SOLIDWORKS Unleashed!!

Piano Transport Fail

2010-11-19T07:47:00.006-07:00

I have to post this unrelated video. My father'n law wanted me to take this piano off his hands so bad. It needed a lot of work and I didn't want to move it the 3 blocks. Eventually some friends said they would take it for their daughter to start piano lessons. I missed the move unfortunately. One of the guys just thought it would be a good idea to record this turn.

That poor little girls heart was crushed just like the piano was. Turns out this is my most popular video on YouTube. We are going to have a party when it hits 100,000 views.

Sprig Toys

2010-11-19T07:35:00.005-07:00

This is a project I worked on about 2 years ago for a short while with LINK Product Development. It was fast paced and they came out in the stores very fast. It's great to see the company doing well.

http://www.sprigtoys.com

Solidworks Enhancement Request for Extrude Feature Direction

2008-05-07T07:43:00.004-06:00

I am starting to keep track of my enhancement requests so I thought I would post them. I have only used SW2007 to date so this request may be out of date. I did hear that in SW08 you can toggle between a cut-extrude and extrude similar to that other program PRO/E. I always thought that was a far superior way of doing cut-extrude or extrudes to having two separate features. This is an idea I had when trying to use a 2 direction extrude. Sometimes an extrude goes 2 directions but you would like to have the option to select a different "From" plane, surface, or vertex for each direction. Of course you could complete the feature in one direction and then use the same sketch for a second extrude. If it looked like this it would save a feature and time. Blickity blam there it is! Maybe I am off my rocker but I thought it was a good idea. Let me know what you think.

Solidworks Design Table for a Part

2008-04-27T17:10:00.005-06:00

Design tables are a powerful way to manipulate properties, features, sketches, drawings, and assemblies. This is a demonstration on how to control dimensions and features in a part.

Solidworks Design Table for a Part from Caleb Stoll on Vimeo.

Solidworks Animation

2008-04-27T08:25:00.002-06:00

This is a product I worked on that was a lot of fun. The animation at the beginning of this was mostly done in Solidworks. IM5 LAUNCHER

Solidworks Enhancement Requests

2008-04-27T08:12:00.004-06:00

I have ideas every once in a while and for some reason I just expect Solidworks to do it. Then it does not and I think that would be a great feature. 10 seconds later I forget what it was. Here are 2 that I remembered.

1. Symmetry Mates similar to the relations in a sketch. If this could be setup with using planes and surfaces for symmetry it would be very useful for relating parts to one another without getting fancy about it.

2. Drive text in sketches with a design table. This would be especially useful when you have many different configurations with a particular part number for each length etched in the part. Currently, a feature for each P/N has to be created and then Suppressed or Resolved accordingly. If there were 60 configurations that would save 59 features.

If anyone has ideas about these let me know.

Animation of house

2008-04-17T07:57:00.003-06:00

This year has been an interesting year in my life personally. We adopted from Ethiopia and our adoption was so unique and twisted we were mentioned in the front page article of the NYT's and IHT. Now we have three wonderful children adopted from Ethiopia. While I was bored out of my mind staying at a guest house people would call and try to reserve rooms but the language barrier was too much a lot of times. My solution was to model the house and make the video accessible on the internet. That way people can call and know exactly what they want without relying on explanations of each room. I had great aspirations for the animation but I have to post this because I was not getting around to working on a better animation.

Untitled from Caleb Stoll on Vimeo.

Copying Sketches

2008-04-08T08:57:00.003-06:00

If you spend time re-sketching sketches for mating parts or even within a part this tip or trick is for you! It can save a lot of time and can be used for so many different applications.

Solidworks Sketch Picture Scaling

2008-04-07T18:48:00.003-06:00

Insert pictures into sketches to quickly sketch over a part with complex features that are not easy to measure from the physical model. This is a demonstration on how to quickly and accurately scale imported pictures in a sketch quickly. Always physically verify the dimensions unless it is being used as a representation.

Solidworks Balloon Animation

2008-04-07T07:39:00.002-06:00

This is an animation of a balloon expanding. The balloon part has an equation related to the distance of another part as it stretches and fills. I will post a demo on how to create an animation with an equation for this in the future.

Solidworks Tip for Toolbars

2008-04-04T13:53:00.002-06:00

I always get so frustrated when I sit down on another machine and run into this particular toolbar issue. I have seen users so mnay times swear they could not find "replace component" in an assembly by right-clicking on a part. Well, it is there but you may have to click on the arrow at the bottom of the list to expand the menu. This is a tip so those menus will always be fully expanded.

Solidworks Arc Dimension

2008-04-04T13:49:00.000-06:00

This is a very quick demo on how to add an arc length dimension into a sketch or drawing. I always forget how to do it.

Solidworks Asssembly Animation of Chain on Path

2008-04-04T13:36:00.000-06:00

This is a demo on how to make a part follow a predetermined path. In this case it is similar to a bicycle chain path. Use a surface extrude for the path and then that part can be hidden in the assembly and nobody will ever know it was there. Super!!

Be a Youtube ninja and watch videos in high def

2008-04-04T09:45:00.000-06:00

"Watch YouTube videos more efficiently with Better YouTube, a brand new Firefox extension that compiles our favorite YouTube Greasemonkey scripts into a single convenient package। Better YouTube smartly enlarges videos for better viewing, hides user comments, declutters the page and disables autoplay (great for vids open in a background tab।) Following in the footsteps of Better Gmail and friends, customize your online video-viewing with Better YouTube."

http://lifehacker.com/software/exclusive-lifehacker-download/better-youtube-firefox-extension-319925.php

Properties

2008-03-28T13:52:00.001-06:00

This is a demonstration I saw by Gerald Davis at COSUG to populate part properties very efficiently if the properties are empty or change significantly.