Model Mania 2011

As anyone who has spoken to me knows, I have great pride and admiration for the members of my technical services team here at CATI.  I inherited a great team and I have done (if I do say so myself) an exceptional job hiring additional members as we have grown over the last 8 years.

Every year at SolidWorks World I encourage my team members present to participate in the Model Mania competition.  Each year I have great confidence that they will make a good showing if they just make a run at it.  Finally, this year, our support manager, Josh Altergott, tried his skills with the competition and did a spectacular job.  Josh won the competition with a time of 10mins and 52secs.  This effort won him an Nvidia Quadro 6000 graphics card a truly excellent piece of hardware.

The Model Mania competition pits reseller against reseller and users against users to see who can most quickly model a given part, make specific changes to the part and successfully run a simulation on the part.

Congratulations on a great win Josh!!

Adrian Fanjoy

Technical Services Director

2011 Service Pack 2 is Live!

Solidworks has released service pack 2.0 as of 1/18/11 just in time for Solidworks World.

Solidworks SP 2.0

So everyone get loaded up and service packed and I'll see you down there. I'll be there giving a couple of presentations this year. It's my first time to the event so I am looking forward to it especially with the recent cold snap in Wisconsin. I will be doing a presentation on "Preparing your Imported Models for Molding" and also a presentation with Josh from CATI on "Redneck Workarounds" for Solidworks. We plan on having a CSWRN certification exam at the end so stop by and show us your tooth when you smile:)

Since there is really nothing to do down there (Solidworks World 2011) on Sunday and the CATI headquarters being in Buffalo Grove, Il and some of us "others" form neighboring states, we should all get together and have some fun!

We might even be a little interested in this-

 

Packers vs Bears

It should be an awesome game and an awesome time! I'm looking forward to all of it. See you there!

Todd Werginz

CATI Brookfield WI

Event Based Motion Simulation

Using SolidWorks Motion Analysis users can model motion of an assembly that incorporates event-based motion control. For example, in  a manufacturing procress that includes components moving along a conveyor belt, motors turn on or change according to compoonent position along the belt. However, since you do not know the exact time at which a component reaches a position before calculating the motion, you cannot determine the time to change the motor value. Without knowing the exavt times to turn on or change a motor, you cannot creat a time-based motion study. However, you can use an event based motion study to model the conveyor assembly motion.   Use event-based motion analysis to specify motion from some combination of sensors, times or previous events.

Event-based motion requires a set of tasks. The tasks can be sequential or can overlap in time. Each task is defined by a triggering event and its associated task action. Task actions control or define motion during the task.

See below a video of how to set up event based motion and how you can improve motion of the assembly.

 

Rajat Trehan

Product Manager - Design Validation

Computer Aided Technology Inc.

 

The World is Non Linear

"The World is Non Linear" is the topic of my presentation at this years Solidworks World User Conference " SolidWorks World 2011". The conference is held from Jan 23 - 26 in the Henry B Gonzalez Convention Center at San Antonio TX.

I will be exploring Non Linear Simulation techniques, the need, approch to solve non linear engineering issures. This is a hands-on session, so attendees will practice concepts learned. It is a great opportunity to bring your engineering concerns to light and have multiple people discuss the approach.

SolidWorks World is a great place to meet people with an engineering acumen. This is one tech fest you do not want to miss. I am very excited to be a part of this event, I hope to see you there.

Rajat Trehan

Product Manager - Design Validation

Computer Aided Technology Inc.

Maximizing SolidWorks Performance

Well it's that time of year again and my team and I are preparing for SolidWorks World 2011.  My team is doing several presentations this year but the one closest to my heart of course is the one Josh Altergott and I are doing together called Maximizing SolidWorks' Performance.  This is the sequel to a presentation that we did last year that was very well recieved.

The premise is this; we got a very nice brand new Dell Workstation to test on.  We built a very large assembly as a test subject.  And finally we wrote a macro that would do a bunch of different operations to the assembly and components to the assembly.  All of these items establish our environment.  The stats are listed below:

Baseline Machine

• Dell Precision 5500


• 6GB RAM


• Dual Core Processor


• 7200 RPM, 1 TB Hard Drive (For file storage)


• Nvidia Quadro FX 4000 Graphics Card


• 3 10000 RPM, 320GB Hard Drives RAID 0 (For OS)

The Baseline Assembly

• 6637 Total Components


• 5862 Parts


• 775 Sub Asseblies


• 170 Top level mates


• 13011 Bodies

What are testing consist of, is changing just one aspect of the environment or modeling methodology and measuring the time difference that is takes for the macro to run vs our baseline.  Our baseline test took 7 hrs and 50 mins to complete.  We are also able to breakdown the benchmark into different categories of operations to better tell what changes effect what types of efforts in SolidWorks.  Aspects that we are measuring include: file opens, closes, saves, modeling, rotations, rebuilds and others.

Some of the things that we are comparing are:

• Different amounts of RAM and different numbers of processors and cores. 


• 2010 vs 2011


• having files saved in the old version vs the new version


• Verification on rebuild turned on vs off


• Files stored on the network vs local


• lightweight vs fully resolved


• optimized user settings vs default


• Different hard drive options


• Different RAID options


• differnt modeling methods


• and much more....

As you can imagine, we are learning a lot from this effort.  We are very excited to present our findings at SolidWorks World and we are hoping that, if you are coming to the event, you will join us for our little portion of it.

Maximizing SolidWorks Performance

Tuesday, January 25, 2011 @ 10:30am in Room 202

I hope to see you there

Adrian Fanjoy

Technical Services Manager 

'Tis the Season to Upgrade your SNL to 2011!

'Tis the Season to Upgrade Your SNL to 2011!

Around this time every year kid’s eyes and minds fill with thoughts of great presents and visiting relatives, while their engineering parents eagerly await the new SolidWorks version to be installed at the office. All while, IT managers are as busy as elves trying to get the roll out ready for the new year. But wait a snag!

Some people have noticed that the uninstall of 2010 and install of 2011 hasn't been so smooth. This is done typically by uninstalling the old server and installing the new server. With activation this can be done with or without a transfer license. However the removal of the old server without a transfer is sometimes causing an issue on the activation web server. The user may end up with an error that the new server is not able to activate. So, if you choose to uninstall the SNL server you should transfer the license first (from the SNL manager click modify, when you get to the activation list choose transfer license).

But wait, there’s more! For 2011 there is another option! The preferred method is the newly available, for the first time ever; SolidWorks has now developed an upgrade option for SNL managers. You no longer need to uninstall the server and it works smoother with the activation web server than the other methods.

 

While this may go slightly against the grain of this Blog, I would like to take the opportunity to post a job opening that we are looking to fill.



If you know anyone that fits this description, either a sales professional OR a SolidWorks user that has an aptitude for sales, please have them contact me.

http://www.cati.com/company/3d-cad-solidworks-reseller-employment.html

Thank you for allowing me to temporarily disrupt the flow of our blog.

Happy New Year From CATI !

To start the New Year, we asked you to submit topics or SolidWorks related questions to be featured in our "Questions From The Field" CATIpult Webcast.  The response has been great.  There is still time to register and ask us your question.  Please ask your question using the comments field of the registration form or feel free to comment on the question samples listed below.

Webcast Information:
Date - January 13, 2011
Time - 12:00pm-1:30pm Central Time

Registration Link - http://www.cati.com/catiphp/events/event-register.php?CourseID=13030

Samples of topics and questions we received:

•     Best Practices for Converting 2D CAD to 3D SolidWorks Models


•     Working With Imported Models


•     Does licensing allow the user to work from a remote work station?


•     Is there a way to copy a single sheet from a drawing file into another drawing file?

Follow the registration link above or visit www.cati.com for more information.

 

Jim TeDesco
Marketing
Computer Aided Technology, Inc.

Evolution of Simulation

I found this article on desktop engineering. It charts the importance of simulation in todays development environment.  A great article emphazing how computer aided engineering is revolutionizing the industry.

What better way to kick start the new year than to adapt efficient design techniques saving time and money for your organization.

Rajat Trehan

Product Manager - Design Validation

Computer Aided Technology Inc.