Devon Sowell's Blog

SolidWorks Let's Go Design, Engineer's Dream Chair/Office

Here are some photos from the Let's Go Design lab and workshop. Jeremy Luchini has done an excellent job on this project. Follow it HERE.

Cheers,
Devon Sowell
http://www.3-ddesignsolutions.com
http://www.pdmsolution.com

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Enterprise PDM 2011, What's New

Here's the list of the improvements to Enterprise PDM 2011

Cheers,
Devon Sowell
http://www.3-ddesignsolutions.com
http://www.pdmsolution.com

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Cowboy Friday, Brooks & Dunn, My Maria

From Wikipedia, "My Maria" is a song co-written by B. W. Stevenson and Daniel Moore. Stevenson released "My Maria" as a single in 1973, and the song became a Top 10 hit, peaking at #9 on the US pop chart. It remained in the Top 40 for twelve weeks. In addition, "My Maria" spent one week at #1 on the US adult contemporary chart. The guitar portion of the track was played by Larry Carlton.^[1]

I was 21 years old when that version came out, I dug it then and this version is even better. When I hear this song now, I think of our Daughter, Masha. Masha is Russian for Maria.

Bloggers To Invade DS SolidWorks For 2011 SolidWorks Roll Out

Next week Alex Ruiz, Anna Wood, Ricky Jordan, Rob Rodriguez, Jeff Mirisola, Jason Raak ,Brian McElyea, Matt Lorono and I will eat sandwiches and cookies together and try out 2011 SolidWorks, hands on. They've challenged us to bring difficult CAD modeling questions and even files with us for a workout in 2011 SolidWorks. More to come next week.

Cheers,
Devon Sowell
http://www.3-ddesignsolutions.com
http://www.pdmsolution.com

Sucessful Cloud Based Computing In Carlsbad, San Diego, CA? Not Likely

Internet connection speeds in Carlsbad, San Diego, CA are among the lowest in the USA. I've known this for many years, and now I've found a graphic that shows this point. Shown is a YouTube download Speed Test from my office. The results are dismal. Below, is another speed test showing both download and upload results, the upload speed is abysmal.

Another fly in the ointment is the lack of ISP choices, in my area. Here are the only two choices I have;

• TimeWarner Cable, Road Runner
• AT&T DSL

Because we don't watch much TV, less than 3 hours per week, we can't justify the TimeWarner Cable bundle option. Internet cable alone is over $70.00 per month, $840.00 per year. That's not cost effective for our businesses. We use AT&T DSL. The cost is $65.00 per month, $780.00 per year, for long distance telephone, for our fax, and internet access. That's high, but affordable. However, as shown by the chart, the speed is slow, very slow. About six months ago, I complained to AT&T. They sent out a pleasant repair man. He replaced our modem and the telephone connectors and wires and that improved the speed slightly, adding about .25Mbps. We paid $60.00 or so for that.

TimeWarner and AT&T have monopolies in my home town, and that's just not right.

Another problem in my immediate area is the weak cell phone signal. I don't have a land line based office telephone, I use my cell phone number. Typically, I see only 1 or 2 signal bars at my office location. I see mobile cell phone repeaters parked in Carlsbad, CA, as they try to improve the signal. So, that rules out the option of using my cell phone provider as my ISP.

For the reasons mentioned above, the thought of Cloud Based SolidWorks 3D modeling does not appeal to me at all. What's your opinion?

Cheers,
Devon Sowell
http://www.3-ddesignsolutions.com
http://www.pdmsolution.com

SolidWorks Supports Scouts

Our daughter really enjoys Girl Scouts and we appreciate the Girl Scout Values.

Thanks SolidWorks for supporting Scouts;

http://www.solidworks.com/sw/education/9391_ENU_HTML.htm

2011 DevonWorxs Roll Out, My CAD System

 

Break the mold, think outside of the box? That's so 2000, We nuked all that.

DevonWorxs; About Us;

We have no office, everyone works from home. All work is done here in the USA. We have no Board Of Directors. However, we do fly first class overseas and drink only Starbucks premium coffee.

Long sleeve dress shirts are prohibited at DevonWorxs . Also, no blow dryer hair, Soul Patch optional.Skateboard shoes only, please. No texting allowed. BMW M3, Scions, and KIA Souls are the recommend automobiles. No Harley Choppers, they're too loud, burn too much gasoline and leak oil like there's no BP.

The CAD software;

Fully Tested and Debugged prior to Release. No Versions, No Service Packs, Free Hot Fixes.

We have a little purple asexual mascot with pink polka dots and no pants, at this time, the pants that is.

We offer Direct Sales, download and go. Free 24 month payment plan.

Technical Support? There isn't any. We provide a Wiki and we expect all our users to provide each others Technical Support, for free of course.

Free pdf Users Guide and complete pdf Help file at no extra charge.

Runs on any OS. The UNIX version is guaranteed not to crash, ever. The Ubuntu version comes with no Drivers, good luck. When using the Apple operating system, "YOU CAN'T HOLD IT THAT WAY", he said while smoothing his black turtle neck shirt and admiring his old guy jeans and Sperry Topsider shoes, sans socks of course.

Microsoft Office not required at all, nada, zip.

NAUA No acronyms used anywhere in the software.

Cloud Based? Ha! Based In Another Time/Dimension, the future. Pull your already completed work back in time, complete your work before you even start it. Don't tell your boss, the one that can't use CAD anyway.

Nurbs, Dweebs, B Reps, Class A Surfaces, Mirror Splines thinga ma bobs, full push-pull grunt, 0 tangent thingies. Only Matt Lombard knows how to use the Surfacing commands in our software, we planned it that way, OK? If Matt can't figure it out, you don't need it.

Come to DevonWorxs CAD World, it's virtual so we don't have to meet you face to face. Coupons for free beers at your local tavern. You can still get drunk on us.

We pay Power Users to Beta Test our software. A pair of Matts, Rob, Ricky, Phil, Jeff, and Ed, if we can find him (maybe in a watermelon patch, looking for ammo?). We pay them a lot, why? Because they help our customers, amen.

Buy now before the price goes up. Up at least 4% every year, like all good normal businesses, we adjust our prices to the Cost of Living. I mean come on people…

Ctrl Key and Alt Key, inconsistent. Want to Stop a Command? Just unplug your computer and Restart. Full Undo, and Auto Save of previous crashes versions included too.

Manages Incontext External References, Configurations, and configurations of configurations of configurations of configurations of configurations...with Display States, linked to configurations of configurations of configurations of configurations of configurations...with Google Design Tables linked to Display States, linked to configurations of configurations of configurations of configurations of configurations...

Drawings with configurations, along with Assembly configurations, Part configurations, Google Design Tables and Display States, so you can really screw everything up BIG TIME.

Create Drawings with up to 400 sheets, no really! No guarantee they'll Open, see the Wiki for the Knowledge Base article (written by exMicrosoft Knowledge Base experts), they're easy to find and understand, not.

No PLM management software comes with our CAD software, please see our Gold Level Partners and good luck getting a demo, let alone a quote or even a call back if you have less than 300 seats. There are no direct sales of PLM software by us, unless we can hit a home run.

We allow Folders, SubFolders, SubSubFolders, ZIP Folders, Notes, emails, Google Docs, Spreadsheets, jpegs, Messages, Telephone Numbers, chats, GoToMeetings, and tweets in our Feature Tree.

No Magnifying Glass, no Lightweight smoke and mirrors, no fake direct editing, all history based, well sorta.

We provide Sample files without errors, mostly.

Full Rendering Suite included(I love that word Suite).

No Animation functions, why? Because it's too damn difficult and we admit it. If you want Animations, go spend a $1,000.00 on…something.

Game video cards, only, are supported. No CAD video cards allowed at all, we support Direct X, all the way baby.

Finally, we wanted to prove, without a doubt, how much better our CAD software is when compared to Alxxxe CAD, mate. So, we bribed solicited 4 Alxxxe CAD Users and had them take a 250 question survey. At first the results didn’t look so hot, but then we “normalized” the results as per the Star Trek Academy method, and hey! We won!

What are you waiting for? Well? Call today! We know what you need, even if you don't!

Tomorrow, The 2011 DevonWorxs CAD Software Roll Out, Don't Miss It

Very Exciting,
Devon Sowell

Rockin' Friday's Back;Joe Cocker - Summer In The City (Live at the Across From Midnight Tour)

New HTML5 iFrame embed code from YouTube.

Any Ruby On Rails Consultants Out There? Please email Me.

http://rubyonrails.org/

devon@pdmsolution.com

Enable Automatic Login For Enterprise PDM

Tired of logging in over and over into Enterprise PDM (2010 shown)? Here's how to enable Automatic Login.

Cheers,
Devon Sowell
http://www.pdmsolution.com

My Newest Web Site, San Diego SolidWorks Tutoring

After providing this service more and more recently, I decided to create this web site. Follow this link to the new site; http://www.sandiegosolidworkstutoring.com

Cheers,
Devon Sowell
http://www.sandiegosolidworkstutoring.com
http://www.pdmsolution.com
http://www.3-ddesignsolutions.com

Dassault Systemes Issued Its Q2 Earnings Today

As a Dassault Systemes stock holder, I'm very interested in this information. Here in San Diego,CA we still have almost 13% unemployment. The Engineering R & D projects have really dried up around here. But, hope remains. This statement is very impressive.

I've highlighted a few facts in the statement. At the bottom, we see that SolidWorks sold 35,711 new seats in FY2009. 35,711 seats/240 working days = 148 seats sold per day. That's amazing to me.

Cheers,
Devon Sowell
http://www.3-ddesignsolutions.com
http://www.pdmsolution.com

2011 SolidWorks World Presentation Submittals

Here are my presentation submittals for 2011 SolidWorks World;

Hope to see you there.

Cheers,
Devon

NASCAR Racer Carl Edwards' Actions Reflect Poorly On NASCAR Racing

As a retired professional motorcycle racer, I enjoy watching NASCAR Racing. NASCAR Racing is not for everyone, but it has a rich American history and has the largest fan base of any American sport(!).

Many famous drivers raced NASCAR including Richard Petty, Mario Andretti, Dale Earnhardt Sr & Jr, and Jeff Gordon. Even if you don't follow NASCAR, these names are probably familiar to you.

NASCAR may be losing quite a few fans after the dangerous moves by Carl Edwards on July 17, 2010. Carl has a history of rough driving but he out did himself yesterday. As you can see in the video, he was in second place heading for the checkered flag and he INTENTIONALLY SPUN OUT THE LEADER TO WIN THE RACE. WHAT'S EVEN MORE INCREDIBLE, NASCAR CONDONED THE ACTION.

NASCAR should have disqualified Carl Edwards and declared Brad Keselowski (the victim) the winner. After the race Carl Edwards said "I couldn't let him win".

In my twenty years of racing around the USA, this is the most outrageous, unsportsmanlike, dangerous move I've ever seen. YOU DON'T WRECK ANYONE ON PURPOSE IN RACING, EVER. Why? It should be obvious that actions like that are extremely dangerous not only to the drivers, but to the fans in the grandstands too.

I ask this question, if a NASCAR driver INTENTIONALLY wrecked anyone, could that be considered manslaughter? If I was Brad Keselowski I'd find out for sure.

What's your opinion?