SolidWorks World 2010 correspondent quest

Just announced yesterday, SolidWorks is conducting a contest to find a worthy person to act as their Official Internet Correspondent at SolidWorks World 2010.   The winner of the contest will be loaned a camcorder to use to document their experience at SolidWorks World 2010 on a blog and Youtube (and associated Tweets too)!

The decision as to who wins the contest will be made November 13.  I would like to ask everyone to vote for our very own Chris Saller (if he accepts the nominations he has received already).  Unless someone has a more clever idea, I say just vote for Chris by commenting on the article linked here.

Have fun!!!

Welcome to the brand new look

Welcome to the brand new look for the SolidWorks Legion website (http://www.fcsuper.com/swblog).  The website is now upgraded to the latest WordPress version 2.8.5.  This allows for more powerful functionality.  I finally have polls that don’t suck!!!

Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.

Please explore the site.  Contact us if there are any funny things that happen with the site during your visit here.  Many of the previous posts where formatted for the old website layout.  Due to this, they may appear a little messy.  I’ll be working to clean these up over time.  The old version of WordPress used to hide double spacing between sentences (for whatever reason).  The current version does not.  Apparently, as part of this upgrade, I get a bunch of extra symbols where the old version hide those spaces.  So, if you see a funny A after every sentence in an older post, just ignore it.

Thank you Jennifer Szabo for again rescueing me from certain calamity.

SolidWorks Labs: Tagger

SolidWorks LabSolidWorks LabThe ability to tag features within a solid model was added with the release of SolidWorks 2008.  This sometimes under-utilized capability may go unnoticed by many.  After all, the function to add tags is a tiny little icon in the far right corner of the status bar.  SolidWorks Labs has developed an improved user interface for tagging in the form of an add-in called Tagger.   Within its own task pane, it allows the user to see all of the tags used within the open SolidWorks document.  Users can even select specific tags as favorites that can be easily applied to a feature at any time.  To use the tags, simply click on the term in the Tagger task pane.  This will highlight the the associated features within the FeatureManager.  This add-in from SoildWorks Labs adds new functionality that makes tags all the more useful.

SolidWorks World 2010 Agenda

Agenda header

The preliminary agenda is now posted for SolidWorks World 2010 on the SolidWorks website.  The agenda is subject to change, of course.  That usually means that more breakout sessions may be added.

If justification for attendance is still needed, the agenda itself can serve as an excellent resource.  One way to look at SolidWorks World is that it is an opportunity to attend up to twelve educational classes.  At $995, that works out to be just under $83 per session.  I’ve easily paid over $800 a day for some industry seminars.  SolidWorks World is a big bargain.

But wait, there’s more!  Attendees also get to explore a large trade show (Partner Pavilion) with hundreds of exhibitors.  Some trade shows are free, but more technical ones tend to charge some sort of nominal fee.  At SolidWorks World, it’s included as part of the package.

Agenda links

CAD Administration
Data Management
Design Automation
Design Validation
Education
Modeling Essentials
Productivity Tools
Customer Success/Designing Better Products
Design Communication

Coming soon in November, attendees will be able to pick their session preferences.  Spots are not guaranteed for regular breakout sessions even with advanced session preference selection.  However, it’s important to pick preferences soon, especially for hands-on sessions which usually fill up fast.

13 and 13 (likes and dislikes in co-worker behavior)

ThomasNet has a blog.   Apparently, it’s been running in one fashion or another since 2000.   Of course, back then maybe they didn’t label it as a blog, but that’s really what it is.   There’s a couple of articles that caught my attention recently.

13 types of irritating coworkers

13 Types of coworkers we like

In these articles, David R. Butcher explores the best and worst traits in our coworkers (and ourselves) at work.

His likes and dislikes may seem a bit arbitrary.   He complains about the suck-ups in the first article, but lauds the jokers in his second.   He makes the obvious observations regarding the positive coworker; yet in a sense of irony, he complains about the complainers.   It’s a fairly entertaining read.

Funny marketing

It a rather blatant attempt to promote CoCreate, PTC sends out something that appears to be a fake survey via email every once in awhile.  The email invites the reader to try out a “self-qualification” test on whether their team’s design style is parametric or explicit.  The test asks such questions as “within the selected concept design, a broad range of predictable and structured changes can be driven quickly and easily to derive new designs” (choose one in a range of Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree).

The funny thing with this test, of course, is that regardless to one’s responses, the result is always the same.  A screen will pop up declaring “Explicit Modeling is right for you.”  It has links to find out about and download CoCreate.  Even if I wasn’t my jaded self, this marketing approach would rub me the wrong way.  It’s just cheezy, so I’m briefly ranting about it.