Meet the three most important guys at SWW this Monday morning for the General Session.
Greg Krikorian, Patrick Maher and Tim Emmons are the door guards at today's General Session. They are ready for the great crowd that will be waiting. Thanks guys for the scoop on where the Press is sitting.
Cheers, Anna
Just got up and am anxious to get going for the first official day of SWW 2008. Today the convention center will be just buzzing with activity as all the participants arrive. The first general Session on Monday is always highly anticipated.
I have decided on the Breakout Sessions I am planning to attend today. I am going to go see Rob Rodriguez's session on PhotoWorks 2008: Photo Finish in the morning. Then I am off to a lunch time focus group hosted by Greg Jankowski. After that I will be attending the Design Automation with DriveWorks Xpress session. Followed up by Hybrid Modeling Techniques in SolidWorks presented by Matt Lombard.
The last session for the day will be the Ninth Annual SWUGN Summit hosted by Richard Doyle. The SWUGN Summit is always a highlight with all the user group leaders from all over the world convening. It is great to catch up with the other user group leaders and see what they have been up to over the year.
Wow, it is going to be a busy day, and I get to cap it off on Monday evening with the Press Dinner.
Last night's Welcome Reception was great fun. I hung around the SWUGN Booth most of the evening and got to meet a number of the people that I only know by name online in the forums. I got to meet Rodney Hall, Anne Yust, Dwight Livingston, Joy Garon, and Steve Calvert. Gerald Davis was manning the booth for part of the time so I had some time to chat with him. I am sure I am missing a few more folks. It is great to put faces to the names of the folks I particpate online with.
Spent some time over at the DriveWorks booth and was suprised to find out that they also keep up with the blogs and they even read mine. I spent a bit of time chatting with the founders of DesignWorks, Maria Sarkar and Ian Yates. DriveWorks is one of the programs that I wish to learn and to incorporate into our workflow at Auer. I think it, with the DriveWorks Xpress tool found in core SolidWorks 2008, will be a great solution to help automate the design of the Auer Precision product line items we manufacture and market.
Time to go join the group waiting outside the doors for the General Session....
Cheers,
Anna
Back to my hotel room for a couple minutes after heading over to the Press Center to pick up my badge and super, awesome SolidWorks Backpack filled with the agenda and items that I will need for the conference.
The Welcome Reception gets started shortly with the doors opening at 5:30 p.m.
Tomorrow morning the halls of the convention center will be filled with 4400 plus SolidWorks Users, Resellers, Exhibitors, Press and SolidWorks Employees. All waiting for the kick-off of the conference with the first General Session on Monday.
This evening the halls of the convention center are pretty calm.
Today I am holed up in my room at the Marriott. I have a design project that is about one really long day from being complete and ready for some tag team detailing between myself and one of the other designers back at Auer. So I am working on that today. Of course the NFL Playoff games are on the TV in the background. Go Pats, Go Green Bay..... :-)
I also posted some more benchmark data points to the Punch Holder Benchmark Google Spreadsheet today. This past week I had CAD2 from the UK ask me to post their benchmark numbers for systems that they offer to their customers. They have been getting a number of their customers asking them to run the benchmark. They wanted to have their numbers posted in the spreadsheet for their customers to be able to see how their systems stacked up against the competition.
I do plan on venturing out this evening over to the Partner Pavilion for the Welcome Reception. I will be sure to spend some time at the SWUGN Booth.
For many folks that come in early to SWW, they spend time on Saturday and Sunday participating in Alpha Testing of SW2009 and also Focus Groups on various SW topics. This year I will be participating in a Customer Services Round Table that Greg Jankowski is holding on Monday during lunch.
As usual there are way more Breakout sessions that I want to attend, then I will have time to attend. I am still mulling over my choices for each day.
This year I have been afforded the opportunity to attend SWW with press credentials. This opens up a whole new plethora of sessions and meetings that SW has planned for the press community. Sunday is a big day for the press as there is a full range of sessions planned for them with the movers and shakers of SW. Mike Puckett has coverage of what he learned at this morning's press session with Jeff Ray. Jason Raak has also done a post on what he learned during Press Day sessions. There are also a couple of press conferences during the week, these happen right after the General Sessions on Monday and Tuesday.
Monday night is the Press Dinner in the evening. We all will convene at the San Diego Wine and Culinary Center. Luckily it is a business casual dress affair. Being a design geek who is more comfortable hidden behind the screen, events like this are always a bit awkward for me. You want to use the right forks and spoons, not make any really stupid remarks, and hope you don't get a big piece of green salad stuck in your teeth.
I have been taking pictures and have posted them to my Flickr account in a SolidWorks World 2008 collection. I added a few more this morning with some daytime pictures of the view out of my hotel room. You can find them here.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/solidmuse/collections/72157603757506047/
Cheers,
Anna
I have arrived in San Diego after about a 6 1/2 hour drive from Phoenix. Not much traffic along I-8 and some interesting sites along the way.
The Imperial Dunes Recreation Area is always fascinating to me. Here are these Sahara Desert like sand dunes just west of Yuma, in California. A very popular spot for those that are into off road vehicles, four wheelers and sand rails.
Then after getting to the west side of the Imperial Valley you hit the mountains that are between the central portion of California and the coast. Very different, big boulder terrain. Some pretty step grades as you go from an elevation of zero feet above sea level to a bit over 4000 ft.
Along the top of this divide, where the Santa Ana winds can really get blowing there are the wind mills on the Tecate Divide. These wind mills are huge and are quite an impressive site as several of them are right on the edge of the highway.
I arrived at the Marriott just after dark. I am glad I got a Garmin GPS this past week. Made the drive into the center of San Diego a breeze. Just follow the directions of the nice voice direction the Garmin gave. Sent me right to the center of town into the Gas Lamp District. The Marriott is pretty easy to find as it is a huge two tower, twenty-something story structure, right next to the Convention Center.
All the SolidWorks Bloggers gathered for dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe in the Gas Lamp District. It was a great time to meet new friends and renew friendships with the rest of the group. The energy is high among the group as we all are pretty excited to be here in San Diego.
Several of the guys where taking pictures and I expect they will be posted soon on their blogs.
I have some pictures of my trip posted on my SolidWorks World 2008 collection of photos at my Flickr account.
Cheers,
Anna
Well I am about ready to jump in the Honda and head on out to SolidWorks World.... Whoo Hoo!!!
If you run into to me in the halls please introduce yourself and say Hi, I am looking forward to meeting you.
San Diego here we come....
Cheers,
Anna
SolidWorks World 2008 is almost here. In less than two weeks we will all be off to San Diego, CA for the biggest, baddest SolidWorks User Group Meeting of the year.
I am working on planning what Breakout Sessions I will attend this year. I have downloaded the Conference Program from the SolidWorks World 2008 website and will print out all 40 pages on Tuesday. The program highlights all the main events of the conference and also gives the detailed synopsis of each of the Breakout Sessions. I will use the pdf along with the Online Agenda to plan my attack for this years SolidWorks World.
My first SWW, 2006 in Las Vegas, I made it a priority to attend as many sessions as I could that focused on setting up SolidWorks and using SolidWorks in a network environment with multiple users. I also was interested in the sessions on setting up one's hardware. For those responsible for keeping your SolidWorks users up and running Greg Jankowski's CAD Managers Boot Camp on Sunday from 1:00 to 5:00 is a must attend session. The boot camp in Las Vegas was chock full of info and gave me the information I needed. I went home knowing I had our SolidWorks engineering environment, at Auer, set-up right.
For the 2007 SWW in New Orleans my breakout session focus was on large assemblies and sheet metal. As a stamping house we design sheet metal parts on a regular basis. Also, we were starting to get into bigger design projects with our ballistic press automation lines. Gerald Davis and Wayne Tiffany both have great sessions on sheet metal and both are presenting again this year in San Diego. Gerald is also doing a Hands-On session on Wednesday.
For SolidWorks World 2008 my breakout session focus will be on some of the features in SolidWorks that I do not use on a regular basis. I will be looking to find out more about DriveWorks Express, PhotoWorks, SolidWorks Routing and also how to better utilize the Hole Wizard functionality through customization of the database. I also want to sit in on Mark Biasotti's sessions on surfacing. I will finalize my schedule tomorrow evening and will post the sessions I have finally decided to attend.
The session I am most looking forward to, and is on the top of my list, is Phil Sluder and Ed Eaton's session on Solving Your SolidWorks Problems, Wednesday at 10:30. Among the many subjects that I am sure Phil and Ed are planning to cover they are going to take a look at the Punch Holder model that I have posted as a benchmark file. I have a series of posts on this file and the benchmark in the Workstation Performance section of my blog.
Ed tells me he has been analyzing the model and has come up with some very good rebuild times in the big patterns with his older computer. The model presents a great learning session for techniques that can be used to make your models more efficient and rebuild faster. Ed and Phil will be sharing their techniques in their breakout session.
SolidWorks World is a highlight of my year. The positive energy of the event with 4000 or so like minded SolidWorks geeks gets me fired up and starting off the new year right. Looking forward to meeting you all in San Diego soon.
Cheers.....
I have a request from one of my blog reader's, Jack (thanks for reading), to show how to customize the new Command Manager tabs in SolidWorks 2008. Here you go Jack this post is for you.... :-)
The most important thing to remember when customizing the user interface in SolidWorks, and also just using SolidWorks in general, is 'The Right Mouse Button (RMB) Is Your Friend'. RMB when in the different areas of the SolidWorks workspace will usually open up a whole world of options to the user. This is very true when it comes to customizing the user interface.
To start customizing the Command Manager you want to RMB with your mouse pointer located in the Toolbar or Command Manager areas of the SolidWorks UI. You will need to have an assembly, part or drawing document open when you start this process. You will also need to customize the UI for each of the different assembly, part and drawing environments as SolidWorks gives you a different UI depending on what is needed for each document type.
RMB in the Toolbar Area
A right mouse button in the Toolbar area will bring up the standard selection menu for the toolbars that are available in SolidWorks. You can also turn on/off the Command Manager and toggle the icons buttons to show with and without text. At the very bottom of the menu is the button to toggle the UI Customization Panel.
RMB on a Command Manager Tab Title
A RMB on one of the titles in the Command Manager tab will bring up a menu that will allow you to select the various pre-installed Command Manager tabs that are available for that particular SolidWorks environment (assembly, part or drawing). The pre-defined tabs will be different in each environment, so you will want to select this to see what is available for each SolidWorks document type. Again at the bottom of this menu is the button to launch the UI Customization Panel.
Toolbars Tab in the UI Customization Panel
From the first tab called Toolbars in the UI Customization Panel you can toggle some of the various features of the SolidWorks UI; tooltips, large/small buttons, large/small tool tips and also the new context sensitive icon menus that appear when you LMB/RMB, while making a selection in SolidWorks.
LMB/RMB Context Sensitive Icon Menus
It is from the second tab called Commands in the UI Customization Panel that you will start to customize your Command Manager tabs. From this panel you will be able to drag new icons into the Command Manager tabs or drag an icon out of the CM to remove it from the tab. This also works for the other toolbars that are available in SolidWorks.
RMB a Command Manager Title to Customize
After selecting the Commands tab so you can see all the buttons/icons that are available for you to use, you can drag and drop any of the icons into and out of any of the Command Manager tabs or Toolbars that you select. Also if you RMB on the Command Manager tab titles you will see a new menu which will allow you to hide/show tabs, add new tabs, delete/rename any custom tabs that you create, create a CM tab from an existing SolidWorks toolbar or create an empty CM tab to populate with icons. You can also take an existing Command Manager tab and copy it to the other SolidWorks environments (assembly, part or drawing).
Another trick that I have learned (Thank-you to Jim Wilkinson, Director, Usability Group, SolidWorks) is that you can also add those nice separators between groups of icons. Just RMB on an icon while you are customizing your CM tab and Toolbars and you can add the separator to Begin a Group.
RMB on an Icon to Add a Separator
There is that phrase again..... RMB, there is a definite trend going here. :-)
A couple other new areas in the SolidWorks 2008 UI are the S-Key Shortcut Toolbars and also the Heads-Up View Toolbar.
Selecting the S-Key while in the graphic area will bring up a toolbar that can be customized. This toolbar will allow you to set up and keep your most commonly used commands close to your work and not have to go the the menus in SolidWorks. This toolbar is also context sensitive depending on what you are doing in SolidWorks at the time you invoke the S-Key.
S-Key Shortcut Toolbar
You can customize this toolbar by a RMB with your mouse cursor over one of the icons in the toolbar, then drag and drop icons to and from the toolbar. The toolbar can also be re-sized by dragging the edges of the toolbar container.
The last area of the UI I am going to talk about in this post is how to customize the Heads-Up View toolbar at the top of the graphics window. Again you can RMB with your mouse cursor in the Heads-Up View toolbar to get a list of commands that are available to be added to this toolbar depending on which SolidWorks environment you are in (assembly, part or drawing).
Heads-Up View Toolbar
If you do not want to see any of the icons in this area just toggle off all the icons. To get them to appear again, RMB with your mouse in the area the Heads-Up View toolbar should be and RMB to toggle what you wish back on.
After you have spent time to get the perfect SolidWorks user environment for the type of work you do you will want to be sure to back-up the customization you have done. You can do this by using the SolidWorks Copy Setting Wizard. This will copy all the registry keys that are created in SolidWorks when you do your customizations. Take the file that is created and save it to a backed up location out on your network.
SolidWorks Copy Settings Wizard
You can find the Copy Settings Wizard in the SolidWorks Program group under the Windows Start button.
Lastly, if you have made it this far in the post..... Thanks for reading. :-)
Here is a link to a pdf with my current SolidWorks 2008 Command Manager tabs.
http://acrodesigns.typepad.com/SW2008_UI/Toolbars_Revisited/SW2008_Toolbars.pdf
Cheers....
Since getting my new Lenovo Thinkpad laptop I have spent quite a bit of time over the past couple of holiday weekends, getting it set-up. Windows Vista is new to me for an operating system. I have also installed and have been using SolidWorks 2008 for some of the production jobs I have going here at Auer. I am in the process of rolling out SW08 to our users.
When I started testing with SolidWorks 2008 on examples of typical design projects we do at Auer, my initial instincts where to set-up my own custom tabs called Assembly, Parts and Drawings. I would then turn off all of the pre-installed SolidWorks Command Manager tabs. I have pictures of my original tabs shown in my blog post I did on the subject back in early Dec.
Now that I have been using SolidWorks 2008 a bit more I have decided that I need to customize the CM tabs, but it is best (for me and my workflow)) to customize the existing pre-installed tabs, before adding my own custom tabs. I think for many, many users the pre-existing tabs will cover most of their needs. The pre-existing tabs also seem to behave better and toggle properly when switching between the assembly, part and drawing environments. SW08, SP2.0ev is addressing some of these issues, but it looks to still be a work in progress.
Here is a link to a pdf with my current SolidWorks 2008 Command Manager tabs.
http://acrodesigns.typepad.com/SW2008_UI/Toolbars_Revisited/SW2008_Toolbars.pdf
One of the objectives of my set-up was to have consistency between where the icons are placed on each tab. For the most part each of the key zones of the tabs have the icons ordered the same between all the different tabs for each SolidWorks environment (assembly, part & drawing).
Since I have been working with the trifecta of new Microsoft compliant UI environments (Windows Vista, Microsoft Office 2007 and SolidWorks 2008) I am seeing the logic of all the UI changes in SW2008. I very much like where the new UI is headed when seen in the context of the future of Microsoft products. There are and will continue to be some bumps in the road, but for the most part I like what I see.
Cheers......
Now that we have our SolidWorks 2008 Home Use License in order and working I made time to get SolidWorks 2008 loaded up on my development computer. I want to get a project or two under my belt before I roll SW2008 out to the rest of the company. As everyone knows by now the UI is totally new, which may have some of our guys jumping out of first floor windows in fright..... :-) I need to get ahead of the guys with the UI so I can answer the inevitable questions I will get.
Along with my regular Product Line work I have two new small progressive die designs to complete. These prog dies are perfect candidates for me to do some real world design in SolidWorks 2008. They are not to complex, and will work most of the areas of SolidWorks that we use on a daily basis. I have actually completed one of the designs over a couple long weekends (what better way to spend Thanksgiving weekend) and it is in the shop being built. The design work in SolidWorks 2008 went well with no major heartburn or head scratching.
After going through all the System Options in SolidWorks and getting them set up to my satisfaction my next task was customizing the new Tabs that SolidWorks has in the Command Manager. Here is what I have so far.
Parts Toolbar
Assembly Toolbar
Drawing Toolbar
I am still working through what I would like to have on the S-Key shortcuts. I have been getting rid of most of the fly outs and replacing them with just the individual commands that I need. I am not fond of fly outs.
I really like the new UI and am looking forward to getting more proficient with it. I am not one that has a lot of keyboard shortcuts. Never have been able to get used to using them. I attribute that to my ten or so years of using GM's Corporate Drafting System (the General's main CAD system in the 80's and 90's). There was no such thing as keyboard shortcuts in that system, so I am very used to selecting commands on screen with the mouse. The S-Key shortcuts are going to get heavy use in my workflow and really reduce my mouse miles.
It will be interesting to see how everyone goes about setting up their UI. Mike Puckett is showing his toolbars over on his blog. Very different then what I have set up.
Speaking of mouse miles, here are a few programs that you can use to track your mouse movement on screen. Mouse-Clocker measures the amount your mouse has traveled on screen. Mouse-Odometer also measures mouse miles traveled. Mouse Heatmap gives you a visual heatmap graphic of your mouse cursor activities. For those geeky types these look like fun applications.
Cheers...
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