It's my second most favorite time of year.  The days are still warm but there is a just enough of a chill at night to cool you down and let you sleep better.  The grass growing is starting to slow down which means more free time on the weekend for me.  My leisurely drive home from work is now even more leisurely since I always manage to get behind a school bus. And most importantly I'm starting to hear all the buzz about the new release of SolidWorks!

If you been hiding under a rock for the last few days here is some links that will catch you up on the latest...These provided with many thanks to Matt, Gabi and Josh.  Good work guys.

http://www.solidworkslaunch.com/ 
http://www.dezignstuff.com/blog/ (search for 2010 for several posts)
http://www.solidsmack.com/ (search for 2010 for several posts)
http://gabijack.com/search/solidworks+2010

I've been reading the blog posts and I have to admit that I'm excited about this release.  Watch the videos on the 1st link and be amazed at the one highlighting the drawing improvements.  Multi bodies in sheet metal is looking real useful to me also.  Mouse gestures I'm going to have to see before I make a judgment but it is interesting to say the least.

If you just can't wait go grab the BETA and have a go.  Better yet install the Windows 7 release candidate and then SW2010.  Come on, take a walk on the wild side!
 
 
Years ago we had an employee at our company who was always coming up with entertaining words of wisdom.  What was humorous was the fact that he often thought that he was saying something profound when actually it was nonsense.   But now as I think back to some of his quotes I start to see another side to them; maybe in my ‘old’ age I’m getting senile.   Anyway without mentioning any names (he is still a friend of mine) below are some of his sayings.

“He’s an engineer of the third kind.”  Spoken in anger over a disagreement he was having with one of the engineers.  What was really funny about this was that the ‘engineer’ was in the next cubicle and heard it.  He came around the wall and said, “What was that, _____*?”  We still use this one usually referring to the same ‘engineer’.

“Reality is real.”  Not sure what prompted this one so it’s offered here with no explanation other than the fact I once asked him if he did drugs in the sixties and he replied that he did them at all temperatures.

“Wait! Now I have it.”  After digging in his pockets for the correct change when paying for an order at McDonalds and finally giving up and handing over a $5 bill and receiving the change from the counterperson.

“And that will be to go.”  Spoken in the drive thru at McDonalds.

* - remember I said no names

 
 
Picture
The recession has finally hit the company I work for.  A month ago we were informed that we would be cutting back to 4 day weeks.  In truth this is a move that should have been done 3 months ago but the owner of our company is one who actually cares about his employees and put this decision off as long as he possibly could.  We spent some of the slow time learning and perfecting our capability to laser weld.  Three of our employees spent a week in Atlanta learning how to use our newly acquired Faro Arm Digitizer.  Two of the laser operators spent a week in Europe researching 5-Axis lasers.  Quotations for the contenders for a new 5-axis laser have been received and wheeling and dealing is going on now even as I type this entry.  I’m saying all this to say that we will not rest on our laurels.  A quote I heard the other day was, “Innovate or die”.   The person speaking this was refereeing to the so called web 2.0 and how the companies that are still big players are the ones who are constantly coming out with new product and content.  But doesn’t the same thing apply to all business?  And if all businesses took this approach wouldn’t it pull the country out of the recession?  In other words, to innovate you must spend money.  Look at it as an investment in the future of your company.  Yes it might be difficult to come up with the capital but there are a lot of wannabe investors out there looking for something to put their money in. 

In the company meeting where the cutback announcement was made we were encouraged to ‘think outside of the box’.  The phrase was overly used during the meeting and over the next few days to the point where it actually became a joke.  Even I was heard to say something like, “He’s never thought in the box!” in refereeing to a guy who always is quick with a strange and weird ideal.  Other guys would spend hours looking around the shop for the so called box.  One came up with the brilliant idea that maybe we should be fabricating the ‘box’ and selling it.  It was all done in jest of course but the point that the original speaker was making does have a ring of truth to it.  We must if we are to survive these trying economic times we think of new ways of doing things that offer our customers a better product that if more profitable for us to manufacture.  We must truly ‘Think Outside of the Box’.

 

Picture
 
A neat trick... 08/17/2009
 
I found a new way to do something in SolidWorks that has really made my life easier.  When I'm roughing out an assembly either of my design or the customer's I often have two identical parts which are properly the same part used twice in the assembly.  But during the design process the two identical parts suddenly need to be different in some way.  If it is a very simple difference then I will add configurations to the part but more times than not I will actually do a save as of the part and make changes to the newly saved part.



This is how I've been doing this for years but there are some problems.  If you open a part from the assembly and then do a save-as, all the instances of this part within the assembly will be renamed...so I didn't accomplish anything.  So I've been opening the part from the assembly, closing the assembly and then doing the save-as.  I then open the assembly back up and replace the single part instance with the new created part.  This works but it is a lot of opening and closing and then reopening of assembly files and so this is my new solution.

 

With the assembly open, act like you are going to open another file by clicking on the ‘open’ icon or selecting File->Open.  In the open file dialog box select the file you need a different instance of but don’t double click or click the open button.  Now do a ‘Ctrl-C’ followed by a ‘Ctrl-V’.  You will see a new file appear that will be named something like this, ‘Copy of XXXX.sldprt’ where XXXX is the original file name.  Now click twice slowly on this new file and type the name you wish for it to have keeping the file extension the same.  Click on the ‘Cancel button’ without opening anything.

 

Now back in the assembly use the replace component command to replace the instance of the original part with the newly created part.  Now you can open the new part and make the necessary changes.

This is pretty dirt simple Windows stuff but it had never dawned on me before, hopefully it will also be useful to you.