Archive for the ‘Weblogs’ Category
July 9th, 2010 | 
Author: LOL. Sorry, but you’ve got to love those ads on CAD magazines! Anyway, I’ve been getting several questions from people that have used Pro/Engineer in the past or are still using it and for some reason need to transition to SolidWorks or do something in SolidWorks for a particular job. They usually want to know how to do in SolidWorks the same they do in Pro/Engineer. I’m not a Pro/Engineer user, although I must confess sometimes I feel a bit curious due to the kind of questions I receive. There was one in particular about creating a pattern of a circular cut along a free form shape that got me thinking “Wow, can you really do that in Pro/E with just a pattern?”. I tried several things and even asked Matt Lombard about that one, but it was simply impossible to recreate in SolidWorks what this person did in Pro/E with a pattern. The vary sketch option just didn’t seem to do the trick.
Anyway, for those of you Pro Engineers struggling with SolidWorks or vice versa, there’s a blog that deals with both. My friend Chris Thompson from Appian Way Technologies writes it. In fact, he was recently at a SolidWorks 2010 vs. Pro/Engineer Wildfire 5.0 Shootout, where they were judging how fast they could do similar changes to the same model applying similar surfacing techniques, both in SolidWorks and Pro/E. As I understand, there was no official representation for SolidWorks; together with Bart Brejcha from Design Engine, Chris was shooting for team SolidWorks, even though neither work for SolidWorks or even for a VAR.
You can read all about the shootout and also find valuable tips and tricks for both SolidWorks and Pro/E at Chris’s blog: http://www.appianwaytech.com/blog.
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I suspect that most (if not all) of you didn’t even notice, but this blog was down for several days last week. As a matter of fact, I took it down, I erased it and even erased the add-on domain from the host. I erased everything that was on the host. Everything had to go! The reason is because the blog had been hacked and malicious code had been planted in it.
I have to admit that it was a bit heartbreaking, because at that moment I wasn’t really sure I would be able to restore it. You see, I wasn’t really in the habit of making regular backups before all this happened, so I had to do a lot of manual cleaning and gather data from here and there, searching in ancient folders of images that I still had around. For all I knew, it could’ve been the end of it. Fortunately, I was able to clean and restore the data with minimum loses. A few images and comments were taken off, but for the most part everything else is still there. I lost my theme in the process and I don’t think I would buy it again because they stopped offering support, so I designed my own, instead. It’s very simple, with no fancy pictures on the front, but I guess it will do. If I get tired of it, I’ll just tweak it or design a new one.
I also lost my feed in the middle of all this confusion, so I burned a new one. If you are one of the few still subscribed to the old feed, please, be advised that it will be deleted permanently in a few days. You are always welcome to subscribe to the new one. I’ve placed buttons in the sidebar that you can use for that purpose. What else? Oh, yeah… I lost my stats… I lost my ranks… I may have lost all my readership and subscribers and who knows what else, but at least I didn’t lose hope and now the blog is back up again.
Unfortunately, the blog in Spanish, which was also hacked, could not be recovered. Too much of it was damaged to salvage anything and, at least for the time being, I’m not rebuilding it from scratch. It is sad, because it was an idea of mine that, I thought, would benefit many, but perhaps it’s better this way because I didn’t really have the time to update both blogs regularly and it was becoming too stressful. To those that used to read it, I’m sorry, but it’s not coming back for now.
I hope all of you here in the States enjoy what’s left of your Memorial Day weekend. I know I will.
Hey guys, you know we bloggers love comments and we always welcome our readers to share their point of view on everything we write about, right? I mean, at least I do. However, what I really can’t have in this blog is nasty comments and flames, as well as profanity of any sort, even if it’s not exactly directed towards me, and especially when it’s directed to other readers of this blog. I will not allow that! That’s not the purpose of this blog! For that reason, I’ve recently removed the last few comments that were made today, all of them for the post “On Doing Davinci”, and closed comments for that particular post altogether. Sorry guys, but it was getting out of control! I don’t mean to appear as the comment police. I’m really very laid back and I want to listen to what others have to say, even if what they have to tell me is “Gabi, sorry but you got it all wrong, girl, let me show you how it’s done”. Everybody is welcome to contribute their thoughts and ideas here, as long as it’s done in a respectful way. Please, refrain from profanity and flame wars!
Wow! Time really does fly when you’re having fun! While going through old blog posts, fixing categories and what not, I realized that this blog is turning one year old this week. Amazing! I never really thought it would last this long or get this far, but just look at it now! I’m even starting a whole new chapter after moving it to my own domain and looking for ways to improve it and make it grow!
Boy, I still remember that very first week… I had just accepted the invitation to become a blogger and I asked Richard Doyle for a suggestion on how often to post something on the blog. He answered very matter of fact, that three times a week would be fine for a start, then blog even more often as I became comfortable and experienced. With that in mind, I pulled out an old notebook and wrote down my ideas for topics to blog about. I had almost two week’s worth of ideas, but after that… This is the part where I became a little bit worried that I’d soon run out of things to talk about. Thank goodness I haven’t just yet, although I must admit that I haven’t quite broken the three-per-week barrier either, as I don’t find the time to blog as often as some of my other fellow bloggers do… but it’s still fun, and I’m still learning a lot, and if it helps someone, anyone, out there, then it’s all been worth it.
I must say that 2008 was a really great year for me. Writing the blog has helped me keep focused and remain faithful to my goals of learning SolidWorks and updating my skills. Perhaps, it’s simply because it’s easier to follow through when you’ve made your intentions public and then you’re held accountable by whoever reads the blog. I also like to think that I’m helping others in the process. That’s the most rewarding part of it. Now that I’m hosting the blog myself, I’m able to see for the first time just how many people visit the blog and where those visitors come from. I now know for sure what I always suspected: my audience is not really that big, as I only get between 400 and 600 visits on average, and that’s on a good day, but even so, it’s still amazing to see there are people reading this blog from 50 different countries all around the world. Amazing indeed! And humbling too. It makes me want to do a much better job, to have something really good to offer to all those who visit.
I hope this new year will be even greater than the last one. I have a lot of ideas, a lot of goals I wish I will be able to accomplish… I guess I’ll just see where this year takes me and this blog… and hope I don’t run out of things to talk about, at least not just yet.
Thanks to all that read! It’s been great so far!
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 !