In the morning I saw some excellent content on 3D instant website.  No, it’s not new, and No, I’ve never used it either.  You can create password protected, highly interactive websites.  Phillip Thomas also did a really cool trick with a model on his iPhone.  He lost me a bit on the details, but I’ll be stalking him later to ask.  (Don’t worry Phillip, I’m harmless.)

The afternoon was the CAD manager’s boot camp, better named “Every SolidWorks User on the Planet should attend if you want to get the Most Return on your Investment”.  I guess that title was too long, but it was still quite well attended.  I was a bit worried when Greg Jankowski started talking about processors, memory, and hard drives, because I have always viewed hardware as a necessary evil. 

Here are a few of the great tips I picked up:

·         Excluding SolidWorks files from the virus scan process can help your performance. 

·         Windows 7 – 64 bit is really that much better than Vista 32 bit.     

·         I felt admonished for bad computer maintenance.   

SolidWorks TreeHouse is a great, FREE utility that you can use to lay out your project before you start hacking away at it.  A design manager could lay out an entire project in this visual format, assign custom properties and part numbers to the files, reuse old data, and automatically generate the appropriate SolidWorks Documents. 

From there you can check it into PDM, assign owners, and have designers “do the needful” to get the project in the works.   As a planning too, it will give you an idea of how much of the new design needs to be created from scratch, vs. reused.  
If used correctly, it reduce the number of files that need to be obsoleted in the process, and it could make it easier to assign resources early in the project. 

http://labs.solidworks.com/Products/Product.aspx?name=treehouse

I could really see it as a tool for the quoting process.  You can build up your design hierarchy without doing the detailed work, and quickly have a clear picture of the engineering scope ahead.  If the project fails to come to fruition, (never happens, right?) not much time is lost.  When the Purchase order comes in, the team can use the skeleton to jump right on it. 

There are a lot of companies that have all sorts of documentation they have painstakingly generated, and then left to degrade in anonymity on some distant server.  “We have a document about that.  Now where is that again?”  Wouldn’t it be great to have a link to it right on the task pane?  The task pane is really just a simple .html file that you can bend to your will.  (ok… it’s not so simple and full of java script apps, so messing with it isn’t for the weak hearted.)

The file can be found at:

C:\Program Files\SolidWorks Corp\SolidWorks\data\taskpane\solidworks resources\swresources.html

The first thing you will want to do is make a backup copy of the original file.  You can then open the file in Notepad and edit the html code.  The file is well annotated, and you can simply insert a new section containing your links. 

Here is the sample code I used.  In this case, the “http://...” address is the file path, and “Test Document” is the file name.

“<!-- This DIV is for DesignWorks section -->
        <a href="http://www.solidtutor.com/" target=new>
              <DIV ALIGN=CENTER> Test Document 1</a>
               </br>
        <a href="http://www.solidtutor.com/" target=new> Test Document 2</a>
               </br>
        <a href="http://www.solidtutor.com/" target=new> Test Document 3</a>
               </br></div>
<!-- end Longwell DesignWorks DIV --> 

How much you change it up is limited to your imagination. (And of course your html abilities.)

Why then are shops full of dog eared prints rolled up in a rubber band?  The answer has historically been that the incoming quality inspector needs the prints to check the parts against.  While the need is valid, the next step in the process goes off the grid.  The print is highlighted for critical dimensions, the dimensions and tolerances are ballooned and given numbers, and transposed, by hand, to an excel spreadsheet.  “On the record”, the digital spreadsheet doesn’t correspond to the digital print in any way. 

As a process analyst, I see this as a systematic flaw, and Inspection Expert bridges that gap.  Inspection Expert for SolidWorks will automatically populate your inspection chart and maintain corresponding notations on your SolidWorks documents.  Most importantly, if your drawings change, which unfortunately they often do, it only takes minor work to confirm that your inspection sheets are up to date.

Someday, quality engineers pouring over a drawing with a highlighter will go the way of drafters etching on velum, and Inspection Expert can bring Quality processes up to current engineering standards.  Check it out at: www.extensiblecad.com