SolidWorks Legion

SolidWorks Rollout Event

In what might be considered the premier SoildWorks Rollout event in the San Francisco Bay Area, Hawk Ridge Systems kicked off their rollout tour for SolidWorks 2010 at the Hiller Aviation Museum. Now, I don’t normally rave Presenters about VARs doing anything, but this event stands out. Where other VARs are holding events at their offices or even just doing webinars, Hawk Ridge Systems went all out. Despite the first major storm to hit California in a few years*, attendance to this event was good.

The topics covered during the event included many of the improvements in Solidworks 2010, from predictability and consistancy to the new Dimensions Palette. Also included in the event were fairly in depth presentations for 3DVia, Enterprise PDM and SolidWorks Simulator. For the first time ever, I’ve developed an appreciation for the functionality within 3DVia. I’m still not the audience to which this application should be pitched, but hey, it looks cool.

On top of everything else, lunch from Pasta Pomodoro was an unexpected delight. I’m also happy about being able to take a free tour of the Hiller Aviation Museum, which has been on my todo list for a long time. The museum was a little smaller than I expected, though every cubic inch has some aeroplane or other sky contraption and wonderment. I bought the t-shirt (as I always do). One complaint I have about using this location for events like SolidWorks Rollouts is that the museum remained open during the presentations. Once in awhile, arriving patrons did get a bit noisy which made it hard to focus on the presenter.

As usual, sponsors did get their chance to speak. Fortunately, they kept their announcements short and sweet. Taken on the whole, this was an event that stands out as being well above par (or below par if you are a golfer).

*A major storm for California consists of an amount of rain and wind that other portions of the planet may consider timid. We had a lot of slowed traffic and neighborhood debris from trees and turned-over trash cans. That’s about it. But it’s enough to cause people to change their plans.

Engineering related societies

The following is a list of professional societies related to the mechanical engineering field. These groups either have some sort of certification process or are responsible for the control of various commonly used standards. If other societies should be added to this list, please feel free to comment with their information, or email me directly.

American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
ASTM International (formerly American Society for Testing and Materials)
International Organization for Standardation (ISO)
National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE)
Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE)
SAE International (formerly Society of Automotive Engineers)
Society of the Plastics Industry (SPI)

SolidWorks 2010 Rollouts season

A lot of VARs are planning some pretty cool events to rollout SolidWorks 2010. I would recommend checking with your VAR if you haven’t already been contacted by them about their offerings. Here’s a couple of examples:

In the San Francisco Bay Area, Hawkridge Systems has several planned events, one of which is at the Hiller Aviation Museum. There are many other events around California and in Nevada, Oregon, Canada, etc.

GoEngineering has several morning-long sessions available in a variety of cities.

Then there’s 3D Vision Technologies and their webinar schedule starting this week.

SolidWorks 2010: Minor tweaks II

SolidWorks 2010 has made some minor tweaks to the control users have over balloons.

In an assembly, when the user inserts a balloon, they can set it to follow the item numbering of a selected BOM under Balloon text (an added option for that field).
The user can now add quantities to balloons. These quantities are parametric so they update automatically as the quantity changes for the associated parts used within the assembly. This was talked about in one of my SolidWorks World 2009 articles.
One thing that has bugged me about SolidWorks for a long time is the fact that balloon size is determined by font size. Finally, balloon size can now be set using an actual numeric value (such as .50″). This can be a general setting in Tools>Options…>Document Properties>Annotation>Balloons. Individual balloon sizes can also be directly customized via it Balloon PropertyManager.

Standard Views without Zoom-to-fit

When using Standard Views in SolidWorks, the resulting view of the model is normally Zoom to fit. This is regardless to the zoom level of the current view. So, if I’m zoomed in to look at a specific feature a very long part, when I change from Front View to Rear View, the model will be resized to fit to screen. This might be unexpected in some cases, as it requires extra steps to return to the area where I was working on the model.

With newer versions of SolidWorks, there is an alternative. A toggle setting is available under Tools>Options…>System Options>View. Unselect the Zoom to fit when changing to standard views option.

The only draw back is that this toggle is buried deep within the Options window. This makes the task of dynamically using this functionality difficult. Otherwise, this is a great function.

Zoom to fit when changing to standard views

Controlled Radius

It’s been many years since ASME Y14.5M-1994 introduced the controlled radius symbol. Yet, we will still frequent find individuals in the industry who have never seen the symbol, nor know what it is. The symbol is CR.

It’s been many years since ASME Y14.5M-1994 introduced the controlled radius symbol. Yet, we will still frequent find individuals in the industry who have never seen the symbol, nor know what it is. The symbol is CR. Really, a controlled radius is actually just a radius that is a fair curve, with no reversals. I’ve not read ASME Y14.5-1982 in a very long time, but I believe this is actually similar to the original definition of a plain ol’ radius from the older standard.

Since ASME Y14.5M-1994, a simple radius has no fair or reversal limitation. As long as the arc of the radius feature’s profile falls within the tolerance zone, it is considered acceptable. These are represented by R.

So much time has gone by since the introduction of CR, I am left wondering why so many people have never seen it. The reason CR was created, as it seems, was to allow engineers to specify a radius without the need for it to be fair or non-reversed. This is good for breaking edges or filling corners. A CR would be more useful when fit and/or function is important, such as guiding features. In this way, the added expense of a creating a fair and non-reversed curve would only be employed when it is necessary for function.