Archive for January, 2009

Customers Make all the Difference.

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

In a time where the economy has impacted most Americans both personally and professionally it’s critical to recognize the importance of sticking together.

At 3DVision Technologies we realize that we are providing not just a service but a creating a network of individuals all facing similar goals and challenges. And as such, we recognize the importance of our customers and the work they are doing to better the world.

We believe that our customers are some of the best in the business. Their work, determination and drive are what help fuel our own passion of the industry.

This year, we plan to feature some of our very accomplished customers in our blog and we invite you to share your stories as well.

This month I’d like to introduce you to Streamside Systems, LLC. Founded in Findlay, Ohio in 2002, Streamside is a small business that creates and designs alternative methods of cleaning the earth’s water resources. Streamside has most recently been fetured on The Economic Report and I strongly suggest you visit their website http://www.streamsidesystems.com to learn more about the amazing work they doing.

Again I want to recognize all of our customers and the work they do and if you have a story you would like to share I invite you to email me at ccavanaugh@3dvision.com

carrie-cavanaugh.jpg

Carrie Cavanaugh
Marketing Manager
3DVision Technologies

Custom material properties

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009

Today I had the pleasure of doing a fake interview with Jeff Ray, CEO of SolidWorks.

Engineering Data Specialist Man: Thanks for “being” with us today.

JR: The pleasure is all mine. It is not very often I get to talk to one of the best SolidWorks users of all time -you’re in the top four I believe?.

EDSM: Jeff, I have been wanting to ask you about the new ability in SolidWorks 2009 to add custom properties to materials in the SolidWorks materials database. Is there any way to access this information other than reading the XML file through programming? I think it would be super cool if you could take this information…

Custom material properties

JR: Excuse, sorry to interrupt, is that a picture of Celine Dion on your wall?

EDSM: ….as I was saying: If we had a way to get this custom material property information into the FILE custom properties it would be extremely valuable! Think of the benefits! The vendor of a material could automatically appear on the BOM; -or now that we can put equations in our file properties, with a “price per pound” material property we could automatically have the cost of the raw material of a part!

JR: Yes, it is true. Without API, putting data in that new custom tab has little more value than giving you practice on your data entry skills. Your ideas sounds like a great enhancement requests don’t they?

Jeff and a pretend Jeff Ray

Jeff Sweeney

Jeff Sweeney
Engineering Data Specialist
3DVision Technologies

“What’s New” out on Video

Monday, January 5th, 2009

Over, and over I have explained the benefits of attending the 3DVision’s “What’s New in SolidWorks 2009″ festivals. I even went to your home town spreading the love.

Perhaps you were on your death bed, or maybe you were waiting in line to get front row tickets to the Celine Deon concert….but aside from those two excuses what other reason could you have for not wanting to learn of the new tools available to get your job done faster?

Now on videoGiven the fact that 83.7% of the best SolidWorks users are also Celine fans [citation needed]. The folks located on the mighty 3DVision mountain felt you should be able to see Miss Deon AND become a better SolidWorks user -and thus have posted videos of what you missed during the rollouts. The videos are broken out into three sections and multiple chapters in each section, so you can watch them at your own pace.

Enjoy and learn something!

Jeff Sweeney

Jeff Sweeney
Engineering Data Specialist
3DVision Technologies