solidworld 2004

The only break-out sessions that I thought were worthwhile for ME were Ed Eaton's `CurvyStuff'-201 and to a lesser extent Cholly Nachman's about the new mold tools. At least one of them was incredibly mis-represented and I left after 10 minutes.

I have always felt that the interaction between users and talking to folks in the Partner Pavilion was more useful than the sessions themselves. I also had several interesting conversations with SolidWorks personel. It was worth it for me to go, but it's a closer call this year than in the past.

jk

"John Kreutzberger" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com:

JK:

I'm curious about what your impression of the mold tools is. I've been a pretty vocal critic on the advisory board area, and I'd like to hear from someone else who knows which side of the mold to squirt the plastic in. I've had nothing but bad luck with them since beta, but I saw that they were in the list of favorite new features in 2004 from SWW. Am I missing something?

matt

This was my 4th consecutive SWW and although I found it worthwhile, it didn't hold a candle to the previous three. Other years there were 3 days jam packed full of breakout sessions, this year there were only

1. Luckily I had signed up for 2 round table sessions on Monday or that day would have been a bust. Boston in the winter was not very appealing either. Hopefully they will go back to a warm climate again next year. Also the 0 plus room rate was a bit steep.

Hi Matt,

I have not used the new tools very much. One reason is that most of my work right now is either not challenging from a parting line aspect, or re-designs of previous tools where I had already done the split a different way.

I have had some occasion to use them, though. I had a swoopy part with an opening in it. Because I was on a tight schedule for the initial layout, I used SplitWorks and got an acceptable result and used it. Then just for fun, I tried it again with the SWX mold tools. It bombed out because it couldn't fill the shut off area for the opening.

I had some conversations with SWX people at SWW. My point was that they need to either provide a total mold design solution or just leave this area alone completely. What I mean by a total solution is better ways of doing the blue-collar work in a mold design like adding ejector pin holes and other components. The hole series is not complete enough for this IMO, for example.

They reply that they don't want to step on the partners' toes. Well what do they think these mold tools are doing? The FaceWorks guys told me that they have lost several sales due to SWX offering these tools in the core product. Even though they(SWX tools) are not complete yet, it is making an impact on them.

Also Cholly's presentation was not really about the mold tools. It was about how clever he is with surfaces. He did use the new tools for a simple part, but then the next example was way out in left field and irrelevant to the real world.

Sorry to be so long-winded. I will look for jobs to try these on, but am really wondering what they (SWX) are up to. The whole thing kinda reminds me of CadKey back in the mid-90's. CK had a great partner in FastSurf. FS was developing FastSolid. It was rudimentary, but had great promise. Then CK went and developed their own CKSolids which not only sucked, but it cut the legs from under FastSurf. We all know what happened to CK...........

jk

John, I agree with you. I wish SW would take all the resources used to develop the new mold tools and applied them to stability and speed enhancements. Let R&B or I-Mold or FaceWorks do the specialty products for Mold design. The new tools have boomed out every time I used them on a model complex enough that I need them.

SW has a lot of other issues that need fixed, not adding new mold tools.

Not sure why the email bounced. You removed the "_"s from it?

Anyway, I think it was a good thing that they added the ruled surface tool. It has some cool ways of working which will simplify some mold and plastic part design tasks some day when it's more reliable. I was not a big fan of the tooling split done as a multi-body in the part. Tooling data needs to be separated from the part data.

I read in one of the e-zine reports from SWWorld that side cores are a planned enhancement in SW05. This is going more deeply into partner territory where it might be better if they left it alone.

I'm disappointed to hear what you said about Cholly. He used to post in here many moons ago before SW hired him. He's a programmer with mold design experience, which is rare enough. Maybe I can get a copy of his presentation when they post it on the web. I'd still like to see what he showed.

matt

"John Kreutzberger" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com:

...

I have you in my address book, I didn't try from the newsgroup. The error message said that your ISP was not accepting spam messages. I guess we'll just have to discuss this in public.

I also like the fact that they added ruled surfaces. This will make it easier to do these manually. I also heartily agree that the direction that SW Corp is going with the mold tools is "going deeply into partner territory". I tried to have this discussion with an influential person at SWW. He maintained that SW values the mold design partners, and has no intention of under-cutting them. He said that all SW wanted to do was "create geometry". They would leave the business of mold base libraries and adding components to the partners.

I see a big problem with this `logic'. No matter what words come out of any SW employee's mouth, the fact of the matter is that adding mold tools to the core product will make any of the partners' products less appealing. Mold design add-ins are not real hot sellers in the first place. I don't get the impression that any of them are doing all that well. Adding mold tools to the core product may result in them either going under or giving up and porting over to another platform. If either of these things happen, then SWX better be prepared to take up the slack and give us the entire set of tools we need for productive mold design. Their mold base line is dead. I hear that they are trying to get mold bases and mold component libraries added to the 3-d part stream, but they are not getting positive reactions from the major players (DME, National, Hasco).

MoldWorks has a good system for quickly adding components to a mold design and creating a mold base. I am going to give IMold another look. If either or both of these products get shut out of the market by SWX, then it may be difficult to justify the use of SWX for mold design. That would be a real shame.

I don't think I am over-reacting.

jk