SolidWorks Community

SWUGN Spotlight - Twin Cities COSMOS User Group

What do you get when you take a (self-admitted) rookie SolidWorks user with little or no FEA experience, a huge metro area with two terrific user groups (1 and 2), and a bunch of COSMOS users without a place to share, learn and network?

In this case, you get one of the best COSMOS User Groups in the world.

Anne Yust was in the audience of a SolidWorks sponsored COSMOS meeting on a late-summer day when Vince Adams told the crowd that "There can't be a Minneapolis COSMOS User Group going forward without someone stepping up to lead it". Anne's hand quickly shot up.  That was in 2006.

Fast forward to today, and the Twin Cities COSMOS User Group is one of the best.  Like most COSMOS user groups, TCCUG focuses on two meetings per year - Spring and Fall.  Attendance has steadily increased over the past two years, and the presentations that Anne is able to coordinate have been top-notch.  Vince Adams of SolidWorks is a regular contributor, as are the local resellers.  What's really amazing is that Anne has been able to attract local COSMOS users to share their skills, techniques, and knowledge of analysis for the benefit of the entire group.

Anne keeps the group members well informed about events, meetings, and other topics of interest.  She also keeps SWUGN abreast of what's going on.  A terrific communicator with a great sense of humor, it's always a pleasure to get an email from Anne.  I understand she also plays the mandolin.

If you're a COSMOS user in the Minneapolis area, you owe it to yourself to check out the fall meeting - you won't be disappointed, and you will be back for spring.

More SolidWorks Food for Thought

All of the sudden, it's getting popular to model food in SolidWorks.  First it was Richard Williams and his Pasta Bridge.  Today I got an email from an old friend - Catherine Norman (nee Wright) of MLC Cad Systems in Irving, Texas.  Seems Catherine's little girl Brooke desperately wanted a Unicorn themed birthday party, complete with a castle cake.  Not knowing where or how to start building the cake, Catherine turned to SolidWorks for a little help.

In a about a half-hour, Catherine was able to design the basis for what would become Brooke's castle cake.  Using SolidWorks gave her the opportunity to see how everything would work out before she started slinging flour (that's cook-speak, it means the same things as "cutting chips" to a machinist).

Here's the result - a cool cake and a happy little girl.

Happy Birthday Brooke!

There's Community, and Then There's Community

When it comes to SolidWorks (and engineering in general), what does Community mean to you?  User Groups? Forums? 3D Content Central? None of the above?

That's what we'd like to find out.  SolidWorks Corporation has developed a comprehensive survey to learn exactly what designers and engineers want from the SolidWorks Community.  Your answers will help us to help you with training, networking, model sharing, and other services designed to make it easy to access, utilize, and contribute to the community.  The survey is long, and will take about ten minutes to complete.  We'll also follow up with a second survey in a couple of weeks (take them both, please).

This is a very important initiative for everyone involved with SolidWorks.  The SolidWorks Community is one of the best, and we would like to make it even better.

Click here to take the survey!

On Top of Spaghetti...

..or more precisely, fettuccine.  Richard Williams is bridging the gap between mechanical engineering and pasta.

I got some new pictures from Richard last night showing the progress he's made - I hope they make it into his blog soon.

Divided We Stand, United We Conquer

As a whole, the SolidWorks Community is pretty tight-knit - user group leaders have their own private discussion area, dozens of them meet yearly at SolidWorks World, and plenty of them keep in touch all year.  More and more, user group leaders are visiting other groups to share information and/or do technical presentations

There's something exciting going on this year that's gaining traction - combined user group meetings.  On May 3rd, the members of the Calgary and Edmonton user groups will gather halfway between the two cities for a day full of SolidWorks stuff.  In late May, seven group leaders will bring themselves and some of their members to Columbia, SC for the SESWUW.  A collection of groups in the Midwest are planning a combined meeting for August 5th somewhere near Madison, WI.  You may also have heard about a large event in the Northeast in mid-September.  After that, it won't be long until SolidWorks World 2009 in Orlando.

I'm sure we'll hear of other groups that are combining their strengths, talents, and resources to provide the very best experience for their user group members.