RockSolid Perspective

This is absolutely one of the greatest emails that I have ever read. Jeff Cope from Extensible By Design wrote about a blog post that he found about an email that some employees of Microsoft received from Bill Gates. It shows that we are not the only ones that get frustrated by computer software from time to time, we just don’t have the opportunity to send an email like this to get the developers and programmers attention. If you get a chance you HAVE to read this article.

Do you think that Jeff Ray, the CEO of SolidWorks, feels this way some times when and if he fires up the software. I am picturing Jeff preparing for the CSWA examine that he passed, crashing the software at some point and firing off one of these company wide emails. How funny would that be? But hey, we all know that SolidWorks doesn’t have any bugs that would crash the software, RIGHT???

The West Michigan SolidWorks User Group has a new home for its website. The new is address is wmswug.com. The new site for our local user group will now follow a blog style format (guess who is behind this). This way you will be able to subscribe to the RSS Feed so that you can always stay updated on what is going on at the WMSWUG.

So add this address now (http://wmswug.com/feed/) to your preferred RSS reader and always be on top of all the exciting information and news that comes from this user group.

SolidWorks today officially went live with SolidWorks 2008 SP4. For all of you that have been waiting for the stablest of stable service packs for this years release of the software this may just be what you have been waiting for. I have personally been running the Early Visibility version of SP4 since the day that it came out and have not personally had any problems with it. Now don’t take this as the end of all discussions on it but I personally have not experienced any major issues.

If you are ready to take that step and want to download this service pack you can access it from the Downloads and Update section inside the SolidWorks Customer Portal.

If you are already running a version of the 2008 software you can decide for yourself if there are necessary updates included in this service pack to make it worth your while. To find out what has been added, changed or removed this time around head on over to the Fixed SPR’s page and see the list of changes.

And finally if you still aren’t sure whether to go ahead and download this Service Pack you can check out the SolidWorks 2008 SP4 EV in the SolidWorks Discussions Forums. Keep in mind that some of this stuff may already be updated between the Early Visibility release and the actual Service Pack release.

Please feel free to share any of your own personal feelings about this Service Pack or the Early Visibility release.

I returned back home yesterday afternoon from a very, very hot Concord, Massachusetts were I had the opportunity to spend the day Tuesday with a GREAT group of SolidWorks employees looking at some of the new SolidWorks 2009 features and observing what seems to me to be a very fun project (even funner if the air had been working). Jeremy Regnerus, Craig Wilkinson and Darren Henry were great hosts throughout the day and really made me feel as comfortable as I could feel in what felt like 100 degree weather. I am not able to say a whole lot about the rest of my trip there but as soon as I am able to give more details I definitely will.

It was great to be able to take a tour of where ALL the magic happens at SolidWorks headquarters and it was also great to see a bunch of people that I met at SolidWorks World this past year in San Diego. It was fun to see Bill, Patrick, Laura, Nancy and many others that I probably won’t see again until Orlando next February. Let the countdown begin!

If you haven’t already done so I highly suggest downloading SolidWorks 2009 Beta 1 which went live on Tuesday and see for yourself what some of the cool new improvements are for the next major release. The more people that can spend time now with beta will result in a more stable release for EVERYONE when it goes live this fall, so please check it out.

CONGRATULATIONS DETROIT RED WINGS!!!

I want to take this opportunity to congratulate the DETROIT RED WINGS on winning their 4th Stanley Cup in 11 years. What a great series this turned out to be against the Pittsburgh Penguins. There is nothing like a world championship for one of your home state teams. After staying up until 1 in the morning on Monday night/Tuesday morning watching the 3 OT loss and then waking up for work at 5:00 am for work on Tuesday makes this win all the more sweet.

I also want to make sure that Anna Wood is wearing her Red Wings apparel proud down in Arizona. GO WINGS!

Are gas prices these days starting to make you look at other forms of transportation? Are you looking to get some great exercise this summer while enjoying the beautiful weather? Have you been thinking about taking the next step in your engineering/design development? Do you want to be a part of a select group of SolidWorks users by becoming a CSWP?

Well you can accomplish ALL of this by participating in the latest SolidWorks contest. The title of it is “Today’s the Day to become a CSWP” and here is how it all works. You need to register and take the CSWP exam between June 1, 2008 and June 30, 2008. You will then be entered to win a Trek Fuel EX 5.5 bike (designed in SolidWorks).

So hurry up, study hard and take this test. If you want an idea of what to study you can check out the Exam Information page for a list of the topics that will be covered. Even if you pass the test and don’t win the bike you will at least be able to attend the CSWP off site event next year at SolidWorks World 2009 in Orlando, FL.

For more information on this contest click here for the official website.

For the complete set of rules for this contest click here.

Fresh off his appearance at the SolidWorks World 2008, the largest conference of its kind, Dean Kamen is in the news again. Kamen, who invented the Segway, has been back at the drawing board again for the last couple of years and this time he was working on a project for the government. He has now invented a prosthetic arm that weighs as much as a human arm AND has the same range of motion and the same sensitivity as its human counterpart. Check out this feature on him from the Yahoo! tech ticker section to get all of the details on this awesome new invention.

At SolidWorks World 2008 Dean encouraged all of those in attendance to participate in yet another one of his handiworks, US First. It was a great presentation and I know that if excited a lot of attendees who heard him and could feel his passion for this program. If you are interested in getting involved in this program check out all of the details here.

SolidWorks 2008 SP4.0 Early Visibility went live today through the Download Center in the SolidWorks Customer Portal. What this usually means is that the actual release of this service pack is roughly 2 weeks away. I heard a rumor from a little birdie at the WMSWUG meeting we held this past week that this service pack is going to be a MUST for anyone that has been experiencing troubles with the previous service packs in the SolidWorks 2008 software. For those of you that have yet to switch to SolidWorks 2008 this may be your opportunity to do so. Be sure to check it out, I am downloading it right now and I will be sure to let you know what I think of this latest piece of the pie. Stay tuned for more to come!
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If you would like to check out what was changed in SolidWorks 2008 SP4.0 you can now look it up at the Service Pack Fixed SPR’s page in the Customer Portal. It looks as if quite a bit of stuff has been changed upon my initial first glance. My initial impression of the EV version is that it seems quicker for some reason. I am not sure if this is the case or if it is a combo of the service pack and Windows XP SP3 but it seems like it to me. Devon Sowell mentioned this week that he had heard reports that the XP service pack allowed SolidWorks to run faster or maybe they incorporated some of the performance upgrades from SolidWorks 2009 to this service pack also. Like I stated before, check it out for yourself and see what you think of it.

SolidWorks 2008 SP4.0 Early Visibility went live today through the Download Center in the SolidWorks Customer Portal. What this usually means is that the actual release of this service pack is roughly 2 weeks away. I heard a rumor from a little birdie at the WMSWUG meeting we held this past week that this service pack is going to be a MUST for anyone that has been experiencing troubles with the previous service packs in the SolidWorks 2008 software. For those of you that have yet to switch to SolidWorks 2008 this may be your opportunity to do so. Be sure to check it out, I am downloading it right now and I will be sure to let you know what I think of this latest piece of the pie. Stay tuned for more to come!