The SolidWorks Blog

The Final Frontier: How Copenhagen Suborbitals Took Off with SolidWorks

It’s no mistake that a New York Times headline from last September read "Space Tourism is Here". While the human race has already reached the final frontier, the majority of people have probably never ventured into space, let alone traveled beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. With the recent upspring of private companies focused on building crafts for human space flight and new developments in technologies and composite materials, SolidWorks has been able to lend a hand towards helping companies like Copenhagen Suborbitals.

Designing an open-source manned space rocket and capsule for suborbital space flight, Copenhagen Suborbitals believes that the sky is the limit, quite literally. Eager to share his story, Kristian von Bengtson, founder of Copenhagen Suborbitals, blogs regularly for Wired magazine. Some of you SolidWorks fans may even notice that his models and simulations are pulled from our software.

Using SolidWorks Professional, SolidWorks Premium, and SolidWorks Flow Simulation, Copenhagen Suborbitals has built the capsule geometry, exported the drawings for laser cutting, and conducted FEM analysis of structures to see if they meet flight requirements. SolidWorks, combined with sketching capabilities, is one of the most important tools in the early research and development phase and the production phases of von Bengtson’s project.

Copenhagen Suborbitals has used eDrawings to share new designs and get ideas from others. To see the latest capsule design, you can download it here: Download Copenhagen Suborbitals capsule in eDrawings. Feel free to offer your own suggestions, if you would like via the eDrawings file.

Donn McKinney’s U.S.S. Missouri Propelling Forward with eDrawings

Since 2011, when we first featured Donn McKinney’s U.S.S Missouri project, our friend Donn has further progressed in his work. To give some background to those of you who are unfamiliar with Donn’s project, Donn, a fan of World War II-era US battleships, is currently building a fully operational virtual replica of the U.S.S. Missouri in collaboration with the U.S. Navy. Using the replica, he plans to examine the boat’s functionality.

To show us some of his work, Donn converted his models into eDrawings files. And here’s the best part: you can view them too! Click here for a full download: Download Donn McKinneys Models in eDrawings. If you don’t have eDrawings already, you will need to download it to view his spectacular model from all 360 degrees.

Donn was very eager to convert his models into eDrawings files because they’re much easier to share and are generally smaller than SolidWorks files. In fact, using eDrawings for iOS, you can share models with customers, friends, or family using your iPhone or iPad. With eDrawings' new augmented reality feature, Donn can even see how the replica would look in his house!

Donn has realized numerous possibilities with the eDrawings software propelling his efforts forward. Do you have any stories about how you have used eDrawings?

Now available: eDrawings for iOS with Augmented Reality

We've all been there. Your manager or customer has been looking at 3D images of your latest product design for months on your computer.  But when the first prototype is put on the table in front of them, they say something like "Are you sure that's the right size, because it looked smaller on the computer screen."  And since you're on the verge of releasing the design to tooling, you mentally scramble to figure out a way to avoid redoing several weeks worth of work.

How does this happen?  You've been sharing the design with them the entire time.  So how could they perceive it so differently?

When you think about it, whether you're designing a watch or a motorcycle, everything ends up being the same size on your computer screen.  We zoom-to-fit to maximize our work space, and there is usually no visual reference on the screen to help us correctly perceive size.  So we're not certain of a product's actual size until we have a physical model that we can compare to other objects in the real world.

Wouldn't it be great if you could take your design and put a virtual model of it on the table right next to you in the room?  That way you could then look at it next to real products, slide and spin it around on the table, and get a complete sense of the product's true size, scale, and proportions.  And what if you could do this at any time in the design process, and as often as you like?

Well, now you can do just that!  We have enhanced eDrawings for iOS to now include Augmented Reality (AR).  I will let the two videos below do most of the talking, but here are a few noteworthy points:

• AR is available in both the Standard and Professional versions of eDrawings for iPad and iPhone
• It lets everyone on the design team see your product at full scale so its true size is obvious to everyone. Customers who have previewed this have told us that this will be a great sales tool when promoting their own products to their customers
• You can use Configurations to load an entire product line in eDrawings, and then use AR to place any specific product variation on the table in front of your customer

I came across a real Holmatro spreader in the Partner Pavilion at SolidWorks World 2013 in Orlando. It turns out we are using that product as one of our eDrawings sample files.

eDrawings for iOS with Augmented Reality is now available in the Apple App Store.  If you previously purchased eDrawings for your iOS device, just update it in iTunes to get this new capability.

eDrawings Standard

eDrawings Professional

 

eDrawings is now available for the iPhone

Earlier this year we released eDrawings for iPad, followed soonafter by eDrawings Pro for iPad. But here's another update. Both apps are now universal iOS apps, which means they will both work on the iPhone and/or iPad. Even better, if you already bought one of the iPad apps, you can now use it on your iPhone as well.

eDrawings® for iOS allows you to view and review native eDrawings® files, DraftSight® files, SolidWorks® parts, assemblies and drawings files, making it easy for engineers and non-engineers to interpret and understand 2D and 3D design using multi-touch gestures.

There's got to be a better way of creating owner’s manuals

I just bought a food processer last week. As eager as my wife and I were to check out this new toy, we were stuck on how to install a slicing blade to the rotating motor. Remember, we both hold pretty serious degrees in Engineering--she has a PHD, and I have a master's (oh, yes, you are right: she’s way smarter than me). But let’s get back to the point: the installation takes some deciphering. So we turned to the owner’s manual. To its credit, it included some nice dish recipes, but the installation instructions were intimidating with pages of tiny text.

For a non-native English speaker like me (even for native speakers I guess), my eagerness to check out this fresh product got reigned in, and my head hurt.  The problem is I didn’t want--or need--to read all the pages to locate one tip, as most of the components are self-explanatory, even without instructions. Ctrl+f to search for the key words would have been helpful…

So (literally), I threw away the manual and went to YouTube to find a live demo video, jumped to the blade installation clip, and bingo--we found it.  

eDrawings Pro for iPad is available now!

You may recall that we released eDrawings for iPad earlier this year, which lets you view and review native eDrawings® files, DraftSight® files, SolidWorks® parts, assemblies and drawings files. But some of you have been asking us to expand the feature set, and include some of the capabilities found in the desktop version of eDrawings Professional.

So today, we're happy to announce the availability of eDrawings Pro for iPad. Some of the new capabilities include dynamic cross section views, measurements, markups and annotations, and the unique ability to share it all by email.

With a brand new intuitive user interface and improved performance, eDrawings® Pro for iPad enables you to dynamically view cross sections of your models in XY, YZ, or ZX directions from both sides and easily drag the cross section plane on screen or with a convenient slider. You can also measure distances in your designs, with easy-to-use selection filters for faces, edges, vertices, and holes.

With eDrawings® Pro for iPad you can create markups on your drawings, including text notes, freehand notations, dimensions, cross-section views, photos, and camera snapshots. You can share your marked up eDrawings files with others for review and further comments. All markups with history are saved within the eDrawings file.

Features:

• New intuitive and easy-to-use user interface
• Significant performance improvements for opening, viewing, and interacting with all types of models
• Open 3D (EASM, EPRT, SLDASM, SLDPRT), 2D (EDRW, SLDDRW, DWG, DXF), and associated files from any source: email attachments, cloud storage services (Dropbox™, Google Drive™, SkyDrive®, YouSendIt®, and others), email, web and FTP sites, networks, and iTunes® File Sharing
• Zoom, pan, and rotate your 3D and 2D CAD data using multi-touch
• Browse your assembly components tree, model configurations and drawing sheets
• Hide, show, or make components transparent
• Select View mode: standard orthogonal views, shaded with edges, perspective view
• Play animated 3D standard views as well as 2D drawing views
• View your designs in full screen and double tap to fit it on screen
• Double tap zooms to drawing views
• Markup your designs and send to others, and read others’ markups
• Measure your design data
• View cross sections of your 3D designs
• Sample files included

eDrawings Pro is available now for download on the Apple App Store. Regular price is $9.99, but it will only be $4.99 for the next 30 days. Download it today.

eDrawings for iPad: new features are available now

We introduced eDrawings for iPad on May 1, and the response has been amazing. However, many of you have let us know about features and capabilities you would like to see, and our development team has been listening. A major update is now available, with the following changes:

• Transparent parts
• Standard orthogonal views
• Shaded with edges mode
• Perspective mode
• Hide, show & make components transparent
• Select components from graphics area
• Hyperlinked views in drawings
• Sort files by name, extension, date and size
• Leave file open during background execution for fast app switching
• Fixed shaded drawing views during panning and zooming
• Fixed incorrect legends in SolidWorks Simulation files
• Bug fixes

If you already have eDrawings for iPad, you can download the update directly from the App Store. If you don't, you can buy it for only $1.99.

Where are you using eDrawings for iPad?

We announced eDrawings® for iPad earlier this month, and the response has been incredible. If you haven't done it already, you can download eDrawings® for iPad today from the Apple store , and you can learn more about the features and functionality on the SolidWorks website.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time explaining what the app does, because you can learn all of that in the video below. What I really want to know is how you've been using eDrawings for iPad over the past four weeks? Have you found yourself using it on a shop floor or job site? Airplane or customer office? Showing off your work to grandma? Let us know the most interesting or unexpected place you've used the app, and post pictures if you can.

You Asked. We Answered. Introducing eDrawings for iPad.

You’re constantly on the go, and the process of making sure you and your customers can understand and see what’s happening with a project hasn’t always been easy–up until now. In an effort to give you what you need, when/where you need it, we're happy to announce the availability of eDrawings for iPad, an application that lets you bring your 2D and 3D files to a customer’s site, or to a sales meeting, and share the design concepts quickly and easily.

eDrawings® for iPad allows you to view and review native eDrawings® files, DraftSight® files, SolidWorks® parts, assemblies and drawings files, making it easy for engineers and non-engineers to interpret and understand 2D and 3D design using multi-touch gestures.

You can download eDrawings® for iPad today from the Apple store , and you can learn more about the features and functionality on the SolidWorks website.

How will you use eDrawings® for iPad? What files are you most looking forward to sharing? We welcome your thoughts below!

New mobile app coming next week—guess what it is and get it for free!

There's some big news coming next week from SolidWorks. We're releasing our first design-related mobile app, and while we won't let the cat out of the bag just yet, we will give you a chance to win it for free.

Just leave a comment on this blog entry before 5 PM EDT on April 30 with your guess as to what we're releasing. After the official announcement next week, we will send the first ten people who guessed correctly a code to download the app for free.

As with any contest, there are terms and conditions. In a nutshell, you're not eligible if you're a SolidWorks employee, or you work for a SolidWorks reseller or solution partner. And the contest is void in Brazil, Quebec, China, and where otherwise prohibited or restricted by local or national law. Sorry.

So what's your guess???

Download SolidWorks Mobile App Contest Terms and Conditions