New contributor

I'm based in the UK, but work in a consultancy.

News group is great is you have troubles, or want some sympathy when you need to rant about SW....

Lee

Welcome to the club - I went solo back in September after five years as project manager at a CAD/CAM company. The NG is a good place for problems, ideas and generally making you feel less paranoid (you realise that you're not the only one with SW hassles!!) Where abouts are you based and what area are you working in and what software do you have? My background is marine engineering from a Mechanical Engineering degree and I have contacts with a couple of other SME's and consultants who cover everything from ID to Naval architecture and Bio mechanics. It's always good to know what others are up to and have a "I know a man who can" solution for the customer! Working for yourself is lonely, but I wouldn't go back (speak to me in 18 months time!) - I've got a hell of a lot more design work done in the past two months than I did in two years dealing with projects. See the website at

Hi David,

I started about 5 years ago working for myself, personally I found it quite difficult to keep the motivation going, seemed all to easy to stop and make a coffee and jam sandwich! I also found that it was at times difficult to stop work at a sensible time, once I got stuck into a problem I was there until 3 in the morning, unable to stop and start again the next day. Another problem that slowly raised it head was that my clients began to realise that they could phone me any time of day and get an answer to questions! The best move I made in the early days was to move to a purpose built brick shed at the bottom of my garden, seemed to break the link between home and work. I now have a business partner and 4 employees working from offices in the centre of Southend, althought the same problems still exist, like late payments and bad debt, i would'nt change it for the world. I wish you all the luck in the world, just remember keep smiling no matter what the client changes or the absurd delivery date he's asked for! Send us an email with a little description of you experience, you never know we might be able to pass some work between us if we get busy!

Regards Simon Miller

SGM Design Limited

What is "SW"?

Solidworks

South Wales.

SoftWare ... ___

And if it happens to be NSW, it would be New South Wales.

WT

south west

Say, noticed you've done some marine architecture stuff. Do you know where I might find some engineering data on planing hulls. I'm wanting to model up a small (18 to 20') planing hull with some functional geometry. Most of the swx models I've run across are visual representations that don't seem like they are functionally accurate. My local library doesn't have much of anything. Thanks Bill Allemann

My initials

Gentlemen, Thanks to you all for taking the trouble to reply. Thanks for your words of encouragement and advice. It is really appreciated.

Best Regards

David Bowles.

The Rhino NG has quite a few people on it (although using Rhino rather than AutoCAD) involved in boat design, who may be able to advise you.

The group is just called rhino, on the news server news.rhino3d.com

Matthew

Paul

They must have known that! they were being ironic..... its the basis of UK Humour you know?

Alan

David Welcome to the newsgroup. I to am based in the UK down in Brighton working for a local manufacturer as a Senior Mechanical Engineer and have been using Solidworks since 1997 for plastic component design and sheetmetal work. It might be an idea to add your company to the Solidworks Manufacturing Network, you cant beat a bit of free advertising. If I can be of any other help drop me a line. Regards Ken Carpenter

I must reiterate my thanks to you all for all the good advice. I am heartened by all the good wishes, and cheered, (somewhat) by the humour! Thanks again and Regards David Bowles

Yeah.......ok.........so.......? Results are as inconclusive as the responses in the thread.