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Archive for the ‘SolidWorks Community’ Category

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?

Well, I just got an email from Kenneth to let all members know the meeting that was scheduled to happen on September 9^th has been cancelled due to lack of interest/response. That’s a real bummer for me because I was going to do a presentation on creating simple animations using SolidWorks Motion Manager.  Anyway, just to get it out of my system, I think I’ll make a couple of videos about it with what I had prepared and post them here, instead. How about that? I hope I can get them ready this weekend.

I have a few questions for those of you that have attended this group’s meetings before: What happened?  Why the lack of interest?  Was it the topic (rendering and animation)? What can get you guys excited again? And for those of you that are in the area of attendance for this user group and have never been to one of the meetings, please, consider attending next one! This is a very young group, I know, but it has great potential.  We’ve had some really interesting meetings in the past, great guest speakers, and some very cool prizes too.  And, besides, it’s only a few hours every two or three months, but you can learn a lot and benefit from networking with other local users, so please think about it.

Enjoy your weekend and keep an eye for some videos about Animation coming up real soon!

That’s right! I’m giving away ten coupons for a free SolidWorks certification test. Five will be given to readers of this blog and the other five to readers of SolidWorks para Todos, my blog in Spanish.  Now the really neat thing is that once you win one of these coupons you can actually choose which of the five certification tests available you want to take:

• CSWP-Core Modeling Specialist: (8,329 certified professionals worldwide)
• CSWP-Advanced Sheet Metal: (457 certified worldwide so far)
• CSWP-Advanced Surfacing: (61 certified worldwide so far)
• CSWP-FEA (Simulation): (35 certified worldwide so far)
• CSWA (Education): (8,086 certified worldwide and growing every minute)

Usually, you would have to pay up to $100 dollars to take a certification test, but today ten lucky readers will have it for free!

You can find more information about each of these tests and what you need to know in order to pass by visiting the SolidWorks Certification Homepage.  

Let me tell you, I’ve taken and passed both the CSWA and CSWP-core exams, and I’m currently preparing for the Advanced Sheet Metal test.  I see obtaining that certification as an important milestone in my learning process, as a way to have something to show for all the effort I’ve put in training myself, and as a “secret weapon” that can even open a few doors when it comes to job search. Last year, for instance, when a local reseller called me about a job as an Applications Engineer, they told me that one of the things that made my resume stand out from a list of possible matches for that position was precisely that I was a CSWP. I didn’t apply for that position because it wasn’t a good match for my own crazy life back then, but see? Right there, there was a job and all because I was a CSWP!

And I’ve heard that the certification process has been greatly improved ever since I took those two tests. Now it’s even easier than ever to access the certification center to take the exam and also to access information about your results and other certifications previously obtained. And if you manage a team of users, you can set up certification tests for all of them and even track their progress.

OK, so this is how you can get the free test… First I thought about making you guys design the perfect pet door for me. See, I have this little Chihuahua mutt that keeps soiling my carpet, and I bought a pet door that was supposed to work fine with my sliding glass door to the backyard… Err… Never mind that! All you have to do is leave a comment here saying, in your own words, why you want to get certified. That’s it! Very simple! The winners will be chosen at random from all the entries. Hurry up! Winners will be announced by Tuesday 21^st at 11:00 am PT.  You can also send an email or use the contact form, just remember to use a valid email address so I can contact you back and give you information about how to redeem your coupon for the free test!

Good luck!