Archive for December, 2008
December 30th, 2008 | 
Author: I’m trying something new, just to see how it works out. I want to feature at least three small videos a month, independent from the rest of the blog posts, with simple tips and tricks, the kind of “How do I do this…” stuff. Hopefully, the videos can be useful for those visiting this blog. I would like to do this at least once a week, but we’ll see how it goes. The first featured video is “How do I… Use the indent feature?”, and it provides a couple of simple examples of the use of Indent, first to create a packaging for a group of screwdrivers, and then to create a cavity in a shelled body that contains other features (ribs). I hope you find it helpful and that the quality is not so bad. As usual, suggestions are welcome. One more thing, I know the video looks small, but click on the full screen option to see it bigger.
Link to video:
http://www.gabijack.com/wp-content/uploads/videos/Indentvideo.htm
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Given that I’ve been buried in HTML code for the last few days, trying to get this new blog started, I’m a little late in making this announcement, but not too late, because there’s still plenty of time for you to vote for your favorite enhancements for future releases of SolidWorks, and/or submit your own ideas for enhancements.
This is the very first time for me, so I really have no idea of how it used to be in the past. This year, however, you can simply access a website where you will be able to see all the different ideas that have been submitted so far divided in categories. You will also find a description of each one of them, who submitted them, and how many people have voted for them so far. You can only vote for each idea once, but you can submit as many of your own ideas as you please. I’ve already voted and submitted a few, as well.
The site will be live up until SolidWorks World 2009, where they will then announce the top ten
enhancements as they were submitted and voted on by the community.
To vote, submit your ideas, or satisfy your curiosity, go to the following link. One more thing, though, you must be on active subscription to access the site.
To all of you that read this blog in Typepad and to all of those that may stumble upon it, I want to announce that I’ve moved it to a new location. You can now find it at http://www.gabijack.com Every single post, video and image ever published in this blog during the time it was hosted in Typepad is already available in the new location, so you won’t miss a thing, but I haven’t found a way to redirect pages from Typepad to the new location, so the blog hosted in Typepad will continue there for a little longer, just to let people know of the change, however it won’t be updated anymore, so I urge you to visit the new one for fresh content. It is still a work in progress. I still have a lot of tweaking to do until I get it just the way I want it, but it feels good to have more control over links and design in general than I did before. And of course I will continue to blog about SolidWorks and my journey through learning, only I will do it now from my own blog. If you subscribed to the feed in the past, you don’t need to subscribe again, because I’ve managed to transfer it to the new blog, so you will continue to receive fresh content. If you haven’t subscribed yet, well, what are you waiting for?
I want to thank SolidWorks for kindly hosting my blog all this year; to Richard Doyle, for introducing me to blogging in the first place; to Patrick Cook and Matthew West, for all their support in setting up and maintaining the blog, and to Ricky Jordan and Anna Wood for their advice.
I’m really excited about the new blog. My idea is to incorporate the Spanish blog in there too, as a page, to keep it all under one roof and make it easier for me to manage and for the visitors to access. I’m also thinking about lots of new content that I’ll be adding soon, like new videos and tutorials. As usual, suggestions are also welcome.
Hope to see you there, at www.gabijack.com !
This is really a post that began a few weeks ago, when I was kindly given the opportunity of trying out one of 3DConnexion’s new 3D mice for SolidWorks 2009, the SpacePilot. For those of you that haven’t heard of it or don’t know what the big deal of a 3D mouse is, this device allows you to manipulate 3D models and scenes using six degrees of freedom, which is practically impossible to do using an ordinary mouse. I must confess that I was curious about it, given that I had heard so many people talking about the benefits of having one these, how much easier and faster it was working with it when compared to an ordinary mouse, etc., so I was very excited when the opportunity came for me to finally try one.
After plugging in the device and installing the software, I was a bit overwhelmed reading the instructions on how to use the SpacePilot to manipulate parts and assemblies in SolidWorks. I tried the mouse first on a 360° image that is provided as a practice example, but panning and tilting didn’t seem to go according to how the instructions said it would be. I was beginning to wonder if I had done something wrong, but when I finally opened SolidWorks 2009 it all became clear to me, as I realized that the instructions referred more specifically to how to use the 3D mouse inside SolidWorks 2009.
The SpacePilot is fully integrated with SolidWorks 2009. As soon as I opened SolidWorks, a welcome message showed up in a window, and more instructions on how to use and configure the unit were also provided.
A new toolbar had also been added on top of the command manager.
An extra menu, 3D Control, in between Tools and Window menus, was added as well, and a small icon in my systems tray, from which I can access the 3DConnexion Control Panel to configure the device for preferences on speed, buttons, which movement in the mouse (the cap part of the 3D mouse) you want to associate with zooming, etc. I can also obtain help from here.
Moving and rotating objects using the Spacepilot takes some time getting used to, especially when you are right-handed, like me, and are not used to operating anything with your left hand, but once you do, you don’t seem to notice it anymore. It blends so nicely into SolidWorks 2009 and the control and precision you have with this device is certainly something I didn’t think possible. Plus, you still have the use of your 2D mouse for other design operations. It was hard to envision working with both at the same time, but it really doesn’t take that long to get used to it.
It’s amazing how sensitive to the sligthless movement of your hand this device is and how fast and smooth the movement of parts and assemblies can become when you use one of this. No more “hiccups”, like with an ordinary 2D mouse! Push the cap a bit and your part or assembly pans down, pull it and it pans up, tilt a bit and the part rotates, twist it and the part spins. In the beginning, I found the device was at times a bit too sensitive for me, so it was very convenient that the sensitivity can be decreased using one of those buttons in the toolbar. I found that by doing this it was a lot easier to get used to it. You can also configure the device in order to limit the rotation to only one dominant axis or disable zoom or pan, thus facilitating the use of the 3D mouse even further. So far, I haven’t done that, although I realize it may be convenient at certain times.
There are a couple of things that I particularly like about the SpacePilot. One of them is that you can easily select a point in your model (like a vertex or the center of a circular face or edge) and rotate the model about that point, or you can also select an edge, a line in a sketch or a temporary axis and designate it as the new axis of rotation for the part or assembly simply by using the buttons in the toolbar. I don’t know about you, but I find it tremendously helpful to be able to select any axis, line or edge on my model and be able to rotate the model exclusively about that axis.
My second favorite (although not necessarily in that order) is the programmable buttons that come with it. Button Mapping, as they call it. This SpacePilot has six different buttons that can be associated with macros that match your keyboard shortcuts or with practically any command available in SolidWorks as easy as dragging and dropping from a list to each of the buttons in the Button Mapping Panel (access this panel by clicking on the icon in the toolbar). I know a lot of people love their hotkeys and shortcuts. I don’t usually use them, because I have an awful memory for remembering them. I would probably need a list of them pasted right next to my computer and then look for the one I need in that list… and that would defeat the whole purpose of the shortcut keys altogether. This device makes it a lot simpler, just programming a few buttons with some of your most commonly used commands and macros, and their names always get to appear in the SpacePilot’s LCD screen, to remind you what each button is for. I know what you’re thinking, six buttons isn’t really that much. Perhaps not, but you can create (and save) multiple configurations, each with six different commands and/or macros, if you wish.
Another neat thing of this device is that, when working with assemblies, you can toggle between manipulating the whole assembly and manipulating only a part or component in the assembly, simply by pressing a button in the toolbar. If you are moving a part in the assembly, the rest of the assembly remains anchored in place. When you are done, simply toggle back to moving the whole assembly. Really nice! Oh, and it can also detect collisions between parts and components while rotating them, although I still struggle manipulating the component of the assembly when this option is turned on. I find that the movement is not as smooth, even when I don’t select the option to stop the movement when collision is detected.
So, as far as I’m concerned, everything I heard about it was true. The praises were all for very good reason. This is an extremely useful device for anyone that works with SolidWorks. Sure, it’s also fun with Google Earth, but in integrates so beautifully, that it seems as if it had been especially made for SolidWorks. It really makes your life easier, but be careful because once you try one of these, you get hooked, and you really don’t feel like going back to 2D mouse and keyboard ever again!
For more information on the 3DConnexion products, visit their web site located at www.3dconnexion.com
I stayed up late last night watching a long collection of sheet metal related videos. Some were tutorials on how to bend metal by hand or with simple tools, with a hammer, a leaf brake or a box and pan brake; some others dealt with the design of tools and dies. I know this doesn’t replace visiting a real shop and (hopefully) getting a try at bending a piece of metal myself, but the videos were extremely detailed, with lots of close up views, and at least I got to see different kinds of presses in action. This one is one of my favorite ones. Just wanted to share with you here, for those that, like me, had never seen one this before.