Matt Lombard has just released his fourth book in his SolidWorks Bible series from Wiley Publishing.

Matt's new book, the SolidWorks Administration Bible, covers the essentials anyone charged with administering SolidWorks in a production engineering environment needs to know to be successful.

I ordered my copy of the book last weekend and it arrived just in time for me to spend the weekend giving it a read.  The book comes in at 550 plus pages and covers an extensive list of topics that a CAD administrator needs to know to keep their engineering department up and running with their SolidWorks software implementation.

Wiley Publishing has the table of contents posted here: http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/64/04705372/0470537264-1.pdf

In Matt's usual style this is not a book for beginners.  It is not a step by step, push this button tutorial.  Matt assumes the reader of the book will be an experienced SolidWorks user or IT professional who has been tasked with getting their company's SolidWorks implementation up and running smoothly for their users.

The book offers plenty of practical advice and recommendations, with the pro and con reasoning behind the recommendations.  Much of this advice is based on Matt's actual experience in the industry in helping companies get SolidWorks up and running.

From my perspective as a design engineer using SolidWorks the better part of everyday, who also wears the CAD admin hat for my company, Matt covers all the key topics in a well organized, easy to read style.  This book should be essential reading for anyone who has the duties of SolidWorks CAD administrator.

You can purchase the book from Amazon, or better yet, head over to Matt's blog and purchase the book directly from him.  The links for purchasing the book are at the bottom of the right sidebar at Matt's blog.  http://www.dezignstuff.com/blog/?p=2754

Cheers,

Anna

Phoenix Metro Area SolidWorks User Group
Next Meeting

Wednesday, August 12, 2009 (note weekday change)
4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Auer Precision Company
1050 West Birchwood
Mesa, Arizona 85210
www.auerprecision.com

Click For PDF with Map and Directions

Agenda:

Certified SolidWorks Professional Exam & a Tips and Trick Session

Guest Speaker:

Mike Puckett, Certification Specialist, SolidWorks Corp

Mike will be joining us to talk about the Certified SolidWorks Professional exams.  SolidWorks has been re-vamping their certification process over the past couple of years with online testing and new updated exams.  Mike will give us an update on all the new aspects of the exam.

Mike will also offer a session on Tips and Tricks in SolidWorks.  For those of you into mold design be sure to bring your mold design questions for Mike.  Before Mike joined SolidWorks last year, he worked for a mold shop in California and has vast experience in mold design using SolidWorks.

Please RSVP with the meeting sign-up form at www.phxswug.com so we can plan refreshments and pizza for everyone.

Looking forward to seeing you August 12th.

Cheers,

Anna

I recieved another solution for the modeling task of creating end cut-offs in a tube that are normal to the surface.  This particular solution was submitted by Charles Culp.  Charles solution also uses surfaces, breaking down the process creating each surface separately.  The key aspect to this solution is Charles use of a Ruled Surface to create the normal surface.

Ruled Surface Technique

Here is the SolidWorks 2009 file of the tube.

Cheers,

Anna

Check out Rob Jensen's Blog...

Rob has posted another solution, using Sheet Metal tools, for creating a normal to surface end cutoff on a tube.

http://www.robjensenblog.com/2009/06/02/creating-a-tube-with-normal-to-surface-end-cutoffs-option-2

Cheers,

Anna

This was a question posed a few weeks ago on the SolidWorks Forums.  How do you model a tube with an end cutoff normal to the surface of the tube?  This is the type of cut that would be created with a laser.  The tube is held in a chuck that rotates the tube around it centerline.  The laser head will move along the tube centerline to make the cut.  A google search on 'laser tube cutting' will get you several links to companies that do this type of work and have some neat videos of the lasers in action.

Tube With Trims Normal to Tube Surface

Using typical SolidWorks modeling techniques, Extrudes and Cuts with solid bodies, this looks like an impossible task.  This is where we, as SolidWorks users, need to think beyond our normal tools we use everyday and take a look at some of the other tools SolidWorks offers us.

This type of tube is very easy to make using Surfaces.  One of the cool aspects of surfaces is when you offset a surface it is offset normal to the seed surface.  We can take advantage of this behavior to model our tube.

Surface Offset

What we will do is sweep a surface, then trim the surface and finally thicken the surface to create the solid body tube.

Tube Created Using Surfaces

Here is a video of the process and the SolidWorks 2009 file of the tube.

A very easy task when you break out of the thought process to create the tube with solids.  There are all kinds of ways surfaces can be used to make your modeling projects much easier.  In the future, I will explore a few other techniques for modeling with surfaces instead of solids.

Cheers,

Anna