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!

Now that we are all beta testing SolidWorks 2009, I can’t help but think about how much CAD applications have transformed over the past 15 years and what path the future will take. With the launch of cloud-based applications like Google Apps, Photoshop Express, and Windows Live Mesh, it is hard to ignore this movement of web-based computing. Many of us have watched products like SolidWorks grow up into very powerful applications but still we are locked to using CAD on a desktop machine. In many cases this is sufficient and probably the first choice, however this was the same belief we had about word-processing and spreadsheet applications just a few years ago.  Today these type of applications are ubiquitous and can be found up in the cloud.

With the introduction of platforms like Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flash, applications for the web are now popping up all over the place, even in arenas that are dominated by the desktop. There are arguments that cloud-based application are limited not only in features but also in access, since many of us are not always connected to the Internet. There are some technologies that allow web-based applications to work while offline, like Google Gears.  Gears allows some applicatoins like Google Reader and Google Docs to work while disconnected from the Internet, utilizing Java in the background to power the web page’s technologies.

There are a few different configurations of how cloud-computing can be done with respect to the interfaces in which the user interacts with the application.  Some web-applications are solely accessed through a web browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox, while others can communicate with the cloud through a desktop application, allowing collaboration and/or sync features.  I have recently started using a great application called Evernote, that is a note taking application that exists both on the web and on the desktop.  Evernote can be accessed solely via the web using a web browser but also has a native desktop interface, running on either Windows or Mac, giving offline access to my notes.  In this case, the cloud not only brings storage and sync capabilities, but also brings OCR (Optical Character Recognition) for pictures and hand written notes.  I can take a photo of my hand written notes or a picture containing text and it will recognize it for search.  This powerful feature doesn’t happen on my desktop application but once my notes are synced, Evernote’s server does the OCR for me and the results are synced back to my system.  This flexibility allows me to be mobile and give me all the power everywhere I need it.

So back to the CAD application, what if SolidWorks started small and developed a cloud-based eDrawings?  This could be an extension of some of the SoildWorks Labs projects like BluePrint Now, Drawings Now, and COSMOSXpress Now giving not only a web-based interface but extend features like storage and collaboration as well.  Currently both BluePrint Now and DrawingsNow share an online storage space which gives some cloud benefits since they can be accessed from anywhere.  This could also be coupled with a connection from the installed desktop application, allowing simplicity of access within the current working environment. Learning from what eDrawings could bring, SolidWorks itself could be extended to the cloud to do minor adjustments and collaboration across the Internet.

These are obviously my own “dreams” but if anyone can make a CAD application utilize the Internet and bring it to the mainstream, SolidWorks can.  Don’t forget that SoilidWorks tried this back in February 2002 with a collaboration/project management website called 3D TeamWorks that allowed for some of this functionality.  That was before many of these advanced technologies existed and also before most people were comfortable with using the web as a serious platform for computing.  As these technologies begin to break many of our everyday applications free from the desktop or extend the current capabilities back to a powerful server in the cloud, the glass ceiling of innovation is broken and the “Clouds the limit”! ~Lou

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

Embedding SolidWorks into Microsoft Word or Powerpoint has always been a OLE (object linking and embedding) technology that is important to users that create documentation or presentation materials. With the introduction of Microsoft Office 2007, there were some major changes not only to the interface, but also to the way you insert control objects like the one used by SolidWorks’ eDrawings product.

I recently covered this topic in show 151 of the SolidWorks:Heard! podcast since this feature has been requested by many customers - especially how to add an eDrawing to a PowerPoint presentation. Users don’t want to have to launch another program and/or exit their presentation slideshow to display their 3D content to the audience.  Since eDrawings has the capability to not only open eDrawings, but also SolidWorks, PRO/E, and AutoCAD files, it is a great tool to leverage CAD content.

Office 2007 changed the location where the eDrawings control is located from previous versions since the OLE controls are not displayed in the usual Insert, New Object listing. These functions have been gathered up and relocated under the Developer’s tab, which, by default, is turned off. The Developer tab, including features like Macros and Controls, can be activated by navigating to the Office program’s options located in the Office Button (displayed on the right). Once the options page is displayed, you can check Show Developer tab in the Ribbon which is in the “Popular” section of the Options dialog box.

Now that the Developer tab is accessible, all the tools needed to add the eDrawings control into Office are available.  Under the Developer tab there will be a grouping called Controls, which in PowerPoint will have a More Controls icon where the eDrawings 2008 Control can be selected.  For Word the More Controls icon is hidden under the Legacy Tools button, or in Excel under the Insert button.

In PowerPoint, once the eDrawings Control 2008 is inserted, the cursor will have a cross hair on it, prompting the user to drag out the size of the control.  This can be changed at anytime by dragging on the object’s drag handles located around the border of the object. This object now displays and has the centered text eDrawings Control inside it which when right clicked, reveals the Properties menu item.

Properties can be modified depending on the desired attributes the embedded eDrawings viewer will obtain. The default highlighted property name is the FileName control which has the … to browse for the file to display in the object.  A bit of warning though: I seem to have found a bug in all the Microsoft Office 2007 products when browsing for the content. Once the … is selected on the first Properties dialog box, another dialog box displays titled Property Pages which has another … button. Clicking on this will crash your current session, so find the file’s path and type or paste it in manually. At this point I am not sure if the issue is SolidWorks or Microsoft but the control does crash if you use the browse function.

There are feature controls that can be enabled under the EnableFeatures control in the Properties. This can customize what the object interface displays (i.e. show the triad, enable the full user interface, display in hidden-lines-removed mode, etc.)

There is one difference worth mentioning that differs between the control inserted in a PowerPoint document and the control inserted into Word or Excel. In PowerPoint there is no need “activate” the control since the presentation mode of PowerPoint will active the eDrawings control by default. When you get to the slide that contains the control, eDrawings will display the content as configured, inside presentation mode without any prompt.  In Word or Excel there is not a “Presentation Mode” or “Slide Show” to activate this control which is why in the Developer tab there is a Design Mode button. By default, this button is activated or depressed which allows editing to controls and other objects inside the active document. This button will toggle these controls to activate and display their content inside the document as desired. ~Lou

SolidWorks has included a few nice tools to assist in export existing data from one PDMWorks Workgroup vault and importing into another.  These tools are located in the install directory for PDMWorks Workgroup <c:\Program Files\PDMWorks Workgroup\Vault\>.

pdmwexport.exe - When launched, this tool will prompt for login and then display all the projects in the vault for export.  You simply check the projects you want to export and click “Go”.  This will create a file called “export.pdmw” in the PDMW vault folder (server side) under the “PDMRC” folder.  This file contains all the information about the project structure, user accounts, credentials, revision scheme, lifecycle and file properties.

pdmwimport.exe -This tool would then be launched on the destination system where the target PDMWorks Workgroup vault resides.  It will also prompt to log into the target vault and then point to the source vault folder.

Once this is selected you will receive a import summary of what was found on the source.  This summary is where you will also be warned if there are any potential issues or mismatched revision schemes/lifecycles between the two vaults.

Along the left side you can select your projects, which users to bring over, as well as property mappings from the source vault.  You do have options to only bring over only the latest revision and some overwriting options as well. These utilities are very useful when first implementing PDMWorks Workgroup since you want to first create a demo vault to test inside and once your revisions and lifecycle work correctly, you could then export out the projects you want to contiune to use in your production vault. ~Lou

Last week I was in L.A. for 3DVIA Composer training and I wanted to take a moment to outline how this tool can complement a company using SolidWorks for their product design. For those of you who have not heard of 3DVIA Composer it is a content creation tool that is a conduit between the CAD tool and the document authoring tool like Microsoft Word or Adobe InDesign.

3DVIA can read in a number of file formats including SolidWorks, PRO/E and Catia and allow a non-CAD technical writer to take the 3D content and build high resolution raster graphics, technical illustrations and interactive 3D animations. This content can then be embedded into the document authoring tool as an object or pushed out to a video or website for true 3D documentation and interaction with the desired audience.

Many of the CAD tools like SolidWorks have tools to create images and renderings as well as animations. The content that 3DVIA builds can add features like balloons, labels, interactive buttons allowing a step by step assembly instruction to be created as well as more complex viewing tools like dynamic sectioning and the Digger! The Digger is one of the tools that definitely makes 3DVIA turn heads. This tool has a subset of tools that will allow you to “peel” layers away from an assembly known as the Onion Skin, similar to doing a dynamic break away section. It also has an X-Ray feature that can control the transparency of the objects that are being “seen through”. Tools like this can completely transform the way that products are communicated to the people that use them or maintain them. Because 3DVIA Composer reads CAD data directly, it also has the ability to automate the update process as changes occur in the CAD model. This is where much of the time savings can be found. Change is a constant! The ability to make a change in a design and propagate that change throughout the design efficiently is the key to successful product development.

One of the most impressive features about 3D VIA was how quickly it can be learned and how it can enhance the documentation creation process. This product is in no way a replacement for any tools that most companies already have but a way to speed up the process of documenting CAD data. Many companies still do a fair amount of 2D documentation and 3D VIA can increase the efficiency of that process as well as paving a way for a future with utilizing 3D documentation.

I recorded a full podcast of this tool and the different modules 3DVIA has to offer in episode 141. For more information about 3DVIA Composer please visit their webiste or you can visit 3dmojo.com which is their blog and podcast site! ~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