If anybody has told you that 2D is dead, they are either misinformed or just wrong. the fact is 2D will continue to play a major role in the manufacturing environment. Everybody knows that I am a huge proponent of 3D modeling but I have also worked in the manufacturing environment for over 15 years. [...]

Over the past few years my career has evolved from 3D design to full-on CAD systems management. In fact a couple of months ago I started a brand new position as the Product Structure and CAD Systems Manager for a Southern California solar power company. Unfortunately this new position has required my full attention since I started and honestly [...]

You don’t need a CAD Manager to do the right thing. Miss Me? Things have been quite here lately and I have a very good reason for it. A little over a month ago I started a new job as the CAD Manager for a growing Solar Power company in Southern California. I was brought [...]

A good engineer can recite whole sections of his favorite reference book…a smart engineer knows how to find the information when needed. And having a fully stocked reference library can save valuable research time and could have an impact on how fast your turn around a design. I cannot count the number of times I get asked [...]

It has been quite a while since the last tutorial about the stapler. The last component of the stapler we created was the Staple Cradle.  Before moving on to another area of the stapler, we will need to build one more component to complete the Staple Cradle. Today we are going to build the front [...]

Today we will conclude the Indulge Your Sweet Tooth series with an extra long post about PhotoView 360. If you are not familiar with PhotoView 360 (or PV360 for short), you do not know what you are missing. PV360 is a simple but powerful rendering package that installs along with SolidWorks Professional or SolidWorks Premium. [...]

Hump day is upon us and, as promised, I am bringing you the next exciting installment of Indulge Your Sweet Tooth. This series explains the steps to creating a photorealistic image of peppermint candies. The first two parts of this series explained the process for modeling a peppermint candy and how to use appearances in [...]

On the week before SolidWorks World 2010, I wrote the first post in this series where I showed you how to create the multi-bodied part for a peppermint candy. Today, we are going to finish the part model by applying the appearances to part to finally make it look like a peppermint candy. You might [...]

For the first tutorial of 2010, we are going to create this image of a stack of peppermints using SolidWorks and the new features of PhotoView 360. A few weeks ago I came across an image much like this one on IStockPhoto.com and I thought it would be a fun project to do. After creating [...]

On April 16, 2009 3Dconnexion announced the release of a new addition to their line of 3D mice, the SpacePilot PRO. I recently received my review unit from the company and I was very excited since I have never had the chance to use a 3D mouse in the past. As soon as I opened [...]