Archive for the ‘Other stuff’ Category
August 27th, 2010 | 
Author: While browsing the Internet a few days ago I came across a funny poem called Ode to My Wife the Quilter. I’m not a quilter myself, but I could see how the same idea expressed by the author could apply to me, if perhaps under different circumstances. I made a few adjustments to the ode… To My Wife the Drafter.
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!
Posted in 
Tags: 
Ever since my blog got hacked a couple months ago, I’ve been making sure I follow the advice given by several experts on the matter of blog safety to prevent this from happening again. According to what I’ve read, one of the things to watch out for is strange keywords or phrases used in search engines to find your website. For instance, let’s say that you find that people arrive to your website while searching for cheap watches. Unless you sell cheap watches on your website or mention them somehow, this may mean you have some malicious piece of code somewhere among the pages of your blog.
So, trying to be cautious, I took a look at the different keywords and phrases that people use on search engines to find my blog. Wow! While most of the time people search simply for SolidWorks, tutorial, gabi jack or other specifics, I also found a few phrases that are either really funny or at the very least creepy enough to make them worthy of mentioning them here.
First of all, take a look at this one.
I must admit it raised a few concerns, but I thought I would give whoever did the search the benefit of the doubt. After all, this is SolidWorks and the word “mating” makes perfect sense. But then, I ran into this one.
Seriously? They were also hoping to find a channel on YouTube? I guess I could still try to give this person the benefit of the doubt, unless, of course, it’s the same person that searched for this.
Hmmm… And here I thought that kind of wackos only visited celebrities’ websites! Sorry, pal, you’re not going to find what you’re looking for in here. Whatever happens in my private life is for me to know and for you to never find out. Bizarre!
And now for some funny stuff… I wonder what this person was looking for.
I don’t know what that was really supposed to spell, but I can assure you I’m a not vegetable with benefits. LOL
My husband laughed at this one. Such a dirty mind… I had to explain to him that this made perfect sense if you think in the context of SolidWorks. LOL
And what do we have here, another typo?
I’m not sure what that may be… Is it simulation that throws punches at you within the forces and constraints you specify? LOL
I didn’t know what to make of this one. I know it’s a coincidence but it’s almost like a question for me…
Well, the answer is yes, of course. I’m a Mechanical Engineer, graduated from ITESM Campus Ciudad de Mexico, class of 1996. Wow! Such a long time ago and I haven’t aged one bit. OK, I have… just a little bit… OK, a big bit, but I’m still young at heart. 
Enjoy what’s left of your weekend and don’t go searching for wacky stuff!
Closer… Closer… OK, that’s close enough!
Dear readers, many of you know me for being a very shy, quiet and introvert person, someone that prefers not to be noticed too much. However, after some serious thought, I’ve realized that in order to increase the amount of visitors to this blog I will have to do something radical. Yes, my dear readers, I will have to (gasp) reveal a lot more of me, and what can be more revealing than… disposable razors? Seriously? Not really. OK, this post is mainly for the humor, partly for the rant, but there’s a bit of semi-important message buried somewhere deep inside. Look for it, look for it, and eventually you’ll find it… some day… maybe.
So bear with me, please. The rant is all about a simple question of mine: are some products merely poorly designed by accident or are they deliberately designed to fail? See, not so long ago I bought a box of disposable razors. I noticed that the product had been slightly redesigned and the change was even highlighted in the box as something positive. “New handle!”, the box said. From my perspective, the main change I noticed was the use of a different material for the handle, which in the past used to be made out of a dull opaque plastic and was now made of a transparent, much nicer looking one.
Mesmerized by the new appearance of the razors, I took one with me to the shower and, as it always happens to me when I don’t have my glasses on, I missed the shelf in the shower caddy and dropped it by accident. Well, that’s all it took for it to break. Now, my shower floor isn’t even very hard, but just the same, all it took was one fall for the handle to break across its thinnest section. I was a bit shocked, because I had dropped disposable razors hundreds of times in the past (I’m blind without those glasses) and this was the very first time one broke on me, but I decided to call it bad luck and go get a second one from the box. Do I really need to tell you what happened next? Well, if you guessed that I finished my shower and wore a mini skirt that day, you’re totally wrong, because that second razor slipped from the shower caddy and broke in exactly the same way and the same location as the first one.
What are the chances of that happening? Is it just me? Did I get the one and only box of defective razors? Am I the only one that drops stuff in the shower? No, apparently not. I did a quick search online and discovered that other consumers had given some bad reviews to this “new handle”, citing that “it breaks easily” as the reason for their insatisfaction. So… I wonder… How come? I mean, was this really an honest mistake? Nobody ever even tried to drop one and see what would happen? Did the designers use sophisticated simulation software that predicted that the handle would deform slightly but never ever break? Did the designers assume that all shower floors were cushioned or carpeted? Did they assume that nobody EVER drops anything in the shower or that the razors would not be used in the shower at all? Did they imagine all women would be sitting on the floor while using the razorsm, so if it ever dropped it wouldn’t drop from so hight up? I mean, I know it’s disposable, but it should at least last long enough to get one decent use out of it!
So, what do you think? Are some products actually designed to fail? Is that a reasonable or somehow justifiable design goal? I mean it! For instance, if you have children, think about all those toys that break so easily while they’re played with by a very normal child under very normal circumstances, or all those products for the home or accessories for your bike, car, etc. that break after a couple of uses or even while you’re installing them! And what does this mean for those of us that either work doing design or pretend to work doing design some day? What do you think? Have you ever designed for failure? Should you?
Hey everyone! It’s been a while since the last time I was able to come and write something on this blog. What can I say? School is out. Summer is in. Kids are home. That should pretty much explain everything.
Anyway, while away from the computer, I’ve been reading a really nice book called The Mechanical Design Process, by David Ullman. I know some of you may have read this book before, perhaps even had it as a text book in college, but it’s my first time reading this book and, so far, I’m finding it really fascinating. The book introduces the reader to what’s known as concurrent engineering, using as an example the process for the design of a consumer product: a splash-guard for a mountain bike. Contrary to what many would expect (me included), most of the first five chapters of the book are devoted to understanding the design problem and the requirements, rather than to generating new and snazzy ideas and concepts. In fact, according to this book, good design really depends on this understanding and even the most snazzy ideas or the most creative or innovative of concepts can lead to failure without a proper understanding of the problem or problems that really need to be solved. After all, your design should solve a problem or provide something of value for the consumer. If your design is not what the costumer wants or needs, then it’s really a failure, no matter how great and innovative it may seem to you. Interesting food for thought, isn’t it? The author also points out that there are different kinds of customers: the end consumer, the marketing department, the manufacturing department, a group of investors financing the development of the product, etc. They all have their own requirements that need to be taken into account and balanced carefully, as to please everyone as much as possible without messing up the final result. I wonder how often does this really happen? How often the requirements of the end consumer are ignored and a product redesigned into something of inferior quality and poor appearance simply for the sake of saving some money?
I was browsing a couple of blogs the other night and found a little video that compares the bobbin mechanism of a couple of vintage Singer sewing machines. The author of this video (Brian) had just purchased an old Singer 285K and is comparing how the mechanism was radically redesigned from the previous 185 to this one. As you can see by the end of the video, the mechanism of the 285K includes a rack and pinion that Brian considers reason enough to not keep the machine, due to the loud noise and vibration it produces. He also goes on to mention in his blog that this may have been the only machine that included this sort of mechanism and that it was considered as one of the worst machines produced by Singer. I don’t know if that’s true because my knowledge of vintage sewing machines is very limited. Yes, I’m a sewing enthusiast (gasp!), but I don’t own a vintage sewing machine. The reason why I found this interesting -besides this new found urge to purchase old vintage sewing machines only to dismember them- is because I wonder what went on during the process of redesign for this particular product. Brian thinks Singer was trying to save money, but even if money was the issue, that’s a radical change, don’t you think?
Here’s the video for you to enjoy. And if any of you out there has some experience on vintage sewing machines or could shed some light on the history of the design of these amazing little toys, please, share!
Oh, and for those of you that get discouraged easily when you don’t see something that is SolidWorks related, I’m adding a couple more files to the list of downloads available: the funkey and the mouse that were featured in previous entries. I know… I had them on Cadooku previously, but don’t worry, nobody got ripped off because the models never sold, so I took them down and decided to share them here. I guess nobody actually needs to buy a funkey or a mouse for their project. LOL Nevertheless, I’ve received plenty of emails from readers asking for these two models, so here they are, and as always for free. Ah, you know what would be really cool? I would like to see some of you that are into rendering “dress” the funkey! Yeah, decorate it, make a rendering and send it to me; I’ll show your creations here in the blog. Hmmm… Should I make this some sort of contest?
So, here are the models:
And the video, of course…
Hey there! It’s been slow here, hasn’t it? And it’s going to get even slower in the next two months as one my sons undergoes surgery and other treatments. I’m sorry, there’s just too much going on in my life at the moment and I need to take care of that before I can even think about finding inspiration to write. Over the last few weeks I’ve spent way too much time visiting different sorts of medical specialists for a myriad of completely related issues, but that, nevertheless, cannot seem to be treated by just one medical professional, but need to be examined by several, each of them dissecting his or her particular piece of the problem, never connecting the whole puzzle together. While it’s great to have specialists, sometimes I find it frustrating. I guess I was used to the holistic approach of the family doctor of my childhood days, who would usually solve several ailments at once simply by examining the whole picture and finding the one reason that, like a domino effect, triggered all the other symptoms. No such luck here! Instead, each symptom gets treated like its own illness.
Anyway, for some reason, the thought of a holistic approach in medicine brought me to think if such thing would be wise or possible when it comes to SolidWorks users. Is there such thing as a holistic SolidWorks user? Should there be? Over the time I’ve spent learning SolidWorks, a few friends have adviced me that I need to find my niche, meaning that I need to find some area of the software to call my speciality. I can see that working very well for those that are already well entrenched in the field or that own a business that does exactly that they are experts at and pretty much nothing else, but I wonder if it’s really something wise to do for those of us that are just beginning to find our way. Shouldn’t it be easier to find a job if you are a well rounded user that knows his or her way around the different aspects of the software rather than just one area in specific? What do you think? I know SolidWorks includes an amazing amount of tools, but how many of you can say that you are actually well rounded in all or most of them? And if you are, is it worth it when it comes to finding a job? Is the niche method better? What do you think? Leave a comment, please. Blogs feed on comments, don’t you know?