Image courtesy of SolidWorks.com

With SolidWorks 2009 just around the corner, many users are wondering about the true performance gains that have been touted .  Every year SolidWorks releases a new major release with 250 enhancements but what really makes users believe the release is worthy to upgrade to is mostly based on performance.  Looking back through the years we used to purposely leave out details in our designs that were “unnecessary” or were just details that were not needed for production drawings.  Today we not only place fasteners in our assemblies but want them to have threads and all the elaborate details that make an exact replica.  These trends are why we as users push the envelope of performance every release and expect more in the future.

Performance has always been a theme for the SolidWorks R&D team, but this year the performance gains seem to be what are most noticeable in SolidWorks 2009.  What SolidWorks has termed “Raw Performance Improvements” targeted assemblies ranging from 5,000 to 100,000 parts while performing various common tasks on these large data sets.  Obviously advancements in 64 bit computing, mainly addressing larger quantities of RAM, have opened the doors for working with these data sets on a PC.  Beyond hardware and operating systems there are still many ways software manufacturers can re-code how certain processes handle memory hungry procedures and make them more efficient. So let’s take a look at the numbers for SolidWorks 2009:

• Assemblies - 2.6X faster than SolidWorks 2008
• Drawings - 6.2X faster than SolidWorks 2008
• Frequent Commands - 8X faster than SolidWorks 2008

“Frequent Commands” refers to common operations like editing the assembly and switching to a drawing, creating views with dimensions, saving and panning, etc. Overall most users will see approximately a 65% increase in performance with SolidWorks 2009 which is pretty significant.

Technology advancements like SpeedPak, simplified representations of an assembly, allow SolidWorks to reference critical interfaces without being required to load all the components into memory.  This performance boost is then handed off from assemblies to drawings allowing many of the critical aspects like dimensions and views to be created without having to resolve any of the suppressed or “SpeedPaked” components.  This reorganization of how SolidWorks utilizes the computer’s resources has paid off in the performance department.

Consolidation of steps is also an area of focus for SolidWorks 2009 with the introduction of features like slot sketch, solid to sheet metal and weldment grouping, which allows a users to place multiple weldment profiles within a single command. None of these advancements allow SolidWorks 2009 to create anything unique compared to it’s predecessor, however these capabilities remove the tedious steps in order to create these features.  Along this same efficiency theme, Instant3D now reaches over to assemblies, allowing the user to modify parts utilizing the all familiar “drag to size” functionality introduced in the 2008 release.

Finally a very important area of focus is multi-threading.  SolidWorks has been multi-threaded for years but not in the areas that have the greatest impact.  Background processes like HLR, view rotation and even PhotoWorks, which renders as a threaded process have been around for at least of few releases. SolidWorks 2009 has put the focus on some of the most intense processes like running an analysis in SolidWorks Simulation and threaded that process so you can continue to work with SolidWorks while the study or studies are being solved. This alone can bring dramatic performance gains especially since most systems ship with dual or even quad core processors.  Utilizing these extra processors is the future to performance gain in SolidWorks.

Overall, SoildWorks 2009 seems to have put it’s money where it’s mouth is with respect to performance and I hope this focus continues to future releases.  Growing complexity in design is inevatable, which is why we will push SolidWork 2009 to the edge and 2010 will need to push the performance envelope once again.  In talking with many beta testers, performance is reason many are thinking of upgrading to SolidWorks 2009 at SP0 instead of waiting till SP2 or later. ~Lou

I know many of you have heard me talk about this online micro blogging platform before on the podcast but though I would take an opportunity to dive into some details of what is growing out of the conversation.

The Service: This service was launched in March of 2006 and really got picked up by a majority of bloggers and other tech media around the beginning of 2007 at CES and MacWorld Expo.  As many of these Web 2.0 services start to launch, it is always a mystery, not only how long will they stick around but what exactly their uses will be.  More often than not, these services are conceptualized one way, only to be used by the masses in ways never foreseen by their designers.  Twitter very much has fallen into this trend.

Twitter, as described on its homepage, “A service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?“  The other challenging aspect of these “quick, frequent answers” is they are limited to 140 characters.  This limit is tied to that of the phone based short message service (SMS) since this is a way to easily update your status when away from your computer.

Currently there are three major ways to update your status with Twitter. One is through their website, via SMS or text message by sending your message to 40404 from your phone as well as many growing third party desktop and web-based applications. The best part of the third party applications is they bring some pseudo-stability to the Twitter service up-time is fragile, to be kind.  I currently use an Adobe Air application called Twhirl but there are so many so your best bet is to search for “Twitter clients” and pick the one that fits your needs.

The Community: When it comes to SolidWorks community, Twitter is beginning to play an important part of the everyday community chatter. The SolidWorks Twitter community really began with a couple of us geeks just testing the water at the beginning of the year and it has really grown into something that has an addictive nature.  The community thus far consists of some SolidWorks employees, various SolidWorks bloggers, growing numbers of users around the world, even the founder of SolidWorks himself Jon Hirschtick joined just a few weeks ago!

The Conversation: The conversation can range from “I’m out getting some coffee at StarBucks” to daily tips on using SolidWorks. What is interesting is how regular the community contributes.  People who are on Twitter are interested to know what others are up to and want to share what they are doing as well.  As soon as you start “following” a user on Twitter, meaning you will get updates to their status, you begin to read what others are up to that you are interested in.  What has spawned is a group of SolidWorks interested people who all want to contriubute and talk tech all day.  They can be extremely productive/distracting since it is a technology that can ping you as it comes in.  This can be even more disruptive than your email notification since the rate can be as high as a few minute or more depending on how many people you are following.

What is most interesting is how the community is growing and how you can “jump” into the conversation, update what you are up to, read what is going on and get out.  Once you leave, you feel like you are in the loop and up with the bleeding edge of SolidWorks breaking news. I use it to push out news like service pack releases, tech related news, and quick tips.

Who to follow: My buddy Josh Mings at SolidSmack did a great post on 60+ people to follow on Twitter that details his impressions of Twitter and who in on it. Searching Twitter for the keyword SolidWorks, you can see who is talking about it and if you look at their posts you can determine if they are worth following.

In addition to my @gol10dr (my Twitter account) I also contribute to @SolidWorksTips which are 140 character tips with both Josh Mings and Ben Eadie. The goal is to have a daily tip, well it averages out to a tip a day even though we usually push out tips in 2 or 3 at a time every couple of days.  So far we have received good feedback from many of the followers out there and look forward to giving back to the SolidWorks community 140 characters at a time! ~Lou

On Saturday July 12 I was one if the guys standing in line for the much anticipated iPhone 3G. Being a gaget guy and all around tech geek I was even curious enough to drive down to the local AT&T store with my 2 year old only to find 70 people waiting in line. Needless to say I was not going to attempt to stand in line with a two year old only to get in the store to find out they were sold out.
I headed home thinking I was going to just let go of my lust to get it the first day and watched it unravel on the web. In hind sight it ended up being the best thing due to the activation issues that came up. So Saturday my family and I went down to the local Apple store before it opened only to see 100 plus people waiting in line there. We hung out and let our daughter play with the other kids in the courtyard and I kept my eye on a guy on line to approximate the time to get into the store. After an hour only about 15 people had gotten into the store and I thought my hopes for a phone were slowly, well very slowly, fading away. So we went next store to Borders and hung out in the kids book section and shopped for books instead. We then grabbed some lunch and headed back home to put my daughter down for a nap.
Once home I decided to call back down to the Apple Store to see if they thought they would run out. The associate assured me that they would have enough and it was only a matter of putting in the line time. So I packed up my backpack with my laptop, iPod and my Camelbak and headed back to do what cattle do, wait in line! To make the endeavor even more difficult it was 110F out, yeah I know I’m nuts!
I stood next to another guy leaving Verizon and his Treo behind and the conversation actually made the 3 hour line wait go surprisingly fast. Once I was in the store things seemed to pick up the pace even though I still spent another 30 minutes waiting to get a phone in hand. So finally I am next! Can it actually be true! Well what I didn’t realize is that anyone who was waiting the day before that got into the store and was not able to activate, received this white card that basically got them to the front of the line. I was lucky enough to have two of these people walk in as I waiting to be next. I am thinking that someone is going to announce that they are out of stock after waiting almost 3.5 hours on line. Lucky me that was not the case. Once in, the whole process took 5 min and I was walking out with my iPhone in the box, unopened and ready to use when I got home!

On Monday, June 11 both SolidWorks Corporation and Apple Corporation were working hard launching some new technologies to excite their customers.  Apple with the iPhone 3G and SolidWorks with SolidWorks 2009 Beta 1. SolidWorks 2009 Beta 1 was made available immediately after the webcast, as opposed to Apple who baited the excitement with the announcement only to inform everyone they would need to wait a month (July 11, 2008) for the iPhone3G.  None the less, Monday was a good day for us in the tech world!

This year SolidWorks decided to change the “beta rules of engagement” and move the entire beta program inside the SolidWorks Customer Portal, which requires current SolidWorks maintenance to get in. Once in, you will be able to download, view service requests, view bugs submitted and get involved in the beta discussion forums! The beta home page will also give you visibility to current beta news, hot issues and the list of the top beta tester.

The other exciting part of beta testing for SolidWorks, besides getting to drive the latest and greatest version, is the prizes you can win.  Beta points are given to the users to find the most bugs and fill out the surveys so get downloading! It is important to note that this is beta, which means that you are installing this for testing purposes and not for production. During installation make sure you pick a different installation location for your SolidWorks Data and Toolbox.

In past beta releases, SolidWorks always advised to install beta on another computer or a “non-production” machine, however in the FAQ’s for 2009 beta, SolidWorks is taking a different tone.  When asked “Should I install this on a machine running SolidWorks 2008?” they answer “Yes” and go on to explain the installing of different file locations for your Common Files and Toolbox.  I have done this with my install and it seems that they have worked on making the beta install not effect your existing SolidWorks installation.  This even seems to work for eDrawings which has been known to be a problem area for multiple installations in the past.

I encourage you to get into SolidWorks 2009 beta, but remember the first rule about beta is we don’t talk about beta….well except in the Beta Forum! Many of us bloggers have to make sure not to lose control and accidentially splatter beta features across our blogs but I will talk more about how to get signed up and getting started in this Sunday’s Episode of SolidWorks:Heard! ~Lou

The “Stump the Chump” breakout went better than I thought it would. We really didn’t have a scripted plan and Ben Eadie did a great job explaining to the mob what the “Rules of Engagement” were. The rule was this, we are not here to prove we know it all or that you have something you know and want to test us. We were there to simply offer our experience as a sounding board to solve issues.

One of the best parts of the session, besides that fact it was standing room only, was helping another SolidWorks user out of a jam. I solved a few issues and it was fun to do that. I watched many people who asked question say that getting their issue solved was worth the trip to SolidWorks World alone. More importantly, when questions were asked that did not have a straight forward solution due to a limitation, a few members of the SolidWorks R & D team were sitting in the session and could hear these needs. It was this exposure that will make SolidWorks aware of missing features of the software. This is also why it is so important to submit your enhancement requests during the year as well as during the SolidWorks World Conference.

I really hope that SolidWorks allows us to come back next year and we are able to grow this session into something that can reach more people next year. If attendees know that this is the place to get real answers I can imagine needing to do a few sessions. It was the best user group atmosphere I have seen and the participation of the audience was tremendous. For those of you that attended I am very interested in hearing from you to get some feedback.

If you have questions that you didn’t get a chance to ask, feel free to send them to lou@solidworksheard.com and I would be happy to weigh in on your question. Better yet, submit it to the forum and that way others can benefit as well. I would also be interested in knowing if you would attend a session like this online via gotomeeting web conference and we can all take questions and chat. This could be recorded with audio and video and placed up on SolidMentor to share with the rest of the community.

It was great to meet all of you and I look forward to next year’s conference.  ~Lou

Well as you may have heard I have voluntarily become one of the Chumps in the SolidWorks World breakout session in January of 2008. This is a new breakout session that Ben Eadie of SolidMentor has spearheaded that will be comprised of an open forum of users that can pitch their problems in front of a hand picked panel of self proclaimed SolidWorks experts. There will be about 8 of us that will be under fire to try to come up with solutions to these problems that have stumped these attendees of the session. In many ways this will be a similar to doing what those of us on the VAR side experience while performing tech support. I think in many ways this is the “Reality Show” of SolidWorks World since not one minute will be scripted.

This is essentially a live user group where you are going to bring your challenges with SolidWorks in hopes to find a solution or work-around. The big difference is usually in a user group there may only be one or two experts that would weigh in on your problem. At the STC session you will have 8 of us that hold well over 60 years of combined experience on SolidWorks and are from all walks of design. There is no better way to find solutions to problems then to get a group of geeks together that all enjoy finding the perfect fix!

I hope the session can bring solutions to many of its attendees in order to build the community that many of us on the panel contribute to. This is only one of the over 150 sessions that will be offered at SolidWorks World Conference. It is one of the largest 3D CAD conferences and a great place to network with other SolidWorks users and experts. Combined with all the training that is offered, it could be the most productive business trips out there for the SolidWorks user. This will be my 7th SWWC and I always come back with a few more tricks up my sleeve. If you want to attend start pitching it to your manager now!  It is time well spent and not a bad place to spend a few days during January! So I hope to see you all in San Diego!  ~Lou

SolidWorks 2008 introduced a new wizard-based tool for developing rules to automate the creation of your SolidWorks designs. There are a few of these wizards in 2008, one of which I know you have heard of, COSMOSXpress. These types of wizards give us a taste of what is possible when these tools are integrated into the design process. Now let’s be honest, many of these tools may seem to be primitive but overall will be functional enough to bring some benefits to the table and if the need grows for further capabilities, full powered tools are available to meet those growing needs. DriveWorks, a UK based company, is the first rule-based engineering tool I have seen that brings the tremendous power of automation without requiring the need for advanced programming skills or in-depth training. DriveWorksXpress is a wizard-based tool that brings power and ease without “hamstringing” all the functionality.

So the question remains, “How does this compare to SolidWorks’ own design tables?” Read the rest of this entry »

I am asked frequently from various users about what my advise is about SolidWorks running under Windows Vista. I have been running Vista since Beta 1 was released and still have the Business version installed on a desktop at work which forces me to use it every day. I mainly run it in order to support our customers that are running it but I also cannot control myself when it comes to new technology. SolidWorks tried to be proactive about Vista, unlike many other software developers, and get a 2007 version out as soon as possible, however it never survived past pre-release 2 and never was worthy enough for production use. SolidWorks has since abandoned Vista on its 2007 version and has announced that SolidWorks 2008 will be the only version that will be supported under Windows Vista.

What reason would someone move to Vista? Read the rest of this entry »

Many of you may have seen screenshots of SolidWorks 2008 or may have heard talk about hardware requirements that will be necessary to support this new graphic capability. RealView was introduced in SolidWorks 2004 and has continued to be in the product over the past 4 releases, which was essentially a real-time visual material property on the model. SolidWorks 2008 has redefined RealView as we know it. RealView in 2008 is no longer only a real-time material property it is real-time PhotoWorks including the environment around the model! This capability shift will require some understanding with respect to graphic card support since there will now be three levels of support when it comes to RealView.
Support for RealView is now laid out like Olympic medals, Gold, Silver and Bronze. Gold, being the highest support, will enable all 2008 RealView features with Silver still supporting RealView with some limitations. This can mean that some of the reflections or environments may be disabled during modification of geometry or during rotation. Then bronze bringing up the rear with support of the RealView capabilities seen in previous versions. This will remove support of the environment rendering, leaving only the material visual properties displayed.

The two players supporting this new RealView capability are ATI and nVidia. ATI has a 7 supported cards at the gold level where nVidia has 13 at this point. I am sure we will see more cards step up to the plate as this becomes more common so if you have a system with a card that is a few years old, you may want to check the SolidWorks Graphics Cards site to see if you are going to run into any issues.

Personally, I think it looks very cool and didn’t think it was that big of a deal the first time I laid eyes on it. What is incredible is how great it looks! If you are looking to create something realistic without having to do much work setting up PhotoWorks to render your model, a simple File, Save As, JPEG will leave you with an incredible looking picture that could be used for any marketing piece! ~Lou

SolidWorks Labs had a nice update and if you have never visited SolidWorks Labs site you are missing out! SolidWorks Labs is a site that is hosted by SolidWorks R & D and displays some of the projects that they are working on. Those of you that fall into the “Geek” or “Early Adoptor” category would be very interested in the products that post up here. This site was launched at SolidWorks World 2007 and had not been updated for about 4 months or so. I recently was looking for tech news for August and checked the site to find out they had refreshed the site with a new look as well added to this library. Here are the products up there thus far: Read the rest of this entry »