SW World 2006 Day 3 Afternoon

Well I just got back from the offsite event at the Las Vegas Speedway.
Im not sure how they pulled it off, but the bused 2500 people over to
the speedway!! It took 50 dedicated buses, plus 20 more buses for
inner venue transportation. I took the oppurtunity to try out the drag
racing. I got to drive a audi A4 down the strip at a modest time of
15.30 at 93mph. I lost the drag race, but it was a good time. The
event itself was pretty good. There was plenty of food, drinks,
desert, and lots of games. By the time 7:00 rolled around, the lines
for all the other activities were quite long, and growing. I heard
rumors of the total price tag for the event, and lets just say it in
the six figures!!!

I was able to meet a few local users and invite them to our usergroup
meeting on Feb 9th, and also got to meet quite a few Solidworks
employees, including CEO John Mc Eleney. They are very friendly
people, and always willing to talk shop.

My afternoon session was: "Misc Debris, the next level of SW tips and
Tricks." The sessions was presented by Matt Lombard, and his
popularity as a speaker and his topics was evident in the standing room
only crowd. The only let down was that he had a 1 hour slot, and he
could have easily taken 2 hours. I gained a few pointers from the
presentation, as well did lots of other people. If you ever get a
chance to attend one of his sessions, I would highly recomend it.

Tomorrow is the 4th and final day, and the morning general session is
where we will see SW 2007!!! I was told not to miss it, so im hoping
for some good results. I will post all the details after lunch
tomorrow.

Viva Las Vegas!!!

 

Whew. And I thought I was finally going to be up to date by getting on
board a new yearly release in January of that year, and now 2007 is
being talked out.

Can't say Vegas is on my list of hot spots, but I do take in
conventions now & then, limiting my gambling to a handful of quarters.

What I have always wondered is whether or why SolidWorks wouldn't be
wise to sell copies of the SolidWorks World yearly presentations (with
advertising no doubt) as a DVD some time after the conference ends.
The logic is that SolidWorks has at most 1% of the user base at a
conference, so making the option for the other 99% of users to get a
heads up (plus promotional value) seems to be a decent option.

Bo

 

Good stuff hope?

 

Mike, your reports made me very curios about solidworks 2007 and the 3D
Scanner with the $2500 price tag. thank for sharing with us your experiences
and insights. it is especially helpful for guys like me which reside outside
of north America, and for whom a trip to Las-Vegas for a 3 day conference is
almost impossible.

 

The improvements to SW 2007 are going to be incredible. Here's a
quick list of what they've shown:

* They have a tool that will automatically fillet your parts, and
automatically resolve any fillet errors
* Same type of tool for mates and sketch relationships
* In sketches, you can do simulations, such as cams, belts/pullys, etc.
* in assemblies, you can automatically create belts or chain drive
chains. When you create the beltn, not only does it show it around
all the pullys, but you can even turn one pully and it rotates the
others when you do it - at the correct ratios also.
* there's a rack-and-pinion mate now
* in drawings, you can automatically add properties to balloons. You
can also click on dimensions to add to the text in a leader which will
show not only the dimension value, but also any other text like
tolerance, countersinks, etc.
* There's a "tolerance stackup" tool which is amazing - you define
what the critical element is in the assemlbly, and then choose which
dimensions affect that element - it will show you the tolerance
stackup and show the assembly in the MAX and MIN conditions based on
all the tolerances.
* There is now an OPTOMIZE DESIGN feature for cosmos works -
basically, you tell it what you waant to "flex" and what the limits of
the material are, and it will make that dimension fit what it needs to
be (reduce weight, by keeping it strong).

 

Phil,

Just read 2007 supports curved bends (i.e. unfolds them).

http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/blog/2006/01/solidworks_worl_3.html

Len

 

I'm under the same NDA from Solidworks, though probably for a different
area.

 

That did it because they are implementing 3d pdf in Solidworks. Adobe
just announced it yesterday or day before. Guess Solidworks didn't want
to wait on Bluebeam to catch up.

 

Like it or not, most everyone uses PDF. Solidworks was already
supporting PDF through Bluebeam so switching to support the 3d added by
Adobe makes sense.

Edrawings still has it's place. For one, the recipient doesn't need to
have it installed and that's a big deal. There's also support for
configs, animation, FEA, etc. that the 3d pdf will not likely support.

Now if they can get eDrawings to read/write PDF files, that would be
big.

 

File size just keeps increasing as do systems requirements ....
and don't you have to pay for Adobe to *create* files?

 

I agree, someone dropped the ball when changing it in sp3. First, we
should have been told, and next, it should have been beta tested.

The full version is iging you settings option for you PDFs, something
we lack with the Save As PDF option and is probably at the heart of the
problems peple are having. They need an "Option" button there.

 

One of the first claims for SW2007 on Monday morning was that it will
decrease file sizes by 50%. Not nearly enough, but it's a start!

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"