Richards SolidWorks Blog

Being Absolutely Too Sure of Things.

Well I thought I could be absolutely sure of certain things in life and it was an absolute.  As it turns out that is not always the case and can get you into trouble unless you consider how it might apply to what you do with designs and other creations.  This article can be an eye openor for many of us.  It sure was for me.  This article is short and full of pictures.  Download amazing_puzzle_ponders_12_2_08.doc

Learning the Hard Way

Well Folks,

                I had my first real experience using Photovoltaic cells today.  I had a little left over allowance and headed for one of my favorite places that I think we all have heard by the name of Radio Shack.  While browsing around I spied the section were the Photovoltaic Cells were placed.  Soon I realized that I would just have to buy four cells at almost five bucks a piece and a very small motor at a few dollars.  I have a big need to do a science experiment that will position a model that will always face into the sunlight.  This would be a test of the controller that I would use to do that with.  A larger scale would come later on if I could get this prototype to work properly.

                I got out the soldering kit to attach very small wires onto each one of the cells for a negative and positive.  With everything in place I thought that I had better use a small heat sink adjacent to the soldering point that would absorb some of the heat so I would not destroy the cell because each one is able to produce one half of one volt each and I needed all that I bought.  This is a good practice to do especially if you are not sure of what might happen; so go that extra step to prevent any damage.

                With steady hands and the cell already in a small vise cushioned all around with tissue paper, I placed a small heat sink on the edge where I had to attach a wire to.  Snap, crackle and pop now has a new meaning to me.  With ever so gentle pressure it cracked right down the middle rendering the piece absolutely useless.  I stopped right there and put everything away and just called it a day.  These silicon wafers are so delicate that it is truly amazing to me how they can be sent up into outer space and used to power our International Space Station and satellites so they can do their jobs.  I felt like a bull in a China Shop literally, even after trying to work extremely delicately because I knew they were very fragile.  Of course that killed the chance that I wanted to experiment with for the ability to keep things facing into the sunlight.  So I will now have to re-think the solar experiments for that project I wanted to post on the teachers SolidWorks web site.  When this had happened I soon afterward remembered an appropriate saying.  "The easiest way to do a hard job is to let someone else do it."  It made a lot of sense to me at that moment.  Not that it was a hard job but that it was just plain hard to do. So now I have a much fonder respect for these little miraculous energy producers.  I am aware of my poor eyesight and now I know something else.  I now understand more fully about an old Jewish saying, "cheap can be expensive" also applies here.  They did have one all made up on the shelves for another ten dollars. J  In a split second I was half way to that one.  Oh well.  Live and learn I suppose.  I’m just so very happy that I wasn’t on a Martian Base Colony trying to fix one of these things in order to reestablish communications with earth.  I might have been sleeping outside of the habitat tonight or day or however long it would be before being allowed to rejoin the colony again.  J  So anyone out there contemplating doing a similar thing you might want to learn something from this experience.  Bye.

Richard Williams

My Search for Knowledge

Maplesoft and my Search for Math Knowledge                      by Richard Williams 6/16/08

           I only want to be understood.  There will be a series of article blogs written about my personal search to retrieve my lost knowledge and my interactions with the recently released version 12 of Maplesoft Math Cad.  This study should prove interesting I think because it has been well over fifty years since I last sat in an Algebra class with a math instructor capable of teaching this subject.  This application can work smoothly with the SolidWorks program, so we shall see about that as well.

        Okay, I'll admit to being an old dog and just to give you a hint about my entrance into this world, I got here two years to the day before the first atomic bomb was ever dropped during a war.  Having said that, I want to state here and now that I have a personal quest to re-learn something that has long escaped me.  Due to time counted in years starting back in the previous millennium and for the lack of using it, I find myself wanting and actually needing to know basic Algebra and advanced Mathematical calculation skills.  My research into solar energy for school science projects, including other things I do and also to work with and collaborate with the local university professors, requires me to do this. It will help me to relate my ideas, into a language that is universally accepted in these hallowed halls of higher thinking.  Just to describe things I “suspect” or those things I "feel" in my experiments is not enough for good science and very un-scientific of me.  I need to provide documentation of my ideas in both a mathematical form as well as a digital graphing plot format in order to properly convey my thoughts to the intelligentsia that I will be working with.  This is all made possible for me now by the use of the Maplesoft 12 Math Application.  It not only can teach me the Math that I once was a decent user of at the basic levels but to combine the best of both worlds in the language of ideas, using formulas with text annotations and world class digital, interactive and animated graphing plots in both 2D and 3D.  All of these can be combined easily into one professional looking and easily understood document.  I certainly can use all the help I can get with the presentations of my ideas and this is the greatest tool ever to do it with.  Yes, I could be totally wrong in my science and experimentations but the math formulated solutions and visual graphs and charts will provide insights into where my thinking might be wrong, thus leading to a better understanding and possible corrections.  No, the Maplesoft application will not make me a scientist of notable accomplishments; it does have to have something to work with at least.  But just to be able to talk in the language of those that know how science and math interact will be a great help and I can now be heard and even understood.  I don’t expect to be absolutely proficient in all areas of math with this new tool but I will use Maplesoft to be my go-between or universal translator from my world to theirs.  Stay tuned as I learn things I never knew and to re-learn things I have forgotten.  If Maplesoft can do this for me then it can do it for everyone out there that would be reading this report to begin with.  Sincerely,

My SolidWorks Buddy

Using SolidWorks for Fun

                                                                                                                      By Richard Williams, 4/28/08

         I cannot remember who said it but I believe it to be true that when you want to expand your knowledge with the use of SolidWorks, do something different and creative that you enjoy doing outside of work.  That is a very true statement.  When you “play” with different ideas and use the application to help you visualize things you want to experiment with, it can be a very enjoyable time that you spend with your buddy, SolidWorks.  I don’t know if anyone has ever described SolidWorks as being a “buddy” but when I want to get away from it all and spend time developing my ideas from my creative side that is what I do.  No, I am not a recluse, introvert or hermit if you are thinking that. Since there are so many activities that I do during the week that bring me to family and friend gatherings, meetings, speaking engagements at schools and this wonderful land of entertainment in Las Vegas, I do need some time alone with my buddy.  Being creative means jumping out of that box or confinement to standards that you use in your working life.  Time alone without any restrictive rules keeping you bottled up and safely inside of a set procedure or format, to try things that might work, could work, will work, if only you can come up with that right combo.  Who knows what you might be able to create if you just had no restrictions placed upon your work as you play. 

          I work mainly in the orthogonal world and use very little curves and surfacing in my projects.  That is something that needs to be corrected by me because working like that is limiting, restrictive and does not conform to the true world we live in.  Look around from where you are sitting and see the world around you with curves and shapes that are not just up and down and from side to side.  I have cultivated a wonderful relationship with my buddy.  I sketch things and extrude them into 3 dimensional figures and my buddy forgives me those stupid mistakes I make and warns me about where I did the wrong thing.  It talks to me in nice pleasant tones as long as I leave the sound off.  Okay Andy Rooney, eat your heart out.  I cannot count the number of times I was jolted out of a quiet and somber playful and creative mode with a harsh discordant sound, so now I don’t get heart attacks from my buddy warning me about something I did wrong.

        So what makes this special relationship between my buddy and I work so well?  The simple answer here is that I don’t know.  I enjoy it if that is an answer you might believe.  There is very little pressure in my life at this time as I am retired now and get to play more, plus there are no schedules and work commitments that I must meet.  (In actuality there are even more of those now then when I was working.)  When working on heavy electrical construction jobs, when you got home after physically working hard in all different kinds of elements and weather conditions too, you more or less wanted to get cleaned up, eat and settle down for the night.  The things that I have experienced during this long career are enough to fill a very large book.  After all we made things work that were designed by you designers and engineers and architects.  A great career but now I mostly sit behind a desk when I am not out running around doing all the things that I volunteer to do.  That gives me time to think and play with ideas that might help others.  I experiment with solar energy but mostly I enjoy designing school science projects that can be used by teachers from all over the world.  Do you know about those very popular bridge building science classes in which our youngsters design and build their own structures and then test them out with weights?  Well, lots of times kids do those projects in schools with monies that teachers lay out from their own pockets for rather expensive Balsa woods.  So I took it upon myself to find an alternative material.  I experimented with paper and cardboard and did have lots of success with it.  However, it wasn’t exotic enough for me.  I wanted to use a material that was not only cheaper than Balsa wood (used in model airplanes and boats) but more easily obtainable.  I’m building the actual structure right now of the digital model screen shot I am placing down below here and this one is made from Fettuccini Pasta.  Yup, you read that right.  You have to be certifiable to come up with ideas like this but believe me I am not the very first to use this material.  Some Elmer’s Wood Glue, steady hands, a good design, patience of a saint, some simple tools, nice music and a certification in being crazy all works together to bring you the “Bridge Fettuccini.”

It should be obvious to anyone looking at my design that I am not an engineer, designer or architect.  But could I do any worse than the bridge down below here?  Amazing isn’t it?

I sit on a curriculum committee here in my school district and it is our job to choose courses and course materials like software applications for our students that are handpicked to attend our six Academies of the Sciences.  This is a very gratifying job and one that I take very seriously in helping to bridge their education to what they need to know in life and as a career choice.   (Pun Intended)  As far as I am concerned there is no more important job that I could do.  Yes, I do get laughs when I mention to the adult  school officials and others what my bridge is made of.  But where else can you create something that if it doesn’t turn out right, you can eat it?  Here’s hoping that someone, somewhere, at sometime, in some way might be amused, informed, inspired or even given a good laugh by reading this.

Bye for now.

   

A Good Place to Start; The Beginning

Additive Combinations

                              By Richard Williams 4/13/08

        Good ideas come and go and some of them are never even given more than a quick read or listen to.  Sometimes our biggest obstacles to our own progress comes in keeping with what is tried and true and not leaving our security blankets of where we are least stressed.  Even our bodies like to stay at an even pace or level of output, to what our normal basal condition is.  Take for instance this analogy of what athletes’ train to do.  They keep pushing the envelope further and further keeping their training at body stress levels that are not normal for most of us.  In so doing their bodies adapt to much stronger outputs of energy performance levels to succeed in their sports.  You cannot separate the body from the mind in training like this.  The mind must accept the body’s feedback of pain in order to grow and progress to higher levels than what it is used to.  The body must accept the brains commands to push harder and harder.  Two separate systems in the same organism working in harmony towards a common goal.

        In a way that is how SolidWorks and those that use it, form a pact with each other; an additive combination, to keep on performing better and better.  Has anyone out there achieved perfect harmony with SolidWorks?  Have you used every tool and created everything that is possible to create with it?  I doubt it but if you have done this please let me interview you.  Limits to what we can do are mostly self imposed.  SolidWorks is huge as a database of possibilities.  Well sharpened and tuned tools are given to you to be able to design in this digital language format that we all seek to master to a certain degree.  Yet that language keeps expanding and evolving into better tool sets and abilities.  At the same time if we add to our own knowledge in the use of it as the application grows in its abilities, only a visionary can guess as to where we will finally be someday.  Perhaps there will be no need for clicking with a user input device like a mouse.  These possibilities are already here and in short order you might be able to buy that type of application for your work.  I have seen on line demonstrations using this concept and maybe you have too.  So how is this progression into uncharted waters done using a world class MCAD application like SolidWorks?  Well first of all don’t try to learn everything at once.  Your ship will sink when it hits that first ice berg.  Those built in lessons will only take you so far as a beginner and they were only meant to be an introduction for you anyway.  But you have a number of great video tutorial systems out there and a few of them are really great and they can help anyone in understanding how to work with SolidWorks.   Of course some are better than others, starting from the basics and progress to wherever you would like to be at.  Consider it an investment into your job and future.  It might even be possible to use it as a tax deduction for job training but check with an accountant first, don’t just quote me as proof.  If the USA really wants and needs more designers, engineers, scientists and architects then this should be a legitimate deduction as it might already be.  To continue now, take one lesson at a time, do that lesson and before you go to the next one stop!  Take the time to replicate that lesson yourself inside of SolidWorks.  Place the finished SolidWorks file in a special folder stored someplace on board your computer of a default location.  Not only does it reinforce the last lesson you learned but you can always refer back to it as an example of your own making.  I know it helps me a lot.  “I used to have a photographic memory but these days I am out of film.”  You probably heard that one, huh?  But my friends, as a Chinese proverb says and I for one believe in it, “A little, often, is a lot.”  Try this method out for yourself and take it systematically and steady.  Set a limited number of lessons in video tutorials or chapter readings and stick to it.  Before you know it you will not only be able to do so much more yourself and for your boss and remember no matter where you go in life those “tools” go with you.  This blog article was not meant to advise the pros out there but the new generation of users that will someday be asked to fill our shoes.  Yes, I do have a little shoe.  Hopefully this article will have helped someone, somewhere, at sometime, with something that could help them.  Sincerely,