there are things that I can’t really see a way to do with SolidWorks sheet metal tools, but I know there must be a way around. There’s always a way around…