I guess I’m too nice of a guy to write about a lot of things that bother me. I started to write about VARs and what should be expected from them. But then I thought, “What if I’m completely wrong on this topic and I offend someone out there”. Someone I might be calling next week when one of those ‘festering boils’ surfaces in SolidWorks. I decided I needed a different topic…
I thought about blogging about things in SolidWorks that really irk me. You know, things like not being able to get out of the balloon command with a right click and the fact a sheet metal lofted bend flat pattern does not change, no matter how thick or thin you make the material. But then I remembered that I’ve already covered “things that irk me” in SolidWorks.
I thought about writing about the ever evolving UI of SolidWorks, but Matt covers that subject well enough.
I can tell you a little about the current project I’m into. My boss wants to find a use for the over abundant shipping containers that are accumulating in the United States. He likes the idea of storing classic cars in the 8 x 8 x 40 units but the cars must be driven into the end of the container which means that if more than one is stored in the same container they must be unloaded in reverse order. Same goes for using them for general storage, you must unload the last items stored to get the items stored first. Another problem is that the doors of the cars can barely be opened enough for the driver to exit the car.
He is considering adding garage type doors on the side of the container. Of course this doesn’t allow for loading and unloading of cars until you consider that I’ve been charged with the challenge of loading a car sideways… Picture parking parallel to the long side of the container and by some means the vehicle is picked up and moved sideways into the container. The way I’m leaning right now is to have about 16 feet of gravity conveyors that would run perpendicular to the storage unit. Drive the front wheels onto one conveyor and the rear wheels onto the other. At this point it should be easy to ‘push ‘the car into the unit. This is still in the infant stage so help me flesh it out or give a better option. I have to consider whether the two conveyors would be fastened together in some manner, which seems like it would be safer. This would require me to come up with some compromise on common wheelbases which seem to range from 84 to 120 inches. Does the conveyor units need to be removed after the car is loaded? Much more economical, but this thing is going to be very heavy. This is where the engineering process gets bogged down with me. As they say, “The devil is in the details.”
Oh and if a representative of my VAR is reading, I really have no problems with you or your company. As a matter of fact I would highly recommend you to everyone looking to buy SolidWorks. NOW WHEN IS THE CAPS-LOCK ISSUE GOING TO BE FIXED?
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Finally! I know it's been a long time coming. I looked at and actually created websites on 4 different 'free' website services and evualated each of them. ( the results will be a future blog). Of the 4 I've looked at weebly is the easiest and most versatile I've seen. It needs some things, namely spellcheck but I bet it's coming soon. |
AuthorHey, I'm Jeff. I'm not a SolidWorks guru and I haven't written a book. But I use the software everyday trying to make my company more profitable. Archives
January 2013
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