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‘Solidworks’

Get into SolidWorks World for Free… Be Quick About it.

12 Jan, 2012 by Josh Mings in CAD
3D Human CAD Models

How does jet setting over to San Diego sound? What if it involved sitting inside a conference center all day, absorbing vast amounts of knowledge about SolidWorks? I know my pasty white skin would appreciate that. SolidWorks World 2012 is coming up in a few weeks, and SolidWorks is interested in launching one of you over to San Diego for free. What’s the catch? Just drop by the SolidWorks blog and let them know what you create in SolidWorks. But you better hurry, there’s not much time left. Details after the jump!

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Reverse Engineering a Handheld Portal Device from a SolidWorks Model

05 Jan, 2012 by Josh Mings in CAD

Have a few of these laying around the house? If you’re a fan of Portal or Portal 2, the teleporting escape game from Steam, you’ll probably wish you did. Logan Siahaan and Stephen Hess are a couple of portal jumping fiends and wanted to do just that, so they see out to make their own handheld Portal device using a combination tools and processes to make it all happen.

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Art to Part: Designing a Mountain Bike Handlebar for
Performance, Comfort – Part 1

10 Aug, 2011 by Bruce Buck in CAD, DESIGN

This is a guest post by Bruce Buck, avid photographer, videographer and workstation geek at MySolidBox.com.

There’s one constant in product design – the development of new products. Shocking and unexpected I know, but when that development gets down to all the individual component parts of a larger product, the process gets a whole lot more interesting. Welcome to the ‘Art to Part’ series where we’ll be looking at the details that go into the design from start to finish. Today, we have a part that you would think is fairly simple, a mountain bike handlebar. This one however, is aimed at completely changing the world of endurance/marathon racing.

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The Ease of Architecture in SolidWorks: Project Frog

25 May, 2011 by Josh Mings in DESIGN

Creating amazing looking structures using SolidWorks… Many doubt it, others toy with it and still others know just how to blend the capabilities to make it possible.

Project Frog, out of San Francisco, CA, is one of the later. They’ve got sweet looking, highly efficient, modular building systems down in a big way. They do it all in SolidWorks and have even extending it to use with Luxology’s modo preset and rigging capabilities. From concept to construction each piece of structure is designed to fit together perfectly. Ryan Olson, Product Design Engineer for Project Frog was kind enough to provide the specifics of how they take on architectural structures and explains exactly why it works.

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Relive Your Childhood… Give Your Mom a 3D Printed Ashtray

13 May, 2011 by Jeffrey Matthias in FAB, NEWS

Running out of things to give your mother for her birthday/Christmas/Mother’s Day? (hint: you’re late on that last one.) Shapeways, an online 3D printing company which already has one of the largest materials offerings on the net, has introduced Glazed Ceramics 3D printing. One of their trumpeted examples is a coffee mug, so it will surely be good enough to print out an ashtray for your non-smoking mother, giving her two gifts in one: an ashtray she doesn’t really need or want and the memories of when, as a child fresh out of art class, you gave her a clay ashtray that she didn’t really need or want.

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The Eco Easy Button and the Design Crew Serving Up the Cool

11 Mar, 2011 by Josh Mings in DESIGN

There are times in life where you think up a design, so simple, so magnificent, it could change the properties OF THE UNIVERSE ITSELF… and then suck everyone into an awesome design crushing vortex. However, if one takes the power of that idea, shares it with some friends and enters it into the Staples Eco Easy Challenge, the results may still cause permanent awesomeness to the universe.

Four such design students have done just that. They have not only one, but TWO concepts designs in the finals for the Eco Easy Challenge. You can vote for them now or go on to read a little more about the designs, what inspired them and the challenges faced throughout the design process.

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Direct vs. Parametric… What Do the Users Have to Say?

24 Feb, 2011 by Josh Mings in NEWS

Sometimes when the sun is shining and there’s a light, misty acid in that air… you run screaming, jump into a barrel with your friends and push yourselves down a hill to escape the skin melt. Inevitably, the conversation in the barrel turns to the edgy discussion of Direct vs. Parametric modeling. For good reason too. It’s just the topic to get your mind off acid burn.

Such a discussion occurred today. Picture if you will, a webcast where the best and brightest of the CAD World gather together to discuss the age-old topic of Direct vs. Parametric modeling. In attendance, one 3D modeling software user and five 3D modeling software vendors. Certainly a lack of users. So now, it’s your turn. Direct or Parametric?

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SolidWorks World: n!Fuze. First Glimpse at ENOVIA in SolidWorks

25 Jan, 2011 by Josh Mings in NEWS

Earlier today, after sliding down a few escalators head first, I caught up with SolidWorks Product Manager, John Ellsworth, and the team responsible for introducing you to the first tool you’ll use to share, store and manage your SolidWorks data in a collaborative environment. You’ll see it first inside SolidWorks later this year, on the web as well and oh… looky here, they’ve even got a iPad app in development.

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Get Your Fresh, Hot ‘Death of SolidWorks’ Wallpaper Right Here.

10 Jan, 2011 by Josh Mings in NEWS, ROCKIN'

We’re just not going to let that “Kill SolidWorks” thing die… ahem. One comment from former SolidWorks CEO, Jeff Ray is all it takes for a firestorm to start whipping our sanity. What most people do not realize is that the is about creating a better product and providing some more options, not about violently poking a product with the sharp end of C++ stick while watching it bleed out.

Times are changing, and Develop3D has published a pivotal piece of industry insight that settles exactly that. It’s titled, The Death of SolidWorks? Yes, a question. A question that brings up other questions, but an article that puts a lot of the hype to rest, nails down the context and reveals what we should really be thinking about – the death of something much, MUCH bigger…

Now, that’s all well and good, but way too deep and serious for the likes of us. What we need are wallpapers. Dang big ones to put on our dang big screens that will make passer-by say, “DaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAANG!” Here they are.

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