"Best Meeting Ever"

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Sometimes, when a SolidWorks User Group leader sends in a reimbursement request, I also get some notes about the meeting.  Dennis Miller from the Susquehanna SolidWorks User Group sent me some notes about his recent meeting that included phrases like “What a great meeting” and “Fantastic meeting”, so I asked him for a few details and/or thoughts that I could write about here.  Dennis went a few steps further, and pretty much wrote this entry for me.

Well, we started at 5:30 PM with introductions and food (pizza, cookies, chips, soda). Guys jumped right in and help setup the room with chairs and table for the food. My wife always helps me out by picking up the food at the local pizza shop to save me some time. I go straight to the meeting from work. 

Cristian Fustos, of Design-Point Solutions, our local VAR, started around 5:50 PM on the main topic of Advanced Assembly Techniques. His topic went WAY beyond just how to do mates and large assemblies. He started with definitions of some terms and then talked about hardware requirements for doing large assemblies. He discussed at some length how to modify the settings within SW to make working with large assemblies faster. There were a lot of questions in that area. Video cards were discussed a lot as well. 

Cristian then talked about different ways of opening files (assemblies, parts and drawings) to make it easier and faster to work on them. He discussed lightweight, viewing mode, etc. There were a lot of things he pointed out that I did not know (or remember) and I consider myself to be an advanced SW user. I am also a CSWP. Guess I need to work on that CSWE! 

We had a few minutes left at 7:45 for door prizes and general questions. The library had to kick us out when they closed at 8:00 or I think some guys would still be there discussing things. I received LOTS of comments like “Best meeting ever” and “What a great meeting” and “Fantastic meeting”. 

One interesting thing about the meeting is that Cristian is a fairly new Design-Point hire, but has been using SW for a very long time. He is a EPDM expert and that is what he does at DP. When he called and offered to do a presentation we were going to do one on EPDM. I sent out my invitations and announced the topic and got several users to feedback that we had done enough on PDM. Someone suggested the Advanced Assembly Techniques topic and Cristian agreed. We have done PDM presentations probably 3 times in the last 5 years. Users responded soundly and I was blown away with their response. I usually get around 22 users, but we had 30 this time.

Thanks Dennis, and congratulations on a great meeting!

Richard Doyle

Richard Doyle

My official title is Senior User Advocacy & SolidWorks User Groups - but most people just call me "The User Group Guy". I've been a SolidWorks user since 1997, and was one of the founding members of the SWUGN Committee. Since starting the Central Texas SolidWorks User Group in 1999, my career path has led me to DS SolidWorks and a dream job supporting the SolidWorks User Group Network worldwide.
Richard Doyle

@https://twitter.com/swugn

Richard Doyle