GabiJack.com

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 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?

I originally posted this in my Spanish blog as a response to a question I got via email from a reader who was trying to produce a rendered animation and wasn’t quite sure how to proceed. I usually try not to repeat posts in both blogs, but then I thought that someone else could benefit from this same information on this other side of the language barrier, so here it goes.

My reader complained that he would render an image using PhotoWorks only to have it go back to it’s original  state as soon as he tried to rotate it or move it. So, how could an animation be created if this kept happening? I’m not exactly sure how he was trying to capture the animation, but truth is that a rendered animation can be done easily by combining PhotoWorks and SolidWorks MotionManager.

First of all, you need to have PhotoWorks add-in loaded. If you don’t, go to Tools, Add-ins and select PhotoWorks  from the list of available applications. Once you have it loaded, proceed to apply appearances, scenery, lights and/or decals to your model using the options available in PhotoWorks. I won’t go into detail here, since I’m assuming you know how to do this.

As a quick example, let’s say I have this model of a pair of scissors. I’ve applied a few appearances and a scenery. Nothing complicated. I tried to keep it simple to minimize the amount of rendering time. Plus, the image you see here is not rendered yet.

Once you’re satisfied with your rendering options (try rendering the image to check), you can proceed to create the animation. Click on the tab that reads Motion Study 1 at the bottom left of the window to use MotionManager. For this example, I used the Animation Wizard to create a simple animation of the model rotating around it’s Y axis. Of course, you can do any other sort of more complicated animations if you wish. This is just a quick example.  If you are not familiar with SolidWorks MotionManager and you’re not sure what to do, just follow along the steps. First, click on the Animation Wizard button (the one that looks like a little camera). A dialog window will open prompting you to select the kind of animation you wish to create. Since we don’t have any exploded views of the model, the option of rotating the model is the only one available and is pre-selected. Click Next.

Another dialog window will open and you will be prompted to select the axis of rotation and number of revolutions. I selected the Y axis and  decided five revolutions would be more than enough. Click Next.

A third window will open, prompting you to enter a duration for the animation in seconds and a start time. I decided ten seconds was all the time I wanted my animation to last and it would begin at zero seconds. Click Finish to create the keys for the animation and then calculate to see it on the screen. You should be seeing the model rotate five times around it’s Y axis in ten seconds.

Once all the steps for the animation are ready, we can produce the rendered animation, which was the original goal. This animation, however, we won’t watch on the graphics area in SolidWorks. This animation will be saved as an AVI file and in order to create it, PhotoWorks will produce a series of still rendered images of our model in the different positions it would assume during the rotation. This series of images will then be put together, in correct order one after another, just like the frames in a movie. The larger the number of frames, the better the quality of the resulting movie, but the longer it will take for the whole animation to be completed and the more computational resources that will be needed, of course. To produce the rendered animation, click on Save Animation.

A dialog window will open and prompt you to select options to save your animation to a file. From this window select where to save your file, give it a name and make sure to choose PhotoWorks Buffer as the renderer. From this same window, you can also determine how many frames per second you wish to have and what portion of the animation you will save, if not the entire animation.  I decided to go with the default number of frames per second of 7.5 and to save only the first two seconds of the animation.

Another small dialog window opens, this time prompting you to select a compressor. Depending on the kind of compression you select, your file size will decrease, but also at the risk of affecting the final quality by adding artifacts, for instance. I chose to leave it uncompressed, but to each their own.  Press OK.

Photoworks will now proceed to render each of the frames and then the AVI file will be generated and saved in the location you previously indicated. Depending on the size of the animation and the options you selected in PhotoWorks, this process can take a few minutes or several hours. You can then take this AVI file to an application such as Camtasia or Pinacle for post-processing.  Neat, huh? I know PhotoWorks will not be around next year, but I hope this information can benefit those of you who still aren’t ready to upgrade just yet.

While working my way through the PDMWorks  Workgroup lessons in the training manual, I came across a bit of information about Toolbox parts that I never knew about before.  Some of you may have known this already, but it was news for me.

If you’ve noticed, every time you add a Toolbox part to an assembly, the component shows up with a special icon in the Feature Manager that looks like a fastener and that is used to identify it as a Toolbox part. This is true regardless of it being a copy of the master file or a configuration.  Well, that icon is associated with an internal flag that is placed in the file to identify it as a Toolbox part. An add-in, such as PDMWorks, reads the flag and uses this information to handle the part according to the rules that have been previously established by the Vault administrator.  

If the Vault administrator allows it, users will be able to check the Toolbox parts into the Vault with the rest of the components of the assembly.  This is not advisable, but it’s reasonable as long as your Toolbox components are copies of the master file and not configurations.  However, more often than not, the Vault administrator will decide that users won’t be allowed to check Toolbox parts into the Vault and these components will be listed in the assembly as links and in a separate project in the Vault as Toolbox references and library components. The following image shows those two last options have been selected by the Vault administrator.  

The reason for disabling the check in of Toolbox parts is simply because these components don’t require revision control. These are components such as fasteners, library parts or purchased components, and so they are usually located in a directory that is common to all users, instead.  In addition to the flag, PDMWorks can also identify these parts as Toolbox parts by the name of the folder they are located in. Folders containing \Toolbox, \Toolbox Parts or \SolidWorks Data are identified as Toolbox folders.

All this is nice and good but it gets more interesting yet. Did you know that you can add this same flag to components that were not created by the Toolbox? That’s right!  By using a file called sldsetdocprop.exe, which is usually located inside a directory such as SolidWorks/Toolbox/data utilities, you can add or remove the flag from files, thus causing SolidWorks and add-ins such as PDMWorks to change the way they handle them.  I prepared a little example of this.

I had this assembly of some scissors with only three pieces. You can find this assembly among the files for the surfacing tutorial in my downloads section. It’s the same one. There is a fastener in the assembly that shows up in the Feature Manager as a regular part. I’ll first try to check this assembly into the Vault as it is.  Notice in the image below that all the parts of the assembly appear as regular parts in the summary, that they can all be checked into the Vault and I can also take ownership of all them once inside the Vault.

I cancelled that check in operation and used sldsetdocprop.exe to add a flag to that fastener, instead.  This is very easy to do, you simply click on Add files, browse to the location of the component and select it, check the option Property State: Yes and then click Update Status, as you can see in this image.

The following dialog will appear, letting you know that the property has been changed, that is, the flag has been added.

When I try to check the assembly this time around, the fastener shows up as a Toolbox part and I’m no longer allowed to check this part into the Vault.

So what happens with this Toolbox part? Well, once the assembly has been checked into the Vault, the Toolbox part is listed in the assembly as a link, as you see in the image. That little mark on the left of the icon indicates precisely that the part is used in the assembly, but it’s not saved there.  The Toolbox part is not inside the Vault at all; it is simply referenced and shows up listed in the project Toolbox references. It cannot be opened from the Vault either.

I imagine this can be useful for companies that create their own libraries of components that don’t require revision control. They can mark the components and make them easy to identify by PDMWorks this way.  Neat!

You know how that old saying goes: If you fall off the horse get right back on… Unless, of course,  the horse happens to kick you and  walk all over you, or worse,  suppose  you weren’t riding a horse, but a bull and it has already tossed you against the wall and horned you a few times. Then it would be a bit difficult to get up and a real display of masochism to try to ride again. Hmmm…

And I guess it’s also not a matter of “if” but “when” you fall off that horse. Ah, because you are going to fall, right? You are going to fall quite a few times.  And it’s going to be painful.  Yes, it will hurt. A lot. So, why would you want to get on that horse in the first place? And why would you want to ride it again?  Isn’t it safer if you stay off the horse? Hmmm…

Yeah, that’s my pessimist side speaking. See, my husband and I have this joke going on between us, but before I tell you about it and just so you can understand, let me tell you a bit of history.  A long time ago, in hopes of curing my pervasive pessimism and my constant worrying, a counselor at school suggested I read a book by Paul Watzlawick  called “The Situation is Hopeless but not Serious (The Pursuit of Unhappiness)”.  Needless to say I didn’t read the book back then because I was pessimistic and thought it wouldn’t help at all, but I did pick it up just recently.  The book is not your usual self-help volume. None of that! It’s actually written as a series of instructions, tips and tricks of what you can do to make your life miserable and achieve your goal of insurmountable bitterness and unhappiness. It’s hilarious… and even more when I realized that I was actually already doing several of the things the book suggested. Oops!  I shared the book with my husband and we had a good laugh about it. Now, every time my pessimist side and worrywart style begins to show we simply conclude that I need to read the Pursuit of Unhappiness one more time, several times if necessary, until it sinks.  I’m getting there…

Truth is that it actually takes more energy to be a pessimist than it takes to try to find ways to make life work for you and hope for the best. However, being a pessimist seems easier: if you don’t hope for anything good to happen, then you don’t feel crushed when nothing good happens because you knew it wouldn’t.  The bad thing about it is that you also don’t do much to make something good happen.  You just assume it can’t happen and that’s it, and then you feel bad about it. You remain in your comfort zone, even if the zone is not really that comfortable at all. You don’t grow and eventually you fulfill your own prophecy of doom.

And why is all this in a blog about SolidWorks? What is Gabi thinking? Where is my tutorial?! First of all, this is not just a blog of tips and tutorials, this is, after all, my blog, and every now and then I like to claim back ownership and just write about stuff.  Second of all, there is a reason, because it has to do with my personal journey and that’s what this blog was about from the start.

Anyway…  Some of you knew this, but here it goes for those that didn’t. I recently jumped out of my shell and applied for a job with a local company. A friend that already works there had told me about this job.  My job interview went great. I think I made a great impression on the engineer that interviewed me and that would be my boss because he expressed strong interest in hiring me.  It seemed like the perfect match. I liked the company and the products, the location, the boss, the kind of work I would be doing there and I liked the schedule because it was part-time.  It seemed like my dream come true: a great place to work and grow, flexible schedule and happy kids at home.  The engineer told me he would now have to get approval from his manager and HR.

I waited for a few days. My friend told me the ball was rolling and it would only be a matter of a few weeks before I was working there. It all seemed so certain that I abandoned my usual pessimism and allowed myself to believe it was a sure thing.  I could envision myself already working there. I was so eager to start it was actually painful to wait. I made a detailed plan for balancing work and home, found out what would need to be arranged for childcare for my kids and at what cost, and even set up a vault on my computer and taught myself PDMWorks Workgroup using a training manual I had bought on eBay, because I knew they would need me to know all that and I wanted to be as efficient and useful an employee as possible. I was also happily sharing the good news with friends and family.

I waited a few more days. Almost a couple of weeks had passed and I began to wonder. No matter what my friend said, something just didn’t seem right, so I called the engineer. He told me he wanted to hire me but there was a conflict with the schedule. His manager would not hire me because they really wanted someone there full-time.  I was crushed. I was extremely tempted to  tell him I could do full-time, but I knew I couldn’t commit myself to that right now, because just a couple of days earlier I had been informed my son would need surgery to remove a strange growth from his wrist. Somebody had to be here at least one or two days a week to take care of doctor appointments and physical therapy.  A flexible schedule would’ve been perfect, but a full time job would just not do. So, I simply thanked him, hung up and felt like a real dork. 

Then… I mopped around for a while and beat myself up for allowing myself to believe. Like the fellow that falls from the horse (or the bull), I began wondering what on Earth I was doing trying to ride that horse to begin with. Isn’t it safer to stay off the horse? Isn’t it better? What good can come from falling off this horse? Well…  After I thought about it for a while (no, I didn’t have to read the book again this time around) I realized that a lot of good came from this experience alone. While I didn’t get the job, at least I made progress in other areas: 

• I came out of my cocoon and went to that job interview, something I hadn’t done in several years and that seemed scary to me after all this time at home with the kids. This, as simple as it may seem to some of you, was a major accomplishment for me.
• Someone actually liked what I had to offer and believed that my skills and talents could be of great use to them.  Realizing that I was qualified and ready for that job does wonders for my self-confidence and gives me hope for a better outcome on a future search.
•  I learned that I had some good and affordable options when it came to childcare, and that my kids weren’t really so much against the idea of their mother working. In fact, they were actually excited! So, that part doesn’t seem as overwhelming and guilt provoking as it used to be.
•  I learned PDMWorks Workgroup!
• Most importantly, I learned just how serious I am about all this and how much it matters to me.  My kids know that I love them with everything I am, but I still want to try to ride that horse (or bull) not matter how many times I have to fall off.  Once the surgery is done and my son’s hand has healed, I’ll resume my search, and I will probably try for a full time position this time around, since it seems like it’s all that’s available. I have to at least try or I’ll never know if it works for me or not. The idea doesn’t seem so bad anymore.  

So… if you’ve read all this, you are either a saint or just bored with nothing better to do.  Either way, thanks for reading!  I promise more SolidWorks and less rambling next time, but I just had to get this out. I guess for people like me writing really is cathartic.  Enjoy your weekend and God bless you all!