SWX Add-in

I received an email from a company who is developing a new add-in that
is supposed to be launced at SWXWorld in February.

The new add-in looks very interesting!

I like it because it would help me to investigate/edit models that
others built, or to investigate/edit models that I built a long time
ago.

What are your thoughts?????

In order to learn about it, go to:

www.solidmap.com

 

OMG! I MUST get one RIGHT AWAY! You sold me on it!

You should think about working for these wonderful people!

 

Tick,

I think you left the sarcasm button on.

KM

 

So, yes it actually looks like it could be useful. I'd wonder how well
it handles large assemblies with incontext relationships. Working as a
supplier, with customers sending us parts and assemblies, seeing some
of the background relationships graphically might be interesting, but
probably only if the customer sent everything. So I'd also wonder how
well it would handle missing relationships. Error message? Crash?

Do you think this is done with XML? Just curious.

Diego

 

Yes, it is interesting even to a novice such as myself. That Software
will be offered by ITTC Multimedia Corp, headed by Prof. James A.
Sinclair, PHD. It is a company that offers quite a bit of education,
on quite a few different diciplines, in the form of Educational Video
Courses. Among it's offerings is also hands on instruction at the NJ
Workshop. I had purchased an audio/video Educational CD of theirs on
Solidworks, Level I, and can vouch for it's Excellence. Definitely on
an equal par with Solidprofessor. There is supposedely a Solidworks
Level II version coming out shortly. I will also look forward to
seeing just what this addin does, as dissecting the design tree and the
model in detail, is not one of my strong points.

G. De Angelis
De Angelis Tool
Valhalla Grafix
www.deangelistool.com

 

Sounds like a great tool!
Those parent/child relations have always slowed me while editing parts
because I couldn't figure them up from a graphic overview.

Thanks' for posting the link.

Cheers,
Gil

 

I'm sure it's a fine product, maybe even worth paying for. But,
puh-LEEZ! Just come out and say you've got something cool to sell.
The play-acting shillery is insulting to what little is left of my
intelligence.

 

I have a macro that does some of that. It captures a good bit of
information but it doesn't yet go down to sketch feature level. That is
a plus. I have come to appreciate that sorting out these relationships
is not easy and I don't think that they have quite captured all that a
user needs to know to really understand a model.

Personally I think SWX needs to revamp the way the FMT presents
information and the questions in their survey really highlight what
needs to be accomplished though not how. I would rather see what they
are doing turned into something in the Property manager window, perhaps
to actually take the place of the current FMT.

 

The prices for Solidmap are not final yet, however the "thinking" is
for a desktop version for $750.00 USD, and $950.00 USD for a floating
license.

G. De Angelis
De Angelis Tool
Valhalla Grafix
www.deangelistool.com

 

<giggle>

I hope they are at SWx world. I think it would be a fun little
diversion to bring a real project that I am familiar with on a memory
key and have them analyze it.

Parent-child in a part is likely more useful (or at least expedient)
than this, but parent child on an assembly sketch reveals bupkis - I
wonder if these guys do it better? In context, derived parts,
equations (with feedback loops) and stuff like that deserves a little
poking and prodding to see if this tool has the goods to make any real
difference. It would have to do a lot to justify the price.

 

This hits the nail right on the head.
Solidworks need to implement tools that users can understand and correct
these sort of things.
I'm constantly frustrated at the amount of time, spent trying to find out
what the hell is going on, when I have to pick up someone else's modelling
files.
Sure as day follows night the program will screw you when changing a feature
in the tree even after doing child/parent etc.
I mean if the program can fill the FM with cherries surely the programmers
can give us the tools as well and not keep it such a big frigging secret.

Rant over.

Neville Williams
Z-Axis Design - NZ
"remove the KNOT to reply"

 

AssyGator didn't fly and it was less than than $750. Propagator which
sells for much less, less than a tenth of that, and is something you
might use every day hasn't bought the author a Lexus yet. One of the
problems is that what it does is so hard for most bosses to understand
that it would be hard to justify. It is one of those things that when
you tell your boss you are wasting time on the problem they won't see
SW as the problem, they will see you as the problem.

 

Pehaps they just want SW to buy it from them, then SW can include it in
office pro.

steve

 

My name is Pat Pirsoom and I work for the company that is developing
SolidMap. I do not want to interfere with this discussion, however I
wanted to just set the record straight. Dr Sinclair is not associated
with SolidMap. Also, SolidMap is not being developed or marketed by
ITTC Multimedia.

SolidMap is a product being developed and marketed by KollabNet
corporation.

Info on SolidMap:
www.solidmap.com

Info on KollabNet:
www.kollabnet.com

Thank you ... Pat Pirsoom

 

Sorry for so many posts but,

Hadn't heard of AssyGator, so did a quick search and found this
http://www.goulu.net/dotclear/index.php/2004/10/30/89-dynabits/assygator

Illustrates the problems involved for companies developing addins for
SolidWorks (and probably other CAD products)

John Layne
www.solidengineering.co.nz

 

Me, too!

I'm not spending my own money, but I don't think I would have much
difficulty convincing my boss to spend $750-1000 if we could quickly track
down circular references.

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

 

It has been my experience in the past that if you are versed in
assembly managment and external refernces you should not need this
add-in. I have yet to find an assembly, part, etc that I could not
resolve the issue within 5-10 minutes.

The only way I could see this as a need is if I recieved a lot of
poorly created assemblies from other companies and had to fix them all
the time.

 

Crap. Looks like I'm on the hook for following through on a review. I
hope some others do it as well.

With experience, we learn (I think) good relations management
strategies.

However, I do find myself trying to explain to clients and guys I work
with what those strategies are, and how their not following those
practices put them in a pickle. I had just that conversation this
week, and I don't know if the nods I was getting indicated
understanding, or if 'my student' was just trying to get rid of me.

At $750 (if that is the cost - I didn't look into it, I am just taking
that from another post), plus whatever maintenence is required, I see a
hard road to ROI. I personally would love to have it as an educational
tool - see here Mr X, this reference string is why you are having
trouble, then print the screen and redline how the references ought to
have gone. But that convenience probably caps out at about $200 unless
there is some other magic not readily apparent to me at this point.

On the other hand, I can think of at leat one company where they make
fast, loose (and in my opinion reckless and not very thought out)
references, they would get ROI in a matter of a few months. If it
follows through on its promise, I could easily recommend it.

And (now that I'm chewing this over) even for my company, it might be a
competetive advantage to include a graphical representation of the
references when we deliver a job. We already warrant that we do every
check we can in CAD - draft, undercut, interference in all positions,
Ctrl+Q, the usual litany. To also deliver a roadmap for changes when
my clients engineering departments take over control of the data might
just be what they need. I spend a fair amount of time trying to
educate the next recipient of my data through coments in the tree and a
verbal review of the structure of the database (I have an hour meeting
next Tuesday to do just that). Tack on a $200 premium for a printout
that lays out the references, and in five or six jobs I've paid for the
product (includes the time to make the printouts, of course - I can do
math). That $200 could save hours of their engineers time.
Hmmmm.

Ed

 

It would depend on the client and how they value their designers time.
Some are savvy enough to know that all it takes is one innocent mistake
with a SWx dataset and you lose half a day picking up the pieces - but
you are correct, others would absolutely say WTF???, to thier
<potential> peril. Its like any sort of insurance - some folks just
like to roll the dice.

Disclaimer: Again, NOT HAVING SEEN THIS PRODUCT - don't know if this
will even do that well.

The same economical quandry applies for all sorts of add-in analysis to
a job - for instance, I advised one customer earlier this year to do a
moldflow anlaysis because they really wanted their parts flat. I gave
them a vendor for that (we don't do it but highly recommend someone who
does), they rolled the dice without moldflow, and a quarter later we
got a call asking us for advice on why we thought that the final molded
parts weren't flat!. Now they have to pay for modlfow AND a new tool,
and deal with the lost revenue from NOT selling the product while they
are fixing the issue.

Prototypes, FEA, all sorts of things can be hard to sell a client on.
All I do is let them know about the options I would do if it were my
money involved in this product. Each job and client is different and
has different needs, but its easy when I start with the question 'how
can these guys make the most money?'
.... And then its their business if they accept or reject my advice.
Ironically, most of the stuff (like prototypes or moldflow) that I
might recommend I don't make a penny on. Its just the best thing to
do, and my job is to present the best things to do.

When talking to clients about options, we always focus on basic
business ethics - my job is to make my client as much money as possible
and present designs and recomendations that I think will do that (case
in point - I turned down a $300,000 job once in the first few minutes
of going over it because I knew they could do it better in a different
way, then coached them on what I would do in their shoes for a quarter
of the price. Though I would not profit on that one, you bet they came
back for other jobs because they know we are not out to milk anybody.
Win-win).

And if I were handing off a complex SWx database for someone else to
work on, communcating the relationships in the database for $200 or so
could be part of saving them all sorts of time=money as they work on
it. If they didn't 'get' that, it would be a shame - they lose money
if things go south, and strangely, after they rejected my advice I
could probably end up making more money as I am brought back in to bail
them out. At least I would be on record for trying.
Ed

 

I'd second these last comments.

I-DEAS has a graphical representation of assembly relationships (i.e.
mates), including in-context ones (called "associative copies" in I-DEAS)
which allows you to step through the assembly structure in a similar fashion
to the Solidmap product.
Having experienced it, I find Solidworks' tools very poor in comparison. and
I'd LOVE to use Solidmap


.....BUT......$750 is a non-starter.

John H