soliciting suggestions for SolidWorks World Presentation

Mark,

I hope you'll take this in a light hearted way.

Muggs requested a Toolbox presentation. There seems to be a lot of "that" going around right now. I know it's not incredibly sexy, but it's a painful topic that goes unaddressed (other than the hysterical rant stuff on my website). If someone could do a presentation on how to avoid problems with Toolbox, I think it would be very popular, and more than that, highly useful. Not the standard sunny corporate tap dance where "toolbox saves you money". I'm talking about addressing real problems, like "here's how to keep toolbox from eating your lunch".

Muggs suggested I do it, but even I'm sick of that high pitched, shrill, whining sound I make when I get going on the topic. Maybe Joy?

How about a 3D Connection Space traveler. I have one sitting on my desk and it involves some challenging materials (I think) for PhotoWorks. The ring of transparent buttons that also need to illuminate and appear realistic would be a good example for people. Mine also has a brushed stainless base which is a material that people seem to have difficulty with. The environment set up would also be good to show since your dealing with shiny, semi reflective surfaces as well as transparency, illuminated features and matte plastic.

The model is real complex so it lends itself well to a 60 or 90 minute time limit.

Anyway, just a thought.

Rob

matt wrote:

Some examples pf products we have designed recently using Solidworks (including all the difficult surfacing):

Consumer product - hairdryers, curling tongs, straighteners, clippers, mobile phones, 3D point-of-sale, kitchen wares (foil cutters, kettles, wine bottle stoppers), scientific equipment.....

Transport: Aircraft seats, aircraft interiors, car dash board and interior, water craft, airport toilets and interiors,

Structural packaging: blow mould bottles, handle-eye bottles, chocolate packaging.

I dont know if these appeal as such , but they are things that you can design in Solidworks. Bottle surfacing is very tricky in the handle-eye arena, but not necessarily 'sexy'. How about a beer font? Some of those have very curvey 'sexy' shapes, plus most SW users appreciate beer.....

Might I suggest extreme sports equipment-helmets vests, paintball guns,

Of course there is the Number 19 chair.

Cool suggestion, Parel. I have a pair of ski-goggles on my desk that have a lot of very complicated surfaces - might also be a good demo for flex/deform (something I know Mark has discussed in the past) since the thing gets bent. Pretty interesting parting line, too Paintball and moto-cross facemasks are similarly interesting - modeling the shutoffs for the vents is a neat trick to show. I have done industrial face masks/respirators in the past (and am working on something similar now) and can vouch for them being pretty hard models to get traction on. It would be really interesting to see a Biasotti approach to the problem.

Ed

The goggles are good idea although I actually wouldn't have the conscience to use flex because ya know that a real designer would be designing them from a 3D face profile to start with ( I won't make that mistake again, huh Ed:-) ) But that gives me another idea, - how about I scan someone's face in using the NE scanner and create an accurate reference surface to model to and then go from there forward to create the goggles.

Great suggestions

Mark

Mark

snipped-for-privacy@juno.com wrote:

oh, grate. now we have all the designer prittyboyz congratulating one another. Like some privasy, fellas?

mr clone parel

mr "i can talk lowder and way longer than u" 1701

mr "lets all be pritty" mb

How about you model somehting engineers can relate to? Why do you have thousands of engineers show up and make them sit through something which is largely irrelivant to them? Shirley you know the word "target audience"? Why not model an engine? a Transimition? Aircraft parts? In detail, not looking like 3 extrudes the way SW usually shows mechanical parts. A turbine housing, impeller, blades. Turbocharger involute. Manifold sgetti. It has plenty of cool shapes in the castings, and isnt girly. geez, Im sick of girly stuff. Make it relivant.

Daisy.

I've modelled several sets of silverware for ID companies over the years and can attest to the challenges of modelling soup spoons, forks, knives etc. I learned a lot of useful stuff doing that (starting in mech. desktop)

Zander

snipped-for-privacy@solidworks.com wrote:

I have a napkin doodle I don't want that you can take ideas from and use as your own.

For your convenience - Daisy's post edited to the relevant stuff (nastiness ejected):

"How about you model somehting engineers can relate to? Why not model an engine? a Transimition? Aircraft parts? In detail, not looking like 3 extrudes the way SW usually shows mechanical parts. A turbine housing, impeller, blades. Turbocharger involute. Manifold sgetti. It has plenty of cool shapes in the castings,"

Ed speaking now - not a bad point. Most of the audience is engineers.

Of course, one should acknowledge that a good presenter (like Mark) would respect the intelligence of their audience enough to allow that his/her audience will figure out that the principles shown in a challenging sample do apply to their industry.

The whole point of this thread, as I see it (and I commend Mark for asking) is to develop a single sample part that is challenging enough to educate the broadest audience on the priciples that will have the broadest application to help them with their jobs. That's a tough nut.

Ski Goggles aren't bad - tough parting lines, wild 3d curves, and a little master model junk with the lenses (and maybe some in-context stuff with the headband clips). Plus, if you can loft that, you can loft a manifold.

But, to Daisy's point, keep open for suggestions on more technical options. Ed

You really have no idea how fake you sound, do you?

Most engineers don't design engines, believe it or not. So an engine still allows most of us to exercise our feeble imaginations.

...and a lifeless monotone drone will still put them to sleep.

Who makes "single parts"? Tire manufacturers? If you want to be relevant, you have to avoid that inherent designer attraction to make the world in a single part.

So aim wildly left where you're sure not to hit anything but the fringes. Makes sense to me. ;o/ Sure beats aiming down the middle where people on both sides of the aisle might be able to relate.

Mainly because their your highnesses idea?

No, 1701, you see, you really miss the boat. "Wild" 3D curves are not relevant to 90% of the blokes who will be there, and are not something engineers relate to. Is this a marketing event? No, this is primarily an event for engineers and mechanical designers with some other sorts also in attendence. Is this an event for mb to pad his resume a little? No. Its for engineers to take something useful home with them. Even complex but controlled curves of complex engineering shapes are closer to the ballpark, although still irrelevant to most.

Freeform curvature takes a completely different type of discipline than closely controlled curvature, so I dispute your claim. How many designers cant draw a straight line or a circular arc to save their lives? About half in my experience. (Although, admittedly, I don't read as many magazines as 1701).

Your too kind, bestowing royal blessings on mb and my humble self in the same message.

Daisy.

Mark,

Along the lines of what Mr. Pot said but without the sarcasm it seems that much of the emphasis in parts modeling from SW is on the flashy stuff that perfume bottles and the newest gotta have toys are made of. While that is not a bad thing, I'll bet the majority of SW users have very different concerns regarding parts modeling, things that might be considered boring to some. Most of the places I have worked or worked with either have no ID person or have one or two to many regular designers. Just to list a few:

1. Non ID users who make complex parts:

Plastic mold design Casting and pattern design Forging and forged part design Thermoform mold design Gear design Certain weldment designers Aerospace design FEA users

1. Non ID users who make primarily prismatic parts that have to live with many other parts

Machine designers (this is a huge number of SW users) Automotive designers (includes truck and RV markets) Farm and construction machinery design (these should probably be in 1. above also) Boat designers (these should probably be in 1. above also) Electronics designers Tool and Fixture designers (another big segment)

My point is that for every ID user there are many more that use SW in more of a production environment that have to use SW to get parts out in great numbers. For example if I spend a day or two on a "swoopy" casting, that is expected, but if I spent that same day on the other

499 parts in a typical machine we would never get out a product. In terms of downstream use within SW many users have a lot of concern about the final behavior of the part in an assembly and ultimately in a drawing which implies the ability to defeature without messing up mates, etc.

To illustrate my point consider the manifold that I have sent in to SW many times. It is a single forging. It takes a long time to rebuild and has several configs. It has to fit within tight dimensional constraints. There are four of them on the final engine. There are four heads on the engine of even greater complexity that bolt to a block that is complex. Count in the other manifold, crank, rods, pistons, valves, valve train and accessories, put it together in an assembly, make a drawing and SW is swamped.

The guy that makes the crank or rod forgings for this engine has a whole different set of complex part problems which includes making variations (configs) of a part in which topology does change from config to config, but volume doesn't.

I think there are lots of SW users doing this other kind of stuff that would be more than happy to see how to get the stuff out the door predictably, quickly and without kludges. We know from SWW that on even the simplest parts there are maybe 1-2% that can get stuff out really fast and another 25% who are acceptable which leaves 75% who would sorely like to get the SW mojo in their part modeling. I would call this modeling swoopy stuff within constraints and I would pick something like an automotive floor, dash or door panel as being representative.

Zander, it's very interesting that you mention this because I'm in the middle of producing a video on Boundary and the example is a piece of silverware.

Stay tuned.

Mark

Zander wrote:

To the issue of relevancy of what I present - there are many different levels of presentation being presented at SWW this year that perhaps will cover castings, gears, machine design forging etc. but I'm specifically addressing many users that have asked me to present in the area of complex molded parts; an area in which there is not as many tutorials, examples and training as there is for machine design. My intention is to focus, if you will, on the injection molded process and pick an object that best represents a moderate to complex example for this. There are other presentations this year that will address other vertical industries (medical, machine, process and power.) We know from past SWW's that this area (advanced modeling) is very heavily requested as is evidence by Ed's and Matt's presentations being some of the most requested.

Hopefully in the presentations that I give and this year (and in past SWW), I'll try to speak to the manufacturability along the way. I think a lot of it actually does speak to manufacturing, but I'll make sure to keep that in mind. I still like the ski goggles example because it can involve both moderate and complex modeling as well as different manufacturing techniques; i.e. the lenses can be sheet metal technique to have them eventually dye cut sheet.

Regards

Mark

Mark,

I'm not sure where you got the idea I was asking you to show users how to model gears or castings. I was talking about modeling complex parts. And to put a finer point on it taking that through the full documentation cycle of documenting the part, the tooling to make the part, the other parts that have to work with that part, etc. It is not so much the idea of manufacturability as it is the idea of documentability in SW of every step along the way. Put the googles or whatever in the context of the overall documentation process.

TOP pedaling hard just to keep up

In my experience with the engineers I work with, this would be a good presentation or series of presentation. But it would likely have to be a different presentation that couldn't focus much on the modeling because that alone would take a full session (or two!).

For comparison, Mark had to take two 1.5 hour sessions just to talk about the tools and processes required to model a video game controller.

I've had to pick away at the subject of Curvy Stuff over 6 years of SWx Worlds, one or two sessions at a time, repeating myself as little as possible, to cover what I thought needed to be covered (not even being a blowhard - most of my session reviews said I go through too much too fast, but as far as I'm concerned the real learning happens after the session with a slow, personal review of the session materials).

Last year I attempted to attack the same hole in SWx World presentations that you have mentioned (its inescapable - most of the audience are Engineers) and tried to bring the context of 'Curvy Stuff' that year towards bridging the gap between the objectives and the deliverables of the ID the Engineer so they can work together. That was 3 hours right there, with NO time spent on the original modeling of a product (just ribs, shelling, draft, etc in the second session), and it still didn't cover drawings hardly at all, assembly, data management, tooling (beyond modeling parts with respect to complex shutoffs), etc.

To take a sample all the way to tooling - that's a drawing presentation, a data management presentation, probably an analysis presentation (Cosmos ond Moldflow), a moldmaking presentation (not just core/cavity, but include the base too), an assembly presentation (top down, master model, whatever) etc...

Paul, I think it is a good idea. And perhaps I'm missing something -

Would you consider posting an outline (sometime) of what you would like to see? And i would suggest you add times for each part of the outline - for instance, phase 1 - model the part (x minutes), phase 2 add manufacturing details (x mintues) etc? And suggest how, in the time alloted, anyone could go into detail on the ticks and pitfalls that would substantialy exceed what one could see in a trade show demo?

Not a slam, just looking for an idea on what you think could be done within the constraints of SWx World. You've been going for at least 6 years, so you have a good idea of what can be done.

Ed

This conversation seems to be going a direction which was not originally intended. Mark started with the request for an idea for a part to use in a consumer product presentation. I don't believe the engine or other more mundane part suggestions are appropriate for that type of presentation.

I think the original complaint about this was based on a mis-reading, assuming that Mark was asking for a *topic* to present on.

Based on that (the mis-reading), there is some validity to the sanitized argument. While I stop short of agreeing with all or most of what that person said, I do agree that there is a real lack of information coming from SolidWorks Corp about everyday modeling. This is not new, the lack has always been there.

So, if we continue with the misreading, and assume that someone from SW would volunteer to do a presentation based on a topic chosen by users, using a model chosen by users, I think the request for a presentation based on a more mechanical assembly like an engine with sand castings, die castings, forgings, powder metal, sheet metal and machined parts is extremely valid. An engine would be great.

It sounds like you are dismissing the idea because it couldn't be done all at once with fine-toothed detail. That may be true, but it doesn't mean you just abandon the project, the same could be said about any but the simplest design task. This could be done in several ways,

- doing one part in detail

- hitting highlight techniques from several parts

- covering ideas by process

- etc.

Still, regardless if Mark's post was misread or not, and regardless if consumer products are already over represented and under relevant, I think a compromise middle ground could be found and used successfully by Mark. Something which is both cool and relevant.

I'm thinking of something like a mt bike rear derailleur, or a fishing reel, or even (gasp) pistol parts. These have gorgeously sculpted shapes, and are structural and mechanical. They are made of metal, with hinges, springs, pulleys, chains, standard hardware, involve complex motion, and are something that almost anyone can relate to.

Personally I prefer the "wow that's cool" engineering mentality over the "wow I gotta have it" consumer mentality. If I were in Mark's shoes, I would try to reach out and include the audience rather than keep asking them to imagine that what I'm talking about is relevant.

Matt,

Well you guessed it, I'm pushing a little. I've done a whole bunch of stuff with SW over the years including curvy stuff that has been shown prominently at SWW though you probably wouldn't know that I had anything to do with it. And it was in doing this kind of stuff and having to link it to other parts and processes that has formed my thinking.

I know a bit about Mark's background and it is most well suited to the ID side of things. Perhaps we need another Mark of Manufacturing to rise up and deal with the so called mundane side of modeling/documentation cycle. There are probably people at SW with the task of integrating part to assembly to drawing (PAD). On the other side, even in the realm of complex modeling where Mark would be the expert, there is a side that frequently gets short shrift. Suppose for a moment that instead of ski googles you had to do the radiator support for a Buick or a shock tower stamping for a Chevy or a jet engine inlet fairing. Yeeeech...boring you say. Just try it. Not only would you get into swoopy, but you would have to hold profiles to toleranced dimensions. And in the case of the jet engine fairing you might have to layout a series of accurately placed dimpled holes for rivets on the swoops. Mmmmm, yummy. This kind of stuff can make the hair fall out.

Well Matt, I did give a consumer product suggestion too. The Number 19 chair. And I'm sure that what Mark presents will be invaluable. So I better get off my soap box.