Predicament with CAD, Solidworks, Printer technology

I was hoping you could help me out. I work at Avery Dennison and
we're trying to find a more entry-level mechanical engineer/technician
who knows CAD and Solidworks. The dilemma is the person has to have
printer technology knowledge and worked with printers for a bit. It
pays around 75k and is North Carolina. Do you know of anyone or can
you think of any hints to find such a combo? Thanks in advance.
Probably someone with just 2-4 years experience would be perfect.

 

Advertise or high search firms in Hewlett-Packard, Lexmark, or Canon's
back yard where they develop their printers!

Bo

 

Sporky comes to mind.

 

Teresa might not know Mark, so here is his website:

http://www.h2omarkdesign.com/

I see I noted "high" when I meant to type "hire" in my original note.

Bo

 

Well thank you Bo and Paul-amigo as well, even though I don't usually
take "entry-level" jobs unless I'm really desperate. It just so happens
I'm not, but I appreciate the thought anyway. I've been happily
DIRECTLY employed now for almost a year with a small machinery OEM near
Charlotte . . . a nice company with nice people.

Teresa, I expect that you might get some tips (at least) if not some
good contacts if you'll contact one or more of the SolidWorks User
Groups here in North Carolina. Presuming you are near Greensboro (the
only Avery Dennison office I could locate in NC) your closest user group
is the Research Triangle group, but you also may wish to try the
Charlotte group, the Catawba Valley group (Hickory area) or the
Asheville group. You can locate information on SolidWorks User Groups
by going to the following Web page and inputting "Southeastern US) from
the scroll list box:

http://www.swugn.org/pages/find/directory.html

To all: sorry I haven't been active in the newsgroup for a while. Since
I'm still working on SW2005 I find that I really have very little to
contribute or even to gain by lurking. I quit my subscription service
about 2-1/2 years ago and I can't say I regret it. I've been just about
fed up with SolidWorks for quite a while, and I don't consider the
yearly fee to be anywhere near worth the cost. Try checking out
Inventor sometime. It has tools that SolidWorks should have had years
ago, and it's faster to boot. And of course there's the FREE (until
June 30th) OneSpace Modeling Personal Edition software that will create
assemblies up to 60 parts and which (as I hear it) treats IGES and STEP
files as native formats. Competition is good for SolidWorks. I
personally think a moratorium on subscription service would be good for
them too. At least it would probably be good for us, the users.

'Sporky'

 

Mark, I sort of assumed Paul had some sort of reason for noting you as
a possible source of info for the request more than an actual job.

One of the biggest issues for companies like Avery to decide is
whether to "Do It All" or to partner with experienced outside design
firms or other partners in new projects. It is not an easy decision
sometimes, but if it is just a one time project, a product design firm
with printer experience would likely work out better than getting a
single designer with only a bit of experience, who might have to learn
"the hard way".

In reading the management book "The Innovator's Solution" by
Christensen & Raynor recently, they cover the point in Chapter 5 of
what to do internally and what to farm out, and whether farming out
will improve project time to successful completion.

Mark you noted "Since I'm still working on SW2005 I find that I really
have very little to contribute or even to gain by lurking." Maybe
some sources or a little side work could be profitable. Never know.

I got hornswaggled into upgrading my 2006 SolidWorks because a
toolmaker did a tool for me in 2007 Swks (which I think was a
mistake), but otherwise I would have let Swks slide for a year or
two.

Though I (like many others) could try out other 3D solids packages, it
becomes difficult to switch over time because of legacy data, if not
ramp up time. Without a real strong advance in capability I must have
and/or productivity in another 3D package, I can't see switching with
any enthusiasm.

Bo

 

A lot people here, and that includes sometimes myself (even if I am the
decsion taker) regret the move to SW06 from '04.
Next time for upgrade, I will do much more testing that I did (in +, not in
x, that was almost zero)

 

Out of curiosity, what makes 06 worse than 04? As I recall, 04 was one of
the buggiest releases, and some really good stuff was added by 06.

 

Sporky

Spaceclaim.com is released on the 28th March .

Just read a review in mcadonline.com

Sounds interesting

and for those who get upset with having to upgrade

"For a first release of a brand new modeller, SpaceClaim Professional
does a hell of a lot. And with the reputation of the team, you know
it’s going to be pretty robust as it ships at the end of March. Payne
also told me of his intention to make SpaceClaim one of the few, if
not only, modeller to be able to read in and edit files created in
past and future versions of its format."

Jonathan

 

Indeed, I think I will continue to use SWks 2006 for a long time. I
am not going to convert all my files to 2007, even though one job has
been done in 2007.

Bo

 

First, we keep on having to rebuild, simply by passing from one part to the
assy, and forth. On 4 hours at the desk, I can have close to 2 hours of SW
proc use.
(Dell Pent.D 3GHz, 2Go RAM, 2 Raptors with lot of room, Quadro FX 1400: not
great, but acceptable when you HAVE TO buy Dell's - BTW, I'll be back for
new machines on next year's budget)

Frequent "failed to save", or crashes when saving. That's the major bummer.

Certainly crashes linked to lots of assy configs (60+), assies not so large,
and perfs/ rebuilds linked with working with derived parts. No fancy
geometry, but 95% sheet metal.

Changing components properties in assemblies /config not working as
expected, ...

I'm not keeping a list, but those are very tiring.

 

Yes, indeed. I read the info on it that Desktop Engineering sent out.
$125 a month with some kind of contract. The contract may be 2 or 3
years, but if it's 3 years it's still only $4500. That MAY be up front
cost (it's not yet clear), but then you don't have maintenance costs for
three years, and when you finally do it's not much more than SolidWorks'
annual maintenance (and it comes in easy installments).

Eat that, Mr. McEleney.

'Sporky'