For those of you who didn't spend the 80 minutes watching the spot from Google I/O, Google Wave is a live collaborative environment that incorporates many of technologies we use everyday into one sandbox. Think of one place to email, instant message and create collaborative, topical conversation in a threaded live document in the cloud. Sounds too good to be true, huh? Well, it is early and like many new technologies or services, Google Wave is still in the "Geek Stage" so many of it's users are people who enjoy the bleeding edge. So I thought as a good measure of the general public's ability to understand Google Wave I would try to explain this to my wife who is simply a user of technology and really doesn't care how it works, just that it does. She nodded in agreement that it made sense but I still felt that even though it made sense she would probably not be the first one to jump on the Wave.

E-mail but Not:

Similar to email, Wave has an inbox, folders and even an indication that new activity has occurred, however there are some fundamental differences that make Wave a much better tool for communicating with a group of recipients. When trying to send a message in email to your team, you add them to the "To:" area and then you type the message, essentially sending a read-only document to them for review. When they reply, they must reply to everyone in the team in order to keep the conversation contiguous. The problem grows when you want to add people to this conversation.

Wave is different in the conversation is centralized and it's recipients gather around the content, keeping it in sync with everyone in the group while extending editing to everyone. This makes the conversation resemble that of face to face meetings while ensuring everyone leaves with notes! Ever compare notes after a roundtable meeting only to find someone wrote something down you forgot?

IM but Not:

Whether it is Skype, AOL, Yahoo, GTalk, or Live Messenger, instant messaging has become a very common communication tool within teams due to the real-time nature of these services unlike that of email. IM is still mostly a 1:1 real-time tool, allowing two parties to chat and even video conference on a whim. Group chat can also be a productive way to sync teams but sometimes that content is not captured and has limited content creation tools available.

Collaboration is enhanced further in Wave by also making editing real-time. If more than one individual is editing the wave, others in the wave can watch them edit and even type each character in the instant it is happening in the Wave. This essentially brings chat into the communication when it makes sense; within the working environment about the topic at hand.

Gadgets, Bots and Extensions:

One of the things that makes the platforms successful is their ability to be extended through community need and programming. If you look at successful platforms in technology today, Firefox, iPhone, most computer operating systems, they all have a common thread; extensibility through applications. Gadgets are essentially embedded apps that perform a multitude of services as a feature of the conversation. I tested a few of these: Google Maps (maps with collaborative markup), Trippy (trip planning), Napkin (napkin sketching) all which extend the platform for various collaborative specialties. I can imagine once this platform is out, this is an area that 3D might be able to take into account, building interactive 3D markup and viewing gadgets like eDrawings (hint hint SolidWorks!).

Bots, on the other hand, can be added to the wave, similar to a contact, and will perform various actions based on activities happening within the wave. I have used four to date, Tweety (integrated twitter client) and Bitly bot (integraded Bit.ly shortening for URLs, Notify (Email notification) and XMPP (IM notification). In the 80-minute video, Google shows one that does real-time language translation while multiple parties talk called Rosy.

The Verdict:

It is still very early but after using it for the past week I really don't ever want to use email again. I use Yammer as an internal "CB radio" to allow group chat, fact finding and short topic conversation. Other projects are buried in a number of local tools that are shared via email which is slow hard to keep in sync with everyone involved. I can imagine using this platform for all sorts of projects but see a future as a cloud-based platform for all sorts of industries to build in real-time collaborative extensions into tools like CAD, Simulation, PDM/PLM and the like. The point is, providing a platform like Google Wave that could make design teams more cohesive and in sync, the more efficient they become. ~Lou

SolidWorks Enterprise PDM can be a solution that falls in the latter category, making testing for larger installs difficult, since it typically requires you to upgrade not only the clients but also the archives, databases and replicated servers as well.  Seems like a lot of hard work to create a test environment or take a chance on moving a production system to bata-based backbone.

This past week, SolidWorks is offering an easier way to those who want to take part in the SolidWorks 2010 Beta program, to test the coming release of Enterprise PDM without all the headache.  To do this, SolidWorks is hosting the archive and database servers on their infastructure in order to provide a hosted vault, requiring only the end user to install a beta client on their local system.  This eliminates the hassle of locating an additional system, installing all the server-side components and simply allows customers to test out what 2010 EPDM will bring to the table.

In order to take advantage of this offering you must email "epdmbeta@solidworks.com" with the subject line "EPDM BETA SIGN UP".  The retuned email will contain instructions to get started with your hosted testing environment.  Currently, there are two options for beta testing via the "SolidWorks EPDM cloud":

1) Connect to an existing vault using the server name (IP address) and Username provided in your invitation email and connecting the the "Betatest" vault that has been created.

2) Create your own vault on the hosted server, allowing an import of your current vault settings and essentially replicating your production setup.  This option requires a bit of host file configuration but overall the process is standard operating procedure (SOP) for most who have setup any multi-site server configuration.

For many, this will lower the barrior of entry to beta testing Enterprise PDM 2010 and hopefully allow the evalution procedure to upgrade to be started much earlier than it would otherwise.  ~Lou

This week SolidWorks' 2010 beta program moved into it's third round (Beta 3) of testing and with this usually follows two waves of pre-releases and finally FCS (first customer ship).  Beta testing is somewhat of a cult at SolidWorks, pulling in dedicated users in droves to play, test and bug squash everything in sight.  Many of us testing SolidWorks' newest creation are looking at as many of the hundreds of enhancements and trying to determine which ones will actually play a role in "enhancing" our use of SolidWorks on a daily basis! Since SolidWorks 1999, I have watched the new releases roll out of Concord with "Over X hundred New Enhancements", however each release has a handful of highlights that leave their mark.

SolidWorks 2010 follows suit, bringing hundreds of new enhancements, all of which bring different levels of impact and importance to the variety of users in the community.  This year there are 5 that mark SolidWorks 2010 as a release to pay attention to.

Properties driving the filter can be either numeric or non-numeric and once sorted, the graphical display can be customized with colors to give visual clarity to the assembly. By right clicking on the color gradient on the left you can add sliders to change the scope of that color spectrum.  This color control can also be coupled with component visibility by using the horizontal drag bars located at the top and bottom of the list.  Similar to the Rollback Bar in the SolidWorks FeatureManager, these bars allow the user to focus in on the components of interest.

The filtering properties also can include equations (i.e. multiplying the quantity by a numeric property) as well as allowing the user to change property values, i.e material selection.  These criteria lists can also be saved out to a separate file (text or Excel) for outside manipulation.

Configuration Publisher:
SolidWorks 2009 brought the Property Tab Builder, streamlining the way users add file properties (metadata) to their parts, assemblies and drawings by providing a graphical form building application.  In SolidWorks 2010, a similar interface has been integrated into SolidWorks configurations.  In addition to the previous capabilities, Configuration Builder gives the user the freedom to build configuration options without having to explicitly specify every possible combination.  This makes SolidWorks do the work on the fly, modifying your part or assembly and generating new configurations as they are built.

This capability also seems to fill the gap between using SolidWorks configurations and DriveWorksXpress.  SolidWorks configurations add variation to existing documents however many users want a way to add additional configurations to those files without creating new documents (DriveWorksXpress).  Now using Configuration Builder, the user has the ability to create configs on the fly and then use them in design automation with DriveWorksXpress.

Not only can you use this with parts that have existing design tables but as an added bonus, this new interface give a streamlined conduit to submit your generated models up to the web-based model sharing site, 3D Content Central.

Sheet Metal Enhancements:

Hands down, this release has more sheet metal enhancements than any other since maybe SolidWorks 2001Plus.  SolidWorks 2010 finally extends the multi-body environment to sheet metal that was given to parts back in 2003's version.  This gives users more flexibility to design sheet metal similarly to the way the actual design has to be manufactured.  A great example of this would be using the edge flange in a "bridging" maneuver to join two parallel, same thickness sheet metal bodies into one.  These bodies could be created individually or mirrored then joined and even welded to complete the finished design.

I remember back when SolidWorks 2003 shippe and how the impact was not just only that it now supported multi-body parts, but how that brought about a whole line of features that could harness the multi-body environment.  In this case many of the common part, multi-body tools are also utilized like mirror, split, and even insert body.

In addition to multi-body support, 2010 also brings improvements to an area that lends itself to challenge, closing corners.  Closed corners now can support cuts across flanges, large radius bends, closes on parts created from the Insert Bends commnad or the 2009 tool Convert to Sheet Metal as well as faces of large cornered parts. Hems have also been improved to handle a number of complexities and flat patterns bring additional clairity to self-intersection and inner/outer faces.

A big enhancement for sheet metal is flat patten output.  Typically manufacturing requires DXF/DWG files of the flat pattern and this process used to require the SolidWorks user to create a drawing for DXF/DWG export.  SolidWorks 2010 adds this as a right-click menu from the Flat Pattern feature, removing the drawing step completely and replacing it with a DXF/DWG Cleanup preview window.  This dialog allows for common view manipulation and the ability to remove any superfluous entities without leaving the part mode.

Event Based Motion Analysis: (Simulation Professional)
Hints of this were also debuted at SolidWorks World 2009 but it wasn't until I tried this new capability that I started to think about the impact this could have with some creative 3rd party applications.  Being a robotics and automation engineer in my previous life, this new capability intregued me.  Many dynamic simulation tools on the market follow the same approach as many animation tools; the Timeline.  Timelines are great for making something look good but when it comes to tuning an automation system, timing registers are not reliable and that is why sensors are a key to today's automation.  SolidWorks 2010 ups the intelligence of Motion Simulation with event based motion analysis, creating motion triggers with interference, proximity and dimensional sensors as well as completion or start/finish times of previous tasks.

Complimenting these real-world triggers that are incorporated into the motion, drivers like constant speed & servo motors, forces and torques can start, stop or be changed on the fly based on other triggers in the analysis.  This complexity mimics that of real automation systems thus allowing users to "tune" tasks to increase things like thruput.

What further interests me is the integration of SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Aquisition) programming tools like LABView and Rockwell Software's RSView. This would extend the ability to virtually test a PLC program with a virutal model inside of SolidWorks without having to hook it up the actual automation system for testing.

Simulation Design Studies: (Simulation Professional)
The goal of virutal testing is to come out with an optimized design that fits the scope of the product. Bringing clairity to this goal is key to using a simulation tool like SolidWorks Simulation. For the past few years, Simulation (formly COSMOSWorks) has had a few nice tools for optimizing deisgns, one of which was Design Scenerios.  Design Studies in 2010 combines that of Design Scenerios and Optimization (shape optimization) into a single interface.  This new interface integrates nicely into the now standard lower-tabbed area where Motion and Simulation studies already reside and give access to both design scenerios and optimization studies alike.  The new interface also has three distinct views: Variable View (above), Table View and the Results View.

Optimization studies add parameters that contain a range of values, descrete values or a range of values with a step.  This enhancement gives the user much more flexibilty since the previous version only allowed range, which doesn't lend itself well to stock sizes. Design Scenerios works similar to previous releases except that 2010 does add real-time previewing of geometric changes (i.e. scenerios involving dimentional change).

Overall the most power part is the result viewing, which has been completly redesigned to not only show graphical feedback for the scenerios and optimized designs but a tabularized resultant area containing a visual pass/fail (green/red respectivly) of each itteration.

These are just 5 of the enhancements that are coming in SolidWorks' lineup in 2010 and there is no shortage of goodies.  I am thrilled to see that Spilt Line will now allow multiple entities to be split in one command and that Simulation brings back the ability to select faces as shell elements without having to do a number of surfacing commands as it did back in 2008.

Overall the release looks strong and promised to be more efficient with common tasks and to boost performance as it does in every relase.  In premininary testing, SolidWorks 2010 seems to run fine on existing hardware and does not require any major upgrades to hardware from what I can see.  The 2010 beta program is still going on and Beta 3 has just started so if you want to test this fucntionality for yourself, go sign up! ~Lou

Let's face it, sustainability is typically not at the forefront of our minds when we design because we are honed in on F^3 (fit, form and function) as well as production costs (materials and manufacturing). Since SusX does not take into account these design aspects in it's evaluation, may critics has pitched negative comments toward the tool expressing that if SusX does not determine the costs associated with "Greener" processes and/or material selections then it's value proposition is missing. Obviously cost is a major decision factor when it comes to how a product will be manufactured however additional insight can be a good thing.

SustainabilityXpress gives the user a better (green) or worse (red) assessment to choose locations, materials and manufacturing processes that are better than the previous selection. You will still be required to do your homework on cost differences in the material or processes, but using each as a control variable you can determine a selection within budget that is more environmentally friendly.

One tool of SusX that seems to be getting praise is the "Find Similar Material" option. It allows the user to select search criteria for materials that match (any, greater than, less than or approximate) to the material's physical properties like density, yield strength, thermal expansion, and alike. Whether you use this tool for the live environmental impact dashboard below it or just a great tool to find an alternate material that better meets your needs, it is at least worth a look.

SustainabilityXpress is available on the SolidWorks LABS site for download and for a great review and layout of the interface, check out SolidSmack for his recent post on SusX. Remember, awareness starts small and giving all SolidWorks users another tool to help evaluate design decisions inside the CAD tool is a great first step. ~Lou

For example, Apple and Microsoft have been competitors for over 30 years and have many similarities to this battle going on in the CAD industry. Apple, in today's market, is focused on convincing consumers to "switch" to their computers, touting power without complexity. While Microsoft, on the other hand, has been the standard everywhere, especially in business, and has gobbled up over 90% of the PC market. If you had to generalize the markets or areas of expertise for each of them, and there are many to choose from, you might believe that Apple's stronghold is in the artistic and media production industry (Print/magazine layout & design, picture/movie editing & production, creative markets). Microsoft, for the past 20 years, has been the ubiquitous business software company, delivering high end, powerful enterprise and IT infrastructure solutions. While powering much of the corporate world, Microsoft offers a seemingly unlimited list of applications from which to choose. That being said, it would be foolish to assume that if you use Microsoft products, you are unable to be creative; or that using Apple products limit your ability be productive in the corporate world.

Direct editing, like Apple, brings powerful toolsets to CAD, helping engineers and designers conceptualize creative ideas and verify fit, form and function without investing the overhead of approach. History-based tools, on the other hand, have been adopted as "standards", similar to Microsoft, and are powerful platforms from which many of today's products are designed. Most might also agree that the direct modeling (DM) approach is more intuitive and easier to understand at first glance than history-based (HB) modeling. However, the power of history gives the user insight of how a model was built and the ability to apply explicit rules that impact future features.

The important point is not what technology is better, but about providing tools to get the job done. There still might be a point to be made on which execution is best or what mix of DM and HB tools can give the best approach options to the user. Currently, direct modeling is offered as an interface communicating to a parametric model (SolidWorks Instant3D / Pro/E Wildfire 5), a hybrid approach within one CAD platform (SolidEdge Synchronous Technology/Autodesk Inventor Fusion), an integrated toolset (Catia V6), or a separate CAD platform all together (SpaceClaim). Every CAD vendor will argue that their approach is best, but like every technology clash (Apple/Microsoft, HD DVD/BlueRay, Direct Modeling/History Based Modeling), the consumer will choose which product or toolset best addresses their design challenges.

In the same respect, I own an Apple MacBook Pro not because I think Apple's operating system is superior to Microsoft's, but because the Apple's hardware allows me to run any operating system and grants me access to any application. In the Apple/Microsoft decision it is all about the applications since that is where the real work is done. Similarly, direct editing and history-based modeling are application of CAD, each with their own function.

Personally, I use SolidWorks extensively, as you may have guessed, so I understand how Instant3D allows the user to edit parametric data in a way that feels direct. I have also tried SpaceClaim a dozen times in the past 2 months (mainly to understand pure direct modeling), however I am not designing products everyday nor do I have deadlines to meet. In order to shine better light on this discussion, I would ask that you comment on which implementation of direct modeling/editing would work best for your applications. ~Lou

The task bar, by far,  is a HUGE improvement and is great for those of us that run a lot of concurrent applications, bringing fantastic visibility and navigation options to the user. Windows7 also took the quick launch bar and merged it with the rest of the applications running on the system, making it function much like the Dock on the Mac. This change allows you to "pin" a launched application to the task bar for quick launch in the future.  One of my favorite features of the new task bar is for applications that keep a recent document list like SolidWorks.  These applications you can right click on in the task bar and see the recent list, selecting the document and launching the app!  Overall, most of obvious changes are final touches that I think many of us believe Vista should have had from day 1.

May 5th rolled around and with it launched a release candidate (RC Build 7100) which, again, installed without a hitch, of course, after uninstalling Windows7 beta.  There were some very minor changes to some of the Task Bar defaults but overall seemed to be the same as the beta.  The big difference was with compatibility.  Upon install of my standard daily apps, (MS Office, Chrome, FireFox, Skype, Twhirl, Yammer and Evernote) all seemed to install and function as expected.  I then proceeded to install my SolidWorks products and I was also surprised to find out that all the features of SolidWorks Premium worked!  SolidWorks, Workgroup PDM, Simulation, CircuitWorks and even 3DVia Composer installed and functioned normally (without RealView).  I have installed many of the SolidWorks LABS tools like Tagger, Presentation Studio and Treehouse, all of which function normally.

Obviously we cannot expect these products to work perfectly in an operating system that has not launched yet, but it does give us some hope that the transition to Windows7 will be much less painful. Windows7 is very pretty looking, but don't let that fool you into thinking it is just "flair" and no substance.  I use it now daily on my desktop machine and find all sorts of little features that make me not what to go back to Vista!  If you have the opportunity to install it in a test environment and try it out, the release candidate is good till June 1, 2010 and is Windows7 Ultimate.

The day started early and I got caught in a bit of traffic on the way in so I missed the first 10 minutes of the keynote.  Nonetheless, the day was again, packed with information, statistics and lots and lots of geek speak!

Day 2 - Keynote

Dr. Joel Orr kicked off the session with his talk, "Remembering the Future" which began with a brief history and background on his journey.  Computers and COMPAT, Nashville and Mapping, CG77, Computer Graphics Magazine, NCGA...and got right into "Chunking"!  Joel explained that "Chunking" was a way to think about topics and best utilize your short term memory.

I had the pleasure of talking with Joel by the pool on Thursday night about all things Twitter and other interesting Internet technologies.  To say that Joel is a passionate guy who loves technology would be an understatement!  This brief introduction gave me some insight when the keynote got into Joel's Facebook group called "Joel's Book-Writing Mastermind" and also about his Blog Joel Orr Coaching.  Joel then proceeded to the "coaching" chair and said, "There is a book inside of each of you and I'm there to catch it when it comes out!" He continued by talking about "Rhythms" like Moore's Law, human life rhythms as well as harmonious/disharmonious rhythms.  He asked everyone to work on themselves, instructing us to each write a book, focus on what's right, don't fear the new - nor embrace it because it is new and consider becoming a entrepreneur.  Inspiring words from an inspirational person!  He finished by saying, "I love you guys!...and it's going to be alright!"

Peter Marks then took the stage and continued the stimulating discussion with a topic called "BlindSpotting".  This portion of the keynote was designed to assist in changing our perceptions by explaining how 1% of our minds are conscious and 99% are unconscious bias.  He talked about a great example of this called the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy.  Due to this bias our perceptions are altered, ultimately effecting the future.  Peter continued by outlining 7 ideas to consider:

1. Recognize our shared biases
2. The news should contain: national, local, weather, ______ , sports (missing is engineering news!)
3. Make $$$ predictions for the future (technology, products, features, ease of use....etc)
4. Become a voice of confidence
5. Belief and attention maps and metrics
6. Killer apps (belief and attention management tools)
7. Innovating everywhere

Peter concluded with one sharp point..."Twitter is the CB radio of today. Our ability to filter is key!"

While leaving the keynote I ran into Jon Hirschtick and Roopinder Tara (TenLinks) and we chatted a bit about running Windows on a Mac, using Bootcamp, VMWare Fusion among other tools. It is nice to see I am not the only one!

Day 2 - Round-table - Is Direct Modeling the Interoperability "Holy Grail?"

I wanted to get my ear into a deep discussion about direct modeling since it is a topic that continues to surface with the question about interoperability.  Little did I know that I was walking into the CAD architects death match!  The roundtable was packed and had participants like Mike Payne (You know..PTC, SW, and SpaceClaim), Blake Courter (SpaceClaim Co-Founder), David Prawel (LongView Advisors), Rick Stavanja (CadWire), Evan Yares (Purecor) and Paul Stallings (Kubotek) to name a few (more in the room than I mentioned).

The conversation started off when Paul sat down and said that "direct modeling started 20 years ago" and commended Mike for the direction of SpaceClaim.  The rest of the conversation was mostly about the history of starting these technologies "back in the day" and the challenges they ran into back then. The conversation got interesting when Evan said, "Direct Modelers exist because the companies that produce them can't do history based modelers for sh#$!"  That's when Blake said, "Your right, Evan, Mike and I stared a company because we thought we couldn't build a history based moder for sh#!"  It was all in good fun and even Rick Stavanja said that in 9 years of attending COFES, this was one of the best round-tables ever!  It was intense but I enjoyed the history lesson and some of the reasons this type of technology is key to our future in CAD.

Day 2 - Round-table - Leveraging Gaming and Social Networking in Business

This was the second social media topic of the event and I was, again interested to hear how these new technologies would be either embraced or ignored by the panel.  The topic was obviously an important one since the room was packed and it was standing room only.

The conversation started with a table consensus of what everyone believed the most power social network tool was.  Many of the popular were suggested, Facebook, Twitter, RSS, Email, Phone, IM, xBox, Skype and LinkedIn.  One major point that was agreed upon was the fact that these services give you an audience that you would not have access to otherwise.

The topic then switched to how meeting technologies could be improved with virtual reality like Second Life (SL) and World of Warcraft (WoW).  Developing technologies like GoToMeeting / WebEX up to the next level and interact in a virtual space with audio and avatars was interesting.  I know some of that is possible now but not highly adopted..yet.

The session broke with one final question, "If you had to pick one, which social network would you pick?" I thought this was an odd question since you don't have to pick.  That is the beauty of having all these tools available.  Choice allows us to use the tools we want when we need them.  After much banter back and forth, one guy in the back said, "FAX MACHINE!" and we all laughed and called it quits!

Day 2 - CONGRESS - The Business of Design and Engineering: It's the Economy, Stupid!

This was the actual "Congress" session which is a forum for all the vendors to listen to suggestions from user participants to explain what they would like to see in future software tools.  I was interested to see how this session would be conducted compared to the others I had attended at the conference thus far.

The session began with a joint survey of Tech Clarity and Cyon Research about engineering software which primarily focused on the impact of the economy on companies as well as the market and what the outlook would be.  The details are on the live-blog but the jest of it was we have some challenges ahead and most believe that it will recover in the 2 to 3 year time frame.  Brad Holtz explained that the good news is this is a great time for companies to retool and jump forward on engineering and IT projects in hopes to gain a strategic advantage over their competition.

Peter Marks then took the floor, asking customers "What can we do to help?" The user participants wanted to see more robust tools with more complete APIs as well as better ways to collaborate and make their existing teams more productive.

While theories as to why the economy was in it's current state were being discussed, one user raises his hand, stands up, taking the mic and says, "The only thing that is for sure is nobody in this room has a clue!"  As the applause and laughter died down, Jack Ring of Cyon Research stands up and concludes, "The engine of prosperity....is sitting in this room."  Jack is exactly right! This is a tremendous opportunity for the engineering community to make a huge difference in our future! And with that, the Congress session ajourned and it was off to have cocktails and dinner while the conversation continued on into the night.

For me, one thing was for certain, COFES 2009 was one of the best conferences I have attended in my engineering career!  The conference stands alone because it is truly "All Hallways" and all about the conversation that starts on Thursday and ends on Sunday.  I enjoyed every minute of it and hope to be a part of COFES2010! ~Lou

Day 1 - Keynote

The fist "official" day was kicked off Friday morning by Chuck House (MediaX), whose keynote was titled "Innovative Engineering for a Disruptive Time", and was a great presentation. He started with examples of times in history when we have been faced with challenges in the economy and what paradigm shifts occurred from Henry Ford to waves of innovation in Silicon Valley.  He even made some jokes about  Twitter and how he never imagined how much value 140 characters had!  Chuck was a fantastic presenter, blending humor with history and really allowing the audience to understand that we have been in times like this and there is an opportunity to be great!

Day 1 - Analyst Briefing - Design, Engineering, and Social Media

The night before I met Jim Brown from Tech Clarity, who was assigned as my host (since I was a rookie COFES attendee), and was running this session.  I was extremely interested how other people in the industry view social media and how they may be using it on a day to day basis.  Jim kicked off the meeting with his assessment of how SM is allowing anyone to utilize crowd sourcing, ideation, and innovation gathering.  He continued to explain how these services (Twitter, Facebook, Instant Messaging, blogs, etc..) are allowing everyone to also have a much larger outreach than conventional approaches. It was interesting how the group picked sides almost immediately, dismissing some of the services for professional design and collaboration.  One engineer said that he doesn't see the point of some of these services for any professional activities and that chimed in another saying "I would not fly in a plane designed on Twitter!"  It was apparent that many of the participants were missing the point, believing that services like Twitter would replace conventional tools like Email.  I took the floor and explained how you can use SM tools for what strengths they all can bring to the design process.

SM services are tools, nothing more, and your ability to utilize these tools in conjunction with one another can be a tremendous resource. I then gave an example about posting a complex question in a forum, but also put a link out on Twitter and ask for help to funnel traffic to the forum to answer your question.

Jon Hirschtick then piped up and explained that these tools are here to stay and how technology is keeping up all close.  He also made the point that social networking is exactly what COFES is and how valuable it is to him, but that SM does this everyday not just once a year.  He finished by saying that we engineers simply over analyze everything! AMEN!  The final thought was everyone needs to set realistic expectations and priorities for all social media.

Day 1 - DaS Symposium - The Role of the Engineering Software Provider in Sustainability

I arrived to this session a bit late but was able to catch 3 of the presentations.  I wanted to catch Rick Chin (SolidWorks) talk about the SAGE project which was introduced at SolidWorks World 2009. SAGE is a task pane interface inside of SolidWorks that gives Engineers an insight on the environmental impact of a part based on the size, material, location of MFG, among other factors and is an effort in conjunction with PE International.

The second presentation, sponsored by Autodesk, was done by a PhD from Arizona State University.  He discussed a natural way of engineering by utilizing patterns and technologies in nature to inspire design.  He showed many examples from their website Ask Nature.

The last presentation was by Tored Dennis from Siemens PLM who explained what facets of a company that must be changed in order to really make an impact in the realm of sustainability.

Day 1 - SpaceClaim demonstration

I wanted to get another look at SpaceClaim and the direct modeling approach since I had not seen the product till right before the launch at one of their webcasts. While walking around trying to decide what session I was going to attend, I ran into Blake Courter, co-founder of SpaceClaim and invited me in for a peek. I was interested in the position of the product since it's focus is to be a conceptual modeler in conjunction to other systems like SolidWorks. Their demo jock, Roman, did a very smooth delivery of a concept of a chair with a robotic arm and an initial layout in 3D was done in about 2 minutes.  He then proceeded to bring in more complete models from SolidWorks and replace some of the conceptual parts with complete models.  Speed was obviously the key and pricing was about %40 less than that of SolidWorks.

One of the really nice features that caught my attention, besides the clean interface, was a specific tool-set that allowed users to pre-process models prior to performing simulation or analysis. These tools provided an intuitive approaches to remove small faces like engravings, healing surfaces and other anomalies in the 3D solid.  Another factoid was thrown in that SC also can read in 3DPDF and modify it, adding yet another way to start the concept phase.

SpaceClaim has about 1200 seats within about 400 customers and is "on plan", according to Blake.  I will be interested to see how SC stakes its claim (no pun intended) in the marketplace.

Day 1 - Analyst Briefing - Affordable PLM

This discussion was run by Cyon Research's own, Steve Wolfe who started by asking all the participants about the reasons that PLM is expensive.  Comments were thrown out at Steve with blazing confidence, however the meeting was quite stagnant due to the focus on the problems within the PLM/PDM space.  I could tell that after about 30 minutes of building the "CONS" list, the discussion was not progressing so Steve put a few of his own observations on the table.  He explained that PLM is expensive because it wastes the time of the most talented people because developers might not truly understand the actual release process and it is sold to IT instead of engineering and manufacturing.

The take away for me was the major problem was legacy data and how to get multiple systems to talk to one another without the loss of critical information.  The ability of systems to parse data seemed to be the key to reducing the costs in implementation and use. One gentleman said, "You know the nice thing about standards is there are so many to choose from!"  Funny...but very true!

Day 1 -Maieutic Parataxis

This, for me, was the one session I was very interested in experiencing since it give everyone an idea of some of the technologies that are in development and how they might be used in the future.  I believe there were 8, 5 minute presentations, some very interesting, others not so much.  The few that caught my eye were the VLC model viewer which can work with incredibly large models very efficiently without any detail loss.  It also brought tool-sets like interference and BOM creation in Excel.

Microsoft also gave a futuristic preview to how interfaces and communication will be done.  After the video played, it was explained how many of the core technologies that were utilized exist now and were shown where their current development states are. The highlights were multi-touch interfaces that communicate with other devices, many of which were mobile and extremely thin.  The message was essentially, information everywhere and accessible anywhere.

The one that caught my eye was Torben Sko's presentation, a PhD student from Australia, who has been working on face tracking software to be used as an input into computer games. The example was with a first person shooter game where his head actions would allow his character to peer around corners or give the Johnny Lee effect to a 3D desktop. Here, take Torben's word for it!

I have more details on all the presentations on the live blog and soon the COFES website will have the videos of the presentations for 2009.  If you are interested in last year's presentations you can visit the Maieutic Parataxis page of the COFES website.

Day 1 - A Night Under the Stars

After a long day 1, we headed up to La Questa Del Sol up in Fountain Hills, AZ for a outdoor picnic with food, drink and, of course, more conversations about all things engineering software. It was a great day of intense debate and productive conversation, unlike anything I have experienced before.  COFES has set a standard, for me, as the ultimate conference! It was created 10 years ago to be "All Hallways", which is where the most productive conversation happens in today's conferences.

Day 2 was just as action packed and I will follow up with my summary of the day's events once I get my breath! ~Lou

<xml>

<quiz>

<question>

What is SolidWorks Heard?

</question>

<answer>

A podcast covering SolidWorks related tips and tech news.

</answer>

</quiz>

</xml>

The structure displayed above is completely customizable and can have many sub items in order to show the hirachy of a more complex data sequence.  A good example would be if you wanted to show configuration specific file properties within a single part file.

In SolidWorks Enterprise PDM, XML is used as the universal language to communicate to ERP/MRP systems.  By using this standard format, the issues with having to code custom conduits in order to talk to each end (PDM <->ERP/MRP) are avoided and that data simply can be parsed by each system independantly.  This approach also reduces the amount of systems that data needs to be entered into, allowing PDM to do the product management, ERP/MRP system managing the other critical systems while sharing this common data thread through XML.

XML can either be imported in or exported out of EPDM by setting up rules in the Administration tool based on certain criteria the user determines.  Once these rules are defined, an action in the workflow performs the operation of pushing or pulling, typically metadata, for use within the system.

There are, however, a few stipulations to utilizing this data for import. One, the XML file must contain a variable for each file that can be recognized and matched within the database.  The variable "Filename", for example, would need to be written by an action that grabs the actual file's name and writes it to that file's "Filename" variable. Once this is set, the XML now has something within it's contents that can be paired to the database. And two, every item, or "Filename" of the XML  must exist in the database before the import action is performed.  This means that you cannot pre-import data into the database before the files have been checked into the database.  Since the import action needs to match the data up first, it has to exist in order to be accepted by the system.

Once these two criteria are met, the data is written to a temporary table till the action in the workflow is performed, then writing the data to the file data card. One fail safe test is the XML file should dissapear if the system accpets the file, so if the file sticks around longer than your polling interval, something went wrong.  If something does go wrong, don't look in the EPDM logs for the import issues, these issues exist in the Event Viewer in Windows and will give you good feedback on what when south!

Overall, utilizing XML is a great step towards streamlining all data-based systems to communicate without running into the all too familiar file format war or custom conduit woes!~Lou