One of those things I need to go back to, of course, is searching for a full time job that best suits my abilities and interests, as well as the needs of my family. This may take some time, so while I’m at it, I’ll also  return to my study of the book Creating Animations with SolidWorks and the manuals on Simulation and Motion that I still haven’t finished.

Now, about the book of Animations… While working on the last tutorial in Chapter 8, I ran into a few difficulties and wanted to give you all the heads up, just in case you encounter the same problems. The tutorial is about creating an animation showing how a steering wheel and suspension system assembly would look like while driving through tough terrain. The tutorial goes on to show different methods to do exactly the same.  The last method  uses an angle mate to drive the movement of the steering wheel , a linear motor to move the suspension system up and down , and a rotary motor for the tire.

You will first be asked to add the linear motor, then the rotary motor. If you follow the tutorial step by step, however, you will notice that the animation doesn’t work after adding the rotary motor to the study. It took me a while to figure it out, but it so happens that there is a lock mate in the Mates folder of the wheel component that needs to be suppressed for the wheel to be able to rotate.

Suppress this mate locally, and the animation will work as expected.

Ah, but also make sure to add  concentric and coincident local mates between the wheel and the Spindle_Acc components, otherwise they won’t look like they’re moving together at all.

One more thing to watch out for in that same tutorial is a rack and pinion mate that allows the steering wheel to move the suspension. This mate is suppressed from the beginning.  After the two motors have been added and several key points have been set to drive the movement of the steering wheel using an angle mate, the tutorial tells you to unsuppress this mate and calculate the animation. If you do that, however,  the animation won’t work anymore. At first, I feared I had made an awful mistake (it happens), so I checked animation that was already completed in the Built Parts folder and the rack and pinion mate was suppressed there, as well. I unsuppressed it and the animation no longer worked.  Thinking about it, it kind of makes sense; as the steering wheel rotates, it transmits movement to the suspension system through the rack and pinion mate. Adding a linear motor to drive the movement of the same suspension system creates conflict. You can’t have both if you are going to drive the movement of the steering wheel using the angle mate. It’s the rack and pinion mate or the linear motor, but not both.

Anyway, I hope this is useful for those studying from this book. And those of you who aren’t… What are you waiting for?  

I graduated over a year ago and have been struggling to keep my skills sharp (or at least keep them from not dulling too much). To do this, I need the software. While I found full time work, a full license is a little beyond my reach. Are there other, cheaper (and legitimate) options I’m overlooking, apart from the somewhat dubious “have a friend still in college register a student edition” route?

Only two people answered to this. One of those who answered agreed with him that it was, indeed, hard to do, specially while unemployed. The other person simply suggested perhaps he should enroll in a class at a community college. 

Well, I don’t know but I don’t quite agree with this “solution”. I don’t think it solves anything at all, actually.  Why? To begin with, because this guy probably already conquered the basics, which is usually what is taught at those classes. What he wants now is the ability to practice and increase his knowledge; he needs to grow and go beyond the basics, beyond the introductory tutorials, beyond the textbook. But how can he do it if he doesn’t have the tool? 

While I do think we’re always learning and, in some way, students all our professional life, I don’t think it’s realistic to expect that users should really be perpetually in school in order to be allowed access to the tool they need to grow.  What if you can’t find a way to afford enrolling in school, even if you aren’t unemployed? What if you simply can’t find the time to physically be there? What if your boss doesn’t see the need for you to take a class with your VAR?  So, shame on you for not wanting to grow? I don’t think so. 

Do you read blogs? Watch videos on YouTube? Well, it can only help so much, but it you don’t have a chance to practice what you’ve read or seen, then it’s really not going to take you very far. It would be like trying to learn how to fly a plane by simply watching videos of a guy flying it but never actually setting foot inside a plane or even a simulator. Would you let such a “pilot” fly you to your destiny? I mean he’s got like 400 hours of “flight watching” on YouTube.  I think I’d pass.

The worst of all is that this has the potential of becoming a vicious cycle for professional unfulfillment. If you have a crummy job doing repetitive and boring tasks and you would like to be the one tackling more interesting assignments, you need to grow and perfect your skills, you need to explore those areas of the software that you usually don’t even touch… but you don’t have the tool to do it in your own time and you can’t do it during working hours because that’s not what your boss is expecting from you. Some bosses might want you to grow… not all expect you do it on their time or with their money.

If you are unemployed or a career changer, then you need better skills to get yourself a new job. You need to have really sharp skills to compete with others that are also aiming for that job, specially in this economy, but how can you get those skills if the only way to access the software is through becoming a student again or coughing up a large sum of money for a commercial license? Can you cough it up? Try harder… harder… it may come out… no? Oh well…

I know, some of you may think this is really not such a big issue. “Hey, Gabi, there was that stimulus program not so long ago, remember?” Yes, I do remember. It was helpful. It was an awesome thing SolidWorks did for unemployed engineers all over the country, but it wasn’t enough. I’m telling you, 90 days is not enough. In the time I’ve been writing this blog, it’s the story I’ve been hearing over and over, from real people everywhere.

So, what to do about this? Personally, I think SolidWorks should follow the example of PTC  with Pro/Engineer Wildfire and allow non-students to purchase the student edition of SolidWorks, perhaps at a higher price than the one offered to students. See? PTC sells the personal student edition for like  $100 more than the student edition. They’re both the same thing and they are not for commercial use, but you pay $100 more or so if you’re not a student.  

I mean, I respect DS SolidWorks and I know they have their own reasons to do things the way they do, but I don’t see how it could mean them any harm to allow more people to learn and practice. I think it would actually benefit them. If more people have access to the tools they need to learn, the community of users becomes stronger and more users gain knowledge of those higher end tools that are also available and often overlooked.

What do you think? Am I dreaming too much?

I must admit this time around I haven’t been experimenting with the Beta as much as I would’ve liked. I guess you can say I’ve had a lot on my plate. To those of you who sent emails and other messages expressing your good wishes and prayers for my son: Thank You! The surgery went well and he’s recovering nicely. Even though I’m a bit envious of the other bloggers that got to visit SolidWorks headquarters this year, I’m definitely glad I stayed behind and was able to be here for him.  Anyway, I did get to test one or two things in the Beta version and was hoping I could find some time to blog about it.

I guess it is somehow obvious that since I had spent a bit of time playing with animations of lights in SolidWorks 2010 and rendering the animations in PhotoWorks, I would be curious about how all that would work out in SolidWorks 2011, now that PhotoWorks was out of the equation and PhotoView was the new rendering software. I guess in my mind I had this image of the “old” PhotoView and how it used to work as a stand alone application. I had no idea how it could replace PhotoWorks or even work out with the Motion Manager to produce a rendered animation, for instance.

So,  I tried it and was pleasantly surprised by all it can do now: you can add different kinds of lights and modify their intensity and color, apply special effects, modify the quality of the shadows they produce,  add decals, and much more  . In fact, even though I know it is PhotoView, the capabilities, the user interface, and the fact that it runs inside SolidWorks  makes me think a lot of PhotoWorks… only somehow simpler. It seems faster too, and more convenient. At least I don’t feel so threatened by this change, because what I already knew how to do in PhotoWorks translated really easily into this new PhotoView.

In this image you can see this extra tab called the Display Manager. From here you can access appearances, scene, lights, cameras and decals. If you look carefully, you will notice that each one of my lights exhibits two icons. The one of the left means that the light is turn on in SolidWorks, while the one on the right means that the light is turned off in PhotoView. Turning the lights on in PhotoView won’t show on the screen at all, because rendering takes place on a separate window.

So I turned all my lights in PhotoView and proceeded to create a preview render, like you see in the image. Oops! That’s not right!  Well, it makes sense that whatever settings I had for PhotoWorks won’t really apply in PhotoView, so I had to take a closer look to the lights and the new tools available in order to create a similar fog effect as I had in PhotoWorks.  By the way, while the rendering is taking place in this window, you can simply minimize it and continue working. It doesn’t leave you hanging there, waiting for it to be over. Isn’t that cool?

So I discovered that I could easily edit the PhotoView settings for each of my point lights. To achieve an effect similar to what I had before in PhotoWorks, I had to uncheck the option Shadows and check Fog. The fog option works in a way very similar to PhotoWorks, allowing the light to be visible as it would be in a room where there’s fog or light rain. 

 It took a little experimentation to find the right values to make this work, but the cool thing is that by leaving the preview render window open I was able to see the result of my adjustments to each setting instantaneously. I didn’t even had to check OK and or finish the command. I loved that!

After adjusting some of the settings of my two directional lights, I tried generating a final render using a better quality than the preview. You can adjust the quality of the preview and final renders, among other things, by accessing the PhotoView options. Notice how a second window opens on top of the preview one. In fact, even if you didn’t have the preview render window open to begin with, both windows will open whenever you do a final render. You should, however, still be able to minimize the final render window and continue working in SolidWorks. I think this part needs a bit of work, though. I was able to minimize the final render window, but the preview would not minimize. However, I was still able to open a different file and, after a few seconds delay, the preview window finally got out of my way. It wasn’t immediately, but it did happen.

Then I took a look at what happened to my lights inside the animation I had for this particular model. I noticed that all my lights were still off in PhotoView inside the animation and not only that, but the settings hadn’t been updated either.

I was a bit discouraged by this because that meant I would have to repeat all my work adjusting the settings, but then I realized that it makes sense that you can have lights for each animation that are altogether  independent from what you have for the model or for a different animation.  I also noticed that if I started a new study, then my lights would inherit the settings I had in PhotoView for my model. Interesting.

Here is another example of the use of fog in lights. This is a spot light that I added to the model of this flash light, remember? See? Too large values for fog distance and quality produce a beam of light that almost makes it look like a ray gun instead of a light. Lower values produce softer, more natural results in this case. It’s a bit of trial and error, I think, and it’s really nice to see it all change practically at the same time you do the changes.

And of course you can also edit the scene. This user interface seems to me like a nice mix between what it used to be with PhotoWorks and what’s new with PhotoView. It’s easy to use. Ah, did you notice that little pink handle near my cursor? I’m not sure what to call it, but if you click on it and drag it you can actually dynamically adjust the location of the floor in the scene.  That’s really neat. And it’s all taking place right in front of your eyes, in real time. No more guessing!

To be brutally honest with you, I was kind of bummed out that PhotoWorks was being replaced with PhotoView because I didn’t quite like the “old” user interface that was first introduced and because I felt kind of cheated for all the time and effort I put into learning PhotoWorks in the first place. I felt it had been a total waste of my time, but you know what? After checking it out I’m actually feeling much better. I really like what they did with it and I feel like my time spent with PhotoWorks wasn’t really a waste, that it will pay off after all. What do you think?

She learned SolidWorks on Monday,
Her sketches all were very fine.
She forgot to thaw out dinner,
So we went out to dine.

She learned about mates on Tuesday.
She says they are a must.
Her assemblies were quite lovely,
But she forgot to dust.

On Wednesday it was a render.
She says PhotoView is fun.
What highlights!  What shadows!
But the laundry wasn’t done.

Then Simulation on Thursday -
Green, yellow, blue and red.
I guess she was really engrossed;
She never made the bed.

It was animations on Friday,
That’s something she adores.
It never bothered her at all,
The crumbs on the floors.

I found a maid on Saturday.
My week is now complete.
My wife can draft the hours away;
The house will still be neat.

Well, It’s already Sunday.
I’m feeling like a dork.
I cursed, I raved, I ranted;
The maid has learned SolidWorks!

OK, that was to poke some fun and put you in a good mood.  Did it work out?

You will probably read this very weekend that many of my SolidWorks blogger friends are visiting SolidWorks headquarters in Concord again this year. I was invited and very grateful for that, by the way, but I won’t be there this time. Instead, I will stay here in California, tending to my younger son who will finally get his hand surgery this weekend… at least, that’s the plan so far and, unless something went terribly wrong and they had to cancel, he WILL have that surgery tomorrow morning.  If you are the praying kind, please, pray for him; if you are not, positive thoughts are also welcome.

I will try my best to come back and blog about some of the neat new stuff coming up in SolidWorks 2011, once it’s officially launched, of course, which is happening just in a few days. I will try, but at this point I can’t really promise anything.  I will come back to blog, that’s for sure, I just don’t know exactly when. Until then, well, just try to be strong,  visit other blogs, enjoy life, seek the support of your friends and 24 hrs SolidWorks User Group, practice your SolidWorks skills, stay out of trouble,  and learn something new.

See you all real soon!

 Anyway, I guess this is sort of a rant, but mostly a “Huh?!”  moment.  It happened late the other night, when I was trying to complete the animations for my previous post, the ones for the flashlight and the holiday lights. I had already produced an animation using full frames (uncompressed), instead of a compression codec, simply because I liked the way it turned out: much better than with any of the codecs I tried before. I made some changes to the settings in PhotoWorks and was getting ready to render the animations again, but it was late and I was feeling tired. That’s when I saw the “schedule” button in the  Save Animation to File window and had the brilliant idea of scheduling the animations, instead. That way I could go to bed, rest and relax, and find them ready and waiting for me the next morning.  Perfect!

I must confess I had never in my life scheduled anything in SolidWorks. I was a bit worried at first, wondering how it would all get done, but went to bed, anyway, and had a hard time settling down, all full of anticipation for the animations that were being taken care by the Task Scheduler during the night. 

Now I know better. It was not anticipation what I felt, but the premonition of the horrors that awaited me. My AVI files were ready in the morning, but the results were less than I had expected. It seems that, for some reason, the animations had been produced using some sort of compression codec, instead of being uncompressed, like I had specified. They looked terrible! All full of streaks and not at all like the ones I had produced myself previously.  But how could this happen? 

My first thought was that, being as tired as I was the night before, I had made a mistake when I scheduled the animations and used some compression codec instead of choosing for them to be uncompressed, so I went to schedule them again and, after making absolutely sure I had chosen Full Frames (uncompressed), I clicked on a button named “View Settings” and discovered this:

That doesn’t look good, does it? So, does that mean that, despite whatever I may specify, my animation is being scheduled to be produced using  some undetermined codec and 84% compression? Based on the results, it sure looked like it.  Funny thing is that this doesn’t happen when you simply save the animation, when you don’t schedule it for later, and it seems like it only happens when you schedule AND choose Full Frames as the compressor. I checked it out using the Cinepak codec and it seemed to work fine, no settings had been corrupted and the results were as expected.

So, tell me do you use the Task Scheduler for your animations? I wonder if any of you has noticed anything like it. I’m using SolidWorks Premium 2010 SP4.0.  I know it can’t just be me… I mean, why would the Task Scheduler hate me so bad? Right? Right? Just say I’m right…