The SolidWorks Blog

Paris, here I come...

I'm heading to Paris next week to visit the fine people as Dassault HQ. If there's anything you're interested in learning about, let me know. Maybe I can get someone to show me the much-heralded CATIA V6 in action.

Using the SolidWorks Certification Center to Structure Training

The Certification exams offered by SolidWorks have long been a means to test a users skills, and to gage their ability to understand the SolidWorks software.  Once someone passed they were issued a certificate, they printed it out and hung it on the wall.  Their interaction with the system was over and typically they forgot their log-in credentials for the Certification Center, and never found a need to go back.

This year the SolidWorks Certification Center has turned the corner and is on it's way to becoming an interactive area that will provide a number of tools that users and managers can use to do a variety of things.  The most recent release of the Certification Center includes some management tools that can help engineering managers discover the strengths and weaknesses of their team. 

When a team of engineers takes a certification exam, that data can be set up to be shared with a central person who can examine the results to get some idea of where his team is at.  Instead of trying to explain it via text, lets look at some screen shots.

In this first shot we can see the students that are in the 2009 Q1 M.E. Cad 101 Class:

 

It's a relatively small class with only two students, but it gets the point across.  By clicking on Mr. Luchini's name in the list I get the graphical feedback of how he did on his CSWA exam that he took.  As you can see he is in desperate need of help when it comes to mate and assembly creation.  Unfortunately he only scored a 40 and failed, but perhaps if he had taken more then a minute on the exam he could have performed better!

Next we click on Mr. Rochino's results and we see a little different outcome:

 

Avelino did slightly better overall which perhaps is a result of him taking an extra minute to complete the exam! 

The ability to get this information is good, but what can you do with it.  On that same screen there is an export option that will export the data from every student or engineer shown in this list.  It exports an excel file that gives you this data:

 

The nice thing is once you get data into Excel, you can do lots of things with it.  As the instructor of this class I would make a simple bar graph and see the results of my entire class in a single picture:

 

As the instructor I could put in an entire classes results and see exactly what areas of SolidWorks I would need to instruct on, based on this graph.  If I was doing this as a CAD manager I would call my VAR and set up a specialized training session based on the low scoring areas.

As for these two students, well I think sending them back to essentials for the time being may be the best bet possible!

If you have a SolidWorks Certification, head over to the Certification Center and make sure all your information is up to date, and be sure that you can log-in.  Later in the year, the user information in the Certification Center will be used to aid in registration for the CSWP event at SolidWorks World next year, and you don't want to be left out of that if you are planning to attend!

It's not how high you jump, but how well you bounce...

Last week, SWUGN leader Richard Doyle posted a blog entry about Rodney Hall. We first learned about Rod and his employment troubles on Twitter, and I had a chance to speak with him before SolidWorks World 2009, and even mentioned him on stage. Well, there’s some great news—as Richard mentioned, Rod recently found a new job, and when he emailed me to spread the good news, I gave him a call to congratulate him.

While talking to Rod on the phone, he told me “It’s not how high you jump, but how well you bounce that matters.” Rod personifies those values. Rod’s employer was bought out by a competitor, and in the interest of “synergies,” tossed most of the employees out the door, including Rod. Like so many others across the country–and around the world–he fell victim to the brutality of this economy.

Rod was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth; he grew up poor and did all the wrong things in school. He was bored, and saw little opportunity for the future. Then, in a high-school drafting class, a light went on. He fell in love with engineering design. He quickly progressed to wireframes and then discovered early 3D CAD during a class field trip to the local IBM plant. It was there that he saw his destiny.

But life wasn’t finished putting up barriers in front of him. He couldn’t afford college, so he got a job as a machinist after graduating from high school. His life story could have been completed then and there, but he saw the future in 3D, and taught himself 3D CAD. As a result of his machining experience, he could design products that could actually be manufactured, an edge he had over his college-educated peers.

Rod applies his practical design skills in his daily life, and recently designed and built a whole-house vacuum that saved him $1500. Rod gives back to the community, too. He teaches at the local community college, because, “...being a classroom leader forces you to know more than the people you teach.”

So, back to our story. When Rod’s employer closed the doors, Rod picked himself up and started to hustle, finding an exciting new job in less than a month. While his job has taken him over four hours away from his home, he’s already looking at a teaching position in the local community college system, and is planning to start a new SolidWorks user group at his new destination.

You know, a word that gets thrown around too often these days is “passion.” That’s a shame. If everyone got to spend five minutes with Rod (and so many of you just like him), we would treat “passion” with the respect it deserves. Of course times are tough, and innocent people are suffering. But there will always be a need for people like Rod on this planet. And that gets me up out of bed every day, because I get to work with them.

Look Ma, we're on the TV (with Fisher/Unitech & Terrafugia)

Here's a video Mike Puckett sent to me. It's a piece from the WDTN news in Dayton, Ohio talking about Fisher/Unitech's No Engineer Left Behind program. Kudos to Fisher/Unitech for helping, and stay tuned for details on our own SolidWorks Engineering Stimulus Package in the next few weeks.

And that's not all! For those of you who saw the flying car at SolidWorks World 2009 made by the guys at Terrafugia, well, they just made their maiden flight. Here's something from AVweb.com.They also made it to ABC News, but they don't offer up any embeddable video.

Want to be a guest blogger on the SolidWorks blog?

I've been meaning to do this for some time, but things invariably get busy, and user conferences have to be attended, plans have to be made, videos have to be posted to the YouTube...you know how it goes.

Anyways, something we've really been hoping to do is get some of our readers set up as guest bloggers. Whether you're a customer, an end user, another blogger, a partner, a reseller, or some other member of the family I can't think of right now, we're interested in your perspective.

So how about it? If you're interested in being a guest blogger here, leave a comment and let me know.

Fictional characters need not apply.

Now available: SolidWorks World 2009 presentations

One of the things I heard over and over from SolidWorks World attendees is that there's no possible way to attend all of the breakout sessions one would want to attend. Life is full of compromises, I guess.

But fear not--if you attended the event last month, you should definitely check out the recently-released SolidWorks World 2009 proceedings site. In addition to pictures and podcasts, you'll be able to access videos of almost every presentation. It's not the same as being there in person, but it's close.

And if you didn't attend the event, we're not leaving you out in the cold. They tell me that you'll be able to see a small number of the presentations right now, with more added every month.

So why are you still reading? Go visit the site and get learned up.

New from SolidWorks: 3 Dudes Gone 3D

SolidWorks is proud to present 3 Dudes Gone 3D, a new series featuring three engineers who suddenly find themselves working together in an overflow trailer. After you watch the trailers below, click here to visit the 3 Dudes Gone 3D website, where you'll find complete episodes.

And let us know what you think.

What do you see?

A friend of mine recently sent me a video of a fascinating study that looked at the limits of perception, attention and awareness.

The study was on inattentional (or perceptual) blindness. It was done by Daniel Simons, University of Indiana and Christopher Chabris, Harvard University.

The study produced a series of videos that test awareness. While I cannot provide a link to the original videos, several have been remade as public service announcements.

Watch this video and count the number of passes the team in white makes.

If you enjoyed that video, this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAnKvo-fPs0 expands on the topic and features an interview Daniel Simons (sorry - embedding disabled on this one).

Watching these videos made me wonder how much we overlook in the course of doing our jobs. As an educator, what can I be looking at differently while trying to help people learn? As engineers, can we 'relax' our brains to see a bigger problem that needs to be solved?

In closing, these videos may also help explain how illusionists operate or why I don’t notice the dirty dishes in the sink

Why Amazon Will Save the World

Wow, no caffeine-induced euphoria in that hyped message, is there?

As a matter of fact, I’ve been living with an Amazon Kindle now for the past few months and the romance just continues to bloom. There are so many things here to like, and so many messages for those of us who are entrusted to deliver technology to professionals to help them get their jobs done better in less time and with less pain.

First: The medium, known as an “electrophoretic” screen, is provided by a company called E Ink. It was spun out of MIT, and drew its inspiration from groundbreaking technology created by HP Labs and driven by the Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University. Unlike an LCD, it uses a tiny amount of power, only to “clean” and “paint” the image, which then remains visible without any additional power. It needs no backlighting, so the power use extends into days and weeks instead of minutes and hours. It’s much easier on the eyes, too. It’s only available in black and white, but for readers that’s all you need.

Second: This is, at least for right now, the “iPod of books.” Just as Apple was able to broker a standard among competing download technologies, providing an intuitive, user-driven search site, and simple pricing, so has Amazon applied similar principles. The Kindle site respects the interests of the reader, and prices are typically a flat USD $9.99 per title. It will store up to 250 books, enough for even the longest trip to Asia. Like iTunes, the Kindle does not compete against content providers (in this case, book publishers). An added benefit is the availability of dozens of newspapers and magazines, which could provide a shot in the arm to an ailing industry.

Third: The pricing model bundles the cost of the cell connection. The Kindle accesses its website via the CDMA network, but you don’t have to sign up for a monthly calling plan with a cell carrier. The fee is built into the $9.99 price of the book, encouraging more time on the website. Too bad it’s not GSM, so I could use it outside the US.

Fourth: Unlike iTunes’ App Store, Amazon has (so far), taken a rather laissez-faire attitude towards the hacker community, encouraging a potentially valuable secondary market for add-ins and enhancements. It’s too early to see what happens, but the hack sites are busy.

Finally, this is a great use of the philosophy championed in the Open Source community – that giving a user a lean product with a few features that really works well is, for many, good enough. There’s no “technology overhead” on this device.

Getting Oprah’s endorsement didn’t hurt sales, either (glad I already had mine; I could have sold it at a premium on eBay before Christmas).

It remains to be seen who the winning provider will be – there are competing and great technologies from iTunes for its iPhone, Sony and its Reader, a Dutch company with its iRex, and a new company, Plastic Logic, which will soon launch a larger format device. And, of course, Amazon just launched a new Kindle, and Google will make 1.5m free e-books available in a format viewable on smart phones. So, the real winner here is you, the user. That’s the beauty of competition.

For me, the takeaways are: keep it simple, eliminate technology overhead, respect the user and the way they work, provide a highly-purposed UI, and encourage a community of content providers. Will some of this go into future SolidWorks technology? Is some of it already there?

The New SolidWorks Certification Center

There is a whole new look to the SolidWorks Certification Center thats available to anyone who takes a SolidWorks Certification exam.  You can log in to the center here.  Your log-in is the email address you used when you took your exam.  Let's look at some of the highlights.

Once logged in you will see a whole new user interface with tabbed browsing:

 

The first tab will show any certificates you have achieved.  In the case above this user has both the CSWP and the Advanced Surfacing Specialist Certification.  It is from this page that you can also view and print a copy of your certificate.  A new added feature is the "Publish Certificate" tool that allows you to share your certificates with other via email.  You can use this tool to show perspective employers your achievements, or share them with current managers when asking for a raise.  Subsequently a manager can compile the certificates of his employees and export the results into an excel file where he can use the data to focus needed training and to see where his team is strong and weak.

On the Exam Results tab a user can see the results of exams he has taken, and can query the results to see how he did on different areas of the exam:

 

Note that due to database limitations at the time, topic results are only available for exams taken after CSWP R2 (approx July 2008).  All future exams will take advantage of this function.

The Credits / Vouchers tab is where a manager can take a block of exam credits and distribute them to his team.  By doing this he will also be able to track their individual progress and see the results.  It's a way to capture a groups knowledge of SolidWorks and see where they need further training:

Also new to the Certification Center deals with searching for Certified SolidWorks users.  The search can be performed here.  The search now combines all CSWP's into one of two categories: CSWP & CSWP:

When you search for a CSWP you will now see a list of CSWP's and also see their Advanced Certificate achievements as well:

The SolidWorks Certification Center is made possible through the collaborative efforts of Tangix Design & Development, CadCase Consulting, and the SolidWorks Certification Team.