Richard Doyle's Community Blog

Sweet Home Alabama

SolidWorks User Group meetings in Huntsville and Birmingham afforded me the opportunity to visit Alabama for the second time this year.

Many thanks to Ricky Jordan and the North Alabama SolidWorks User Group for making me feel welcome in Huntsville.  I got to do my favorite "What's REALLY New" presentation and everyone was very polite as I babbled on for what seemed like hours.  This is a great group of folks, and I hope to get another invitation soon.

The newest user group in Alabama is the SolidWorks User Group of Birmingham.  The new group leader is very energetic and did a great job putting the first meeting together.  Remember the name Gwen Van Steenberge - we'll be hearing a lot from her over the next few years.  The meeting was held at ITT Tech, and we were joined by about 15 students who seemed very interested in the presentations.  Local resellers Alacad and ModernTech were also on hand to help out.

I hope to back to Alabama soon.  With user groups in Huntsville, Birmingham, and Mobile, I bet I'll get the chance.

SWUGN Summit - Charlotte

Matt Lombard sums it up nicely.

Matt Speaks

September 19th - A Big Day for SolidWorks User Group Meetings

I don't know what's so special about September 19th, but there are seven user group meetings and one SWUGN Technical Summit scheduled for that day.

http://www.swugn.org/pages/calendar/calendar.html

A Rising Star in the SolidWorks Community

If you frequent the SolidWorks message boards, you no doubt recognize the name Anna Wood.  Anna has become a regular at the SolidWorks forum, as well as other sites such as comp.cad.solidworks, and Eng-Tips.  Her insightful answers to a wide variety of questions, friendly attitude, and willingness to help has made her many fans in the SolidWorks community.

When Anna isn't helping SolidWorks users, she's either flying or designing aircraft.  A 20 year veteran of the International Aerobatic Club (IAC), Anna and her fiance are very active in full scale competition and R/C aerobatics.  She evens finds time to be webmaster for Desert Aircraft, and maintains her own website as well.

Anna works for Auer Precision (yep, she has a day job too), and has been instrumental in implementing SolidWorks and pushing data downstream to the shop for CNC and EDM operations. She tells me that she still considers herself a SolidWorks beginner in many ways.

"I have derived so much knowledge from the participants in the forums over the years.  There are some really smart users out there."

Yep, and you're one of them.  Thanks Anna.

SWUGN Summit - Seattle

Low attendance.  Scheduling issues.  Parking woes.  Disappointing?

Only if you weren't there.

Adam Scheible, Portland User Group Leader got things off on the right foot when he boldly proclaimed "This is going to be a great day!!"

And it was...

The session schedule, although a bit jumbled by some last-minute changes, was nonetheless very well received.  Thanks to local SolidWorks experts Adam Smith, Daniel Nordeen, and Michelle Pillers for their contributions.  I would also like to thank Jenn James of SolidWorks for helping to keep the day rolling along.

As usual, I got to meet some great people.  Jeff Mirisola of HySecurity and John Kimmel of Metal Innovations are names that pop up regularly on SolidWorks message boards.  George Tylinski, long-time user and former Portland group leader also made the (long) trip from Oregon.

Thanks to everyone who attended.  I'm looking forward to a return trip to the Northwest in 2007.

Sean Dotson, a CAD Community Icon

Sean Dotson has been getting some extra press lately and I’m happy to jump on the bandwagon.  I had the pleasure of meeting Sean at COFES more than three years ago and we’ve become good friends since then.  A leader in the CAD community, Sean has been helping users for many years through several websites.  Check out mcadforums.com for one of the best CAD related forums on the internet.  I’m partial to the SolidWorks section, but the off-topic forum is a lot of fun too.

Sean also maintains a home page, sdotson.com.  Named one of TenLinks “Top 10 Sites” for five years running, you can find Sean’s blog, industry news, downloads, and links.  He also manages to run a very successful company in Florida, RND Automation & Engineering.

It should be noted that Sean has been an Inventor user since the early days.  But that hasn’t stopped him from becoming a vital part of the SolidWorks community.  When I asked him to create a SWUGN forum on his site, he didn’t hesitate for a second.  He even gave me moderator permission.  The SWUGN forum and the SolidWorks forum have become a great resource for SolidWorks users, and traffic has increased markedly in recent months.

Of particular note to SolidWorks users, Sean’s write-up on SolidWorks World 2005 is worth a read.  Sean is scheduled to make a return trip to SolidWorks World 2007 in New Orleans; we’re looking forward to having him there again.

It doesn't matter which program you are using, if there is a way for Sean to help, he will.  People like Sean are what makes the CAD community special.  Thanks again from all of us at SolidWorks, we're glad to count you as one of our friends, if not (yet) as one of our customers.