July’s Top Five Blog Posts

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We are sometimes in awe of the ground-breaking products our customers are creating on a daily basis with SOLIDWORKS. This month, as we look back at our top 5 blog posts for July, we see some prime examples of these innovations. One of my favorite innovations so far is the world’s first commercial-grade mechanical battery, which is harnessing the power generated by wind power and other sustainable power sources—and doing it underwater. Next, the design team at Paul Reed Smith Guitars is putting SOLIDWORKS to work creating beautiful guitars that strike the perfect balance between instrument and player. Another blog that generated a lot of buzz included one on tips for getting started with 3D printing, and another on using Simulation to validate whether drafting makes a cyclist go faster, and lastly, the announcement of the SOLIDWORKS for Entrepreneurs Program, designed to help turn your dream designs into reality. In case you missed these posts, we wanted to re-share them again here. Happy reading!

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The World’s First Commercial-Grade Battery is Storing Wind Power Under the Sea
This blog post shares the story of how Whirl Energy is using SOLIDWORKS to design an efficient mechanical system for storing surplus power in order to maximize the generation of electricity from clean, renewable sources. Storing this energy in an electric battery is costly, so Whirl Energy turned to a mechanical solution.

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PRS Guitars: Engineered for Musicians
Senior Technical Manager at SOLIDWORKS and part-time professional musician, Brad Williams, shares his experience visiting Paul Reed Smith Guitars to learn how the company puts SOLIDWORKS to work modeling its entire guitar designs, as well as creating the tooling and fixtures for manufacturing.

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Get Started with 3D Printing: SOLIDWORKS Tips from 3D Hubs
This how-to guide comes from the folks at 3D Hubs and is specific to SOLIDWORKS users. Use this guide to avoid the common 3D printing pitfalls and learn how to tweak your CAD designs to obtain high quality print results (on your own printer or via a platform).

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Will Drafting Help a Road Cyclist? A Flow Simulation Study
Kapil Gaitonde, a SOLIDWORKS Territory Technical Manager and amateur cyclist, deploys SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation to solve the mystery behind whether or not drafting makes road cyclists go faster. Read this post to find out how computational fluid dynamics (CFD) helped him determine the magnitude of force being subjected to a cyclist by a wind force to assess the effects of drafting.

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SOLIDWORKS for Entrepreneurs Program
Marie Planchard, SOLIDWORKS Director of the Education Portfolio, explains how this new program helps innovative designers, incubators, accelerators, and maker spaces that are just starting out launch the designs of their dreams.

Barb Schmitz

Barb Schmitz

Senior Marketing Communications Manager at SolidWorks
Barb Schmitz is a Senior Manager in Marketing Communications with BA in Journalism and over 30 years of experience in the CAD software industry. She started her career as a journalist covering technology and served as an editor for several leading industry publications for over 20 years. Besides being a sleuth of tech, she is a loyal dog owner, travel bum, mom, lover of hoppy IPAs, red wine, and alternative music lover living in the great city of Chicago.