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Archive for the ‘Community’ Category

It just went through a fantastic makeover! OK, for those of you that haven’t heard about it, SWUGN stands for SolidWorks User Group Network and is the place to go if you’re looking for other SolidWorks users in your area or pretty much anywhere else in the United States, Canada and even some other places around the world.

A SolidWorks User Group is a group of individuals that use SolidWorks or are learning how to use it (there are groups for students too) and that gather together for a couple of hours on a regular basis (once every one or two months) to discuss all sort of topics related to SolidWorks and SolidWorks related products.  Joining a user group is free and it’s also a great way to learn about SolidWorks and the local industry, and to network and interact with other professionals in the area.  There’s also lots of fun, delicious food and giveaways. If you haven’t joined a group yet, check out the SWUGN website, where now it’s easier than ever to find a group close to you. And if you can’t find a group that suits your needs, why not start your own? You’ll also  find information about how to do it at the new SWUGN website.

Also check out the SWUGN special events, known as Technical Summits.  A Technical Summit is a one-day training event that takes place every month in a different location all over the United States and Canada.  Think about it as a mini SolidWorks World. You get to attend several one hour training sessions on a variety of topics, from Drawings to Simulation, Rendering and Sheetmetal, all of them presented by local experts and SolidWorks employees.  I attended one just a few weeks ago, remember? I strongly recommend them!  Check out the new SWUGN website and see if there’s a Technical Summit coming up near you.

Now it’s easier than even to connect with other SolidWorks users in your area, to learn and to network, so what are you waiting for?

Hi everyone! I’ve been keeping a close eye on the site statistics, to try and figure out if my latest “experiment” had any future at all. I’m happy to see that several people  have already downloaded the pdf file and examples on easy surfacing techniques that I put up  a few days ago. I haven’t heard any feedback from those that downloaded, but I  hope they did find the information useful! 

In the past, several readers had already asked me if I could provide more detail than that allowed by a blog post’s size and format. Many people have been asking for step-by-step procedures and formal tutorials with example files included. I had shied away from attempting that approach, however, because I didn’t want to seem pompous, you know, like I was pretending to be what I’m not: and expert telling others what to do or how to do it right.  I am no expert! Then again, if you think about it, nobody can really claim to be an expert in anything. We are all learning here and whoever thinks he/she knows everything there is to know is foolishly wasting away a great opportunity for growth.

Anyway, philosophical views aside, last Tuesday, while I was at the SWUGN Summit, getting ready to do my presentation and talking with other SolidWorks users, I realized that most people are actually very open to the idea of other users sharing useful information with them. They don’t see you as pompous if you do. If you have anything useful to contribute, they’ll be happy to take it. And a lot of users, especially those that are in great need of learning fast,  really dig tutorials and step by step examples. So, with that in mind, I added a page called Downloads and uploaded thee  my first tutorial in pdf format. I hope to add more tutorials and files with time, always free, of course, and the best thing is that they can be about just pretty much anything that comes to mind, even if it’s not something I’m learning right at this moment, and they can be as short or long as needed. This, of course, doesn’t mean that I won’t continue to blog about what I’m doing or learning right now. I always blog as I go, you know that.

So, what do you think of that? I would like to see some comments. Do you think it’s a good idea? What kind of things would you like to see there?  Where are you, people? How come lately I get more comments from my regular spammers than I do from my regular readers? LOL

There’s also a couple more things I wanted to mention for those of you looking for more information and learning resources right now.   First of all… For the very beginners, my fellow blogger and friend, Alex Ruiz, has just come up with a really nice book  “SolidWorks 2010: No Experience Required“.  I actually had the pleasure to work with him and help him complete three of the chapters for the book. It was a great experience, but no, I don’t get comissions or royalties, so don’t think I have a secret agenda.  This is a very nice book for the beginner user and student and Alex put his heart and soul into this volume; he even prepared materials for teachers and a companion website to provide the readers with help and more content. Check it out!

This is also the time of the year when all sorts of learning resources become available. If you are going to buy, take advantage of the offers. For instance, with the coupon code SWFUND10launch you can receive a $20 off  your purchase of the SolidWorks 2010 training from Inspirtech. I checked out what’s new and improved in their materials and I must say I was very impressed. Among other things you’ll find that now you can access the training from the Task Pane, plus  plenty of review exercises and questions to test your knowledge. Again, I’m not getting any commission or payment for passing this info to you.

For those looking into learning more complex stuff, such as surfacing, for instance, IGetIt  has just released some new courses. I’m just telling you this because I got a newsletter from them not so long ago.  I don’t have a coupon code for this one, though, but I’m sure they may be having some sort of offer going on, so why not ask?  Also check out the video lessons offered by Solid Professor and Matt Lombard’s series of books on SolidWorks.

There’s actually so much out there about SolidWorks, I could never list it all here. Please, feel free to add to the list if you know any other good books, websites, videos, etc. And, please, keep those comments coming!

Bloggers don’t blog?  Sorry guys!  I was dealing with quite a few health issues and going through a lot of antibiotics as part of a trial and error strategycareful scientific methodology and thoughtful planning devised my doctor, and all because I’m allergic to Penicillin. But I’m finally feeling better and back with some goodies that, I hope, many of you will find useful.

First of all, let me tell you about the SWUGN San Jose Technical Summit that took place just yesterday, March 23rd, in the city of Milpitas, CA.  As I mentioned before in a previous post, I was there to present about Easy Surfacing Techniques for Solid Models. I was extremely nervous because this was actually my first time presenting for the SolidWorks community… well, OK,  my first time presenting anything for anybody since my last year of college, back in 1996. Yes, I know… 1996… I’m old.  So what?

I was fortunate to find quite a few familiar faces at the event: Richard Doyle,  Alex Ruiz (SWGeek), Matt Lorono (fcsuper and SolidWorks Legion), Phil Sluder, Brian Titus, Kenneth Barrentine, Elise Moss, and a few other people that I’m absolutely sure I’ve seen at SolidWorks World before.  Richard, Alex, Matt and Elise were presenting too, but I couldn’t stay and attend their presentations because I had to run back home to be with my younger son and allow my husband to go back to work. See, my husband selflessly sacrificed his morning to allow me to be at the summit long enough to present, but I couldn’t ask him to sacrifice his whole work day.

Anyway, at least, the time I was there was lived to the max. Despite the butterflies in my stomach, my presentation went a lot better than I had expected. In fact, quite a few people told me that  it actually went great!  And all those things I had worried for days (finishing too soon, making lots of mistakes, presenting for an empty room,  forgetting everything, having an accident in the freeway, wearing my clothes inside out) never actually came true.  This may seem silly to some, but it was a great victory for me. As I left the building, I felt so happy I was practically doing the jig on the way to my car. I just hope nobody saw me.

And now to the goodies. Because I promised it to the people in attendance, I have prepared a pdf document with step by step tutorials of each and every single one of the eight examples I showed yesterday at the summit. It’s 38 pages long and loaded with illustrations. I’m making that available here, together with all the parts and assemblies used in the examples, plus the solved examples to compare.  To download them, just follow the links.

Easy Surfacing Techniques for Solid Models

Example files

Example files (Solved)

I’m thinking I may as well start a new page to list downloads. Writing those tutorials was a fun experience, since I was able to include more detail than I usually do in a blog post, so I may be creating and adding more of those in the future.

Hey there! I’m still around and with a few more chronicles from SolidWorks World 2010. I’m sorry for the interruption! I’ll be back writing soon; please, be patient, however, since there are a few important family and health concerns that I need to tend to first.

In the meantime, would you please check out my humble gallery of models? You will notice there’s an extra page in the blog named Gallery. I’m putting together a little collection of what I consider my nicest models so far… or at least, the ones I’ve liked the best. It doesn’t have much right now, but I hope to add a lot more to it as time goes by.  At the risk of being labeled as “commercial”, I may also add that I’ve been putting some of those models for sale on Cadooku.com  I’m not expecting to make a fortune, actually, although I could certainly use some extra cash, but I guess I wanted to know if someone out there liked them enough to actually pay a small fee for them.  Anyway…

Also, those of you in this area of the country ( SF Bay Area or Silicon Valley) that are planning on attending the SWUGN Technical Summit on March 23rd will probably notice that my name figures out among those presenting. Yep! That’s right!  I’ll be presenting  about surfacing techniques for patching and blending… plus one or two other tricks. My presentation is mainly for those who are beginners in surfacing with SolidWorks. Nothing too complicated. While I’m not sure I could ever be considered an expert or anything remotely similar, this is a part of  SolidWorks functionality that I truly enjoy working with and  I hope to do a good job as a presenter and bring something really useful to those in attendance.  Wish me luck!

Over the last few days, I’ve been following a thread on one of the LinkedIn SolidWorks groups I belong to with great interest. Some of you may be familiar with it. It’s about a new website, Cadooku.com, where SolidWorks users can upload and sell their models.  This is something new for me, you know? I had heard of similar places, but none that catered exclusively to SolidWorks users.  The site is still in Beta, but it’s fully functioning at this moment, and you can even see quite a few models for sale already.

For some of us, the first question that comes to mind is, “Why the need for this kind of site?” A few users pointed out they can easily get models for free from the 3D Content Central. While this is true, you need to remember that the best models usually come from part suppliers and many of the models you find at the user’s library, could use a little improvement.  Phil Staunton, product designer and co-founder of Cadooku, had the following to say about this:   “Most models you get from Content Central are designed by manufacturers that upload components hoping for designers and engineers to use these components in new product assemblies as they are already modeled. The incentive is that the production team is likely to spec the same components and therefore the manufacturer will sell more real components.

This doesn’t provide any incentive to upload components that you don’t manufacture in the real world. And therefore these components tend to sit on all our hard-drives. Cadooku is designed to help increase the library of SW parts available by encouraging people to upload their models as they could create a passive income.

As an SW user myself I have regularly tried to hit a deadline by downloading models from free sites only to be disappointed at the quality of the download and worse, that it is simply imported surfaces that are hard to edit. By encouraging those who upload a model to give detailed, accurate descriptions and upload an image of their model tree, we hope to avoid this for users of our site.”

So, I guess this would mean that for most users knowing they’ll get paid for their model and that they are responsible for the model’s integrity is a good incentive to upload something of decent quality, as opposed to simply sharing whatever they model for free, errors and all.  Personally, I think it’s a great idea.  As much as I like sharing what I do, because I also learn in the process and my interest has always been to compare notes with other users that may take a look at my models and point out my mistakes or areas that need improvement, I do believe that great modeling work deserves compensation.  If someone out there spends several hours creating a great model and then some of us want that model and we plan to use it for commercial purposes, then I think we should compensate his/her effort. It’s only fair!

However, there are other implications in selling models this way that need to be understood, as well.  One of them is deciding how much a model is worth.  Regarding this, Phil adds, “Price is entirely determined by the seller.

We suggest during the upload process a price of $15-25 per hour of modeling time. The $15 an hour rate would be sensible for student or new modelers where as $25 an hour would better reflect a more experienced modeler’s expertise. This is because although they would be quicker at modeling, the model is likely to be modeled using better, more editable techniques and therefore would be worth more.

For example: I am a reasonably experienced modeler who builds robust, parametrically defined models. I have built a mountain bike in 3 hours and therefore I would probably charge $20 * 3 = $60. Of course I may choose to go for a lower price to sell more and undercut existing models or charge more on the basis I think I have done a great job and it is better than other, similar models on the site. The $60 just gives an approximate price to start from.

Price can be altered at a later stage if the seller chooses. However, if the price is reduced, this may be viewed as unfair by people who have bought the model at the higher price and therefore we discourage this.”

Other concerns  that come to mind are those about disclosure of proprietary information, as well as how to fight plagiarism and prevent people from taking a model from a free site, such as 3DCC, and then posting it in Cadooku  as their own.  Phil also had something to say about this, “I agree that 95% of content produced by designers is probably confidential client work. And yes we will probably never be as big as Turbosquid for example. But that’s ok because all we need is the 5% of models from lots of design consultancies to create a decent, useful library. The problem is going to be that if no-one uploads anything. To help encourage people to put models on the site we are currently offering great benefits (inc. free advertising for a month and zero commission until March 2010) for any model uploaded by December 1st. We are also offering to professionally render your main showcase image for any model uploaded before the end of the year. So take advantage and upload that 5%!!  …  If you post models from 3DCC as your own, you are breaking your agreement with 3DCC. We plan to police this and report these users to 3DCC and take their models off our site. We are also hoping our members will help with the policing. Any other suggestions to help with this would be appreciated!”

It certainly sounds like an interesting idea that may benefit quite a few users. What do you think? Do you think even those models you create during your down time are worth something or would you much rather share them for free? As a user, would you buy models or would you rather spend the extra time and effort and model everything yourself or hope to find something semi-decent for free?