Super SolidWorks Brothers Mobius Strip

The other day I was on a website called Shapeways where you can upload, 3dprint and sell your 3d models. There I shall something that was a blast from 1985 someone a designer named Joaquin Baldwin design a couple of Modius strips. For those who don’t know, Modius strip has several curious properties. A line drawn starting from the seam down the middle will meet back at the seam but at the "other side". If continued the line will meet the starting point and will be double the length of the original strip. This single continuous curve demonstrates that the Modius strip has only one boundary.

Well the blast from 85 was Super Mario Brothers level 1-1 as a Modius strip. Maybe, I could make a Modius strip in SolidWorks? So I went my SolidWorks utility belt and started digging around with feature ideas. That’s when I came across the video below. When you watch the video, it’s not SolidWorks, but if you know your features you’ll realize that FLEX is your tool for this one.

So I modeled a small part of this level, not to Joaquin’s detail and gave it to you.

 

Click to View the Full Resolution of the level 1-1

 

Download MARIO PART 1-1 This is modeled in 2013 sp 0.0

Enjoy,

Bob McGaughey, Certified Mario Expert

CATI

Discussion - The role of the CIO

CATI aims to provide solutions that reduce cost and provide time and material savings for our customers.  Often times, our solutions are pretty easy to justify:  If it takes someone a week to design and document a product using SolidWorks versus 4 weeks in traditional 2D tools...well, it's easy to see how this will pay for itself in time.

One of the more difficult items on which to put a price tag is risk...how does one assess risk?  A customer of ours in St. Louis recently told me this when asked why they planned to implement PDM:  "It's one of these things that just feels like the right thing to do to protect our data."  As hard as it is to come to terms with that statement, it is often true.  Sometimes, it is critical to wrap your arms around your intellectual property before something goes wrong.  Murphy's Law doesn't bat 1.000, but it certainly frequents the All Star Game.

In that spirit, I wanted to share an interesting article regarding the role of the CIO in today's organization.  While I don't agree with every point, it certainly lends some insight as to why CIO's should care about solutions such as Enterprise PDM:

1. Reduce of risk


2. Improve cycle times


3. Reduce Cost

One would be hard pressed to find a VP of Engineering, a key customer of any IT department, that isn't challenged to improve in all 3 of those key areas.  Our solutions are simple to use and to deploy, improve SolidWorks performance (this is an older article, but still relevant today), and certainly automate the process of finding and re-using product development files/data...and by managing the data in a secure vault with configured revision control, we can certainly reduce the risk of manufacturing to the wrong revision or losing one's data.

I am curious to know your impressions of the article:  http://www.zdnet.com/why-cio-success-comes-down-to-just-three-things-7000006850/

How To Import Your DriveWorks Solo Project to DriveWorks Pro

Before you import a DriveWorks Solo project, you need
to:

1. Create or open a
   DriveWorks group into which you want to migrate the DriveWorks Solo project.


2. Launch the New Project
   Wizard 

Next:

Step 1: Select the option to "Import DriveWorks
Solo Project". In the Location field Browse to an empty directory in which
to create the new migrated project. In the Name filed enter a name for the
project to be imported. Click "Finish".

Step 2: Browse for the DriveWorks Solo project to
import.

Step 3: Because the new imported project will be in a
different location than the original project, you may have pictures and other
files you want copied across to the new project. Select the directories to copy
across by checking them in the tree. Click "Finish" to start the import
and open the imported project.

For more information about upgrading from DriveWorks
Solo to DriveWorks Pro - just visit the DriveWorks Pro Helpfile

Jim TeDesco
Marketing Manager
Computer Aided Technology, Inc. 

How to Use the New Orientation Dialog Box in SolidWorks 2013

Do you find yourself constantly changing views until you finally find the correct view that you wanted? Well, the Orientation dialog box received a nice new face lift for SolidWorks 2013 that you will find very useful. Simply press the spacebar or to bring up the Orientation dialog box, (or click the View Orientation button in the Heads-up View toolbar and click More Options, or pull down the View menu and pick Modify - Orientation.)

    

The new Orientation dialog box for SolidWorks 2013 now shares the same buttons for standard views as the Heads-up View toolbar. Another cool new feature in the Orientation dialog box is the View Selector.

The View Selector gives a very nice visual way to see the model views. If you have trouble visualizing what the right, left, front, back, top, or isometric views of your model will look like, this tool is a great enhancement for you. Click the View Selector button or press Ctrl + Spacebar to bring it up.

It is very simple to use. Simply highlight what view you want, either from the View Selector 3D box or even from the Orientation dialog box. If you hover over the button in the dialog box, a preview of that view appears and the corresponding faces dynamically highlight in the View Selector. When you select o view, the Orientation dialog box closes (unless it is pinned) and the model rotates to that view.

Another enhancement to the Orientation dialog box has to do with saving custom views. You can now create custom views and save them to SolidWorks, which allows you to reuse these saved views in different documents. after rotating you model to the desired view, click New View. Give the view a name and click OK.

    

The new named view now appears in the Orientation dialog box. This allows you to toggle between any of the standard views and this new custom view. This is not new to SolidWorks 2013. What is new is that next to this new named view is a Save View to SolidWorks button.

When you click Save View to SolidWorks, a globe icon appears in front of your named view. This indicates that it is now a global view that is now available in other SolidWorks documents. Simply open a different document. Click Saved Views in the Orientation dialog box and click the saved view(s) of your choice. One thing to note is that if you only click the check box, and not the view name itself, the named view is added to to the list of saved views, but the model does not actually rotate to the selected view.

Try it out yourself and see if the new Orientation dialog box, the View Selector, and Save View to SolidWorks will help improve your workflow. SolidWorks 2013 has many great enhancements that will continue to help improve the productivity of SolidWorks users around the world.

Neil Bucalo
Technical Analyst

Computer Aided Technology, Inc.

How to choose the right tool for your technical communications

Join us on Friday November 9, 2012 from 8:30am-9:30am Central Time for a Webinar to show you how.  Register HERE.

Whether you are creating screen captures from your CAD system or taking digital pictures of prototypes. The process requires that you wait for the engineering work to be completed before work begins on the renderings or pictures for the technical communication.

We will compare these processes and have a look at how 3DVIA Composer can help you get started while engineering work continues and help you to finish your technical communication projects with time to spare.

Event Information:

Topic - Choosing The Right Tool For Your Technical Communications
Date - Friday, November 9, 2012
Time - 8:30am-9:30am Central Time(9:30am-10:30am Eastern Time)
Register HERE 

Jim TeDesco
Marketing Manager
Computer Aided Technology, Inc. 

Join CATI in the Fight Against Prostate Cancer

During November each year, Movember is responsible for the sprouting of mustaches on thousands of men’s faces, in the US and around the world. With their Mo's, these men raise vital awareness and funds for men's health issues, specifically prostate and testicular cancer initiatives.

"Let's face it...there are a ton of male engineers. CATI wants to help raise awareness and money for a cause that all men face (pun intended)." Eric Gold, Computer Aided Technology, Inc.

This year Computer Aided Technology, Inc. (CATI) is on board to help raise awareness of men's health issues by participating in Movember. We are asking our friends in the community to join us and help raise aware

Here's How You Can Participate (Lady's too)

1. Join the Computer Aided Technology Team and grow your own Mo and get donations for the cause.

2. Make a donation through the Computer Aided Technology, Inc. Team.

3. Become a Mo Sista (women who love the Mo and want to support the efforts of the Mo Bros in their lives).

So, what is a Mo?

Mo is Australian slang for Mustache. Mo’s can grow in all shapes, sizes and colors. The Mo-growing journey is undertaken by Mo Bros together across the world who all abide by these grooming guidelines:

1. There is to be no joining of the Mo to side burns – That’s a beard.

2. There is to be no joining of the handlebars – That’s a goatee.

3. A small complimentary growth under the bottom lip is allowed.

Thank you for your support

 

Jim TeDesco
Marketing Manager
Computer Aided Technology, Inc. 

SolidWorks 2013 on a Windows 8 Surface Tablet... will it run?

Good afternoon everyone just wanted to take a moment to share some info with you about SolidWorks and Windows 8. First stay tuned to this blog over the next couple of weeks to see hands on SolidWorks in Windows 8. Outside of seeing campaign ads every 22.5 seconds you’ve probably seen SURFACE commercial with Windows 8 RT. It looks really cool, but will it run SolidWorks.

That answer is no, not those tablets, not right now, but in the future. The reason for this is Surface tablets you see in the commercial are based on ARM chipset, which is much different than AMD or Intel. Windows RT is what is installed on these types of devices and standard Windows programs will not install on them. They will only accept apps from the Windows App Store. With that said later this year Microsoft will be releasing the Windows Surface Pro tablets that are base on the normal chipsets required for our applications to install and run. So never fear your SolidWorks will run on a tablet faster than you think.

Bob McGaughey, CSWE

CATI

Happy Movember