Training is often viewed as a luxury and not as a necessity. The problem is training does more than build an employee’s skills; training is an investment in company recruitment, retention and output.

Training can no longer afford to be viewed as ‘optional’. In competitive markets, training is a matter of survival. When there are gaps in skills and capabilities there is an immediate increase in ineffectiveness and money is lost.

Statistically, the top user outcomes from training are:

·         Gained speed and effectiveness

·         Best practices with design and modeling

·         In-depth knowledge of tool functions and capabilities

While those seem like obvious outcomes, what may come as a surprise is to learn that an untrained user may require up to 22.5 hours to acquire the same skill level that it takes a trained employee just 5 hours to master.  Just as important, for every hour of training, end users spend 0.5 hours less time finding and correcting errors versus untrained users.

So what would proper training mean to your organization? With companies cutting costs and trimming back staff it is more important than ever to have properly trained employees to ensure increased productivity and effectiveness.

3DVision offers a full line of training courses to support all our users at every level. As an authorized SolidWorks Training, Testing and Support Center 3DVision Technologies is able to offer professional training taught by a team of award winning certified instructors.

Don’t get left behind, invest in training today.

Not all things SolidWorks have to be work related. If you meet certain guidelines [check your EULA] you may be entitled to have a copy of SolidWorks installed at home.

While attending a recent football game, I noticed nearly every tailgate party had either a cornhole set or a ladderball set. I really thought ladderball looked fun but at $60 a set, they are way out of an Engineering Data Specialists’ budget.

In effort to take down the man (or at least the marketing guy who decided to charge $60 for $9 worth of materials) I have attached the plans I used in SolidWorks.

Before I get the millions of emails I normally get from these blogs, I wish to post a disclaimer: Do not use this model as a study in the ideal way to build models in SolidWorks, I made this just for fun and most importantly for free. If you wish for a perfectly modeled assembly, please send me $60.

Ladderball files

Wish you could “customize” the FLYOUT toolbars in SolidWorks ?
YOU CAN !!
If you customize the “stand-alone” toolbar it also customizes the corresponding Flyout Toolbar !!

For example, why is there a Spline flyout tool bar and a Spline Tools flyout toolbar ?    Consolidate them into ONE flyout by opening the SPLINE TOOLS stand-alone toolbar (right click the command manager, and turn on the check mark next it), then customize it by adding the buttons from the SPLINE flyout or any other buttons you want (right click the toolbar, scroll to the bottom of the list, choose customize, go to the COMMANDS tab, find the buttons you want from the respective categories listed, then drag buttons you want onto the toolbar you are customizing).  OK the Customize window, CLOSE the stand-alone toolbars you had open and then go add the FLYOUT toolbar for Spline Tools to your command manager or your ShortCut Toolbar.   The FLYOUT toolbar should now have everything you wanted on it !!