I slept in again this morning due to a little late night partying with the guys from our user group and a few bloggers in the French Quarter after we left Mardi Gras World. I got to go to Pat O's for the first time and had a hurricane. I felt better this morning than I thought I would though!

Today's general session theme was "Designing Better Products For The Future". The stage opened with the Star Trek set and several SW employees dressed in classice Trek costumes.

They went through the skit with the captain making some pretty funny Shatnerisms. Various times they were hailed by some destressed or angry designer, each one a different race consisting of human, Klingon, Vulcan, and Ferengi (very realistic costuming and acting, btw). Everyone in my group thinks the Klingon was John McEleney - I'm not sure.

They showed off quite a few new features coming in SW 2008 to help these designers, but then the crew mutinied when the captain kept taking all the credit for the new features. So they beamed in a new captain...Leonard Nimoy! He finished off the skit with them showing some of the new Instant 3D technology.

I will have some more pictures up in my album, but it probably be tomorrow or Friday, so check back.

Here is a list and description of some of the new stuff they have in SW 2008:

Large Assembly Management Tools - You can open large assemblies in fast preview mode, manipulate and isolate the parts/subs you want to work on and then only the visible parts are loaded into memory. You can also choose to turn on parts that are directly mated to the visible parts, turning them on. All assembly mates stay intact, regardless if the parts are visible or not. There is also mis-aligned hole detection.

SWIFT FilletXpert - When choosing an edge to fillet, this tool will allow you to choose from a selection of related filleting options that can be applied instead of having to pick each edge individually.

SWIFT DimXpert - This allows you to specify datums in the parts and SW will automatically add dimensions and annotations, including GD&T.

BOM Properties - You can add custom properties directly into the BOM on the drawing and that pushes the value back into the part/assy. You can also add parametric notes just by clicking, such as adding a balloon to a note. The BOM can be rearranged directly on the drawing by just clicking a row and dragging it.

Direct Editing - There is a RealView appearance pallette that allows you to quickly apply material textures to parts. Fillets, drafts, and holes can be automatically recognized in imported geometry.

Motion Simulation - This allows you to easily simulate motion in assemblies, including the effects of physics, torque, momentum, etc. They showed a very detailed assembly model of the game Mouse Trap and the ball moved as it would in real life.

DriveWorksXpress - Allows automated rules-based model and drawing creation.

FloXpress - Analyze fluid flow.

Drafting Enhancements - Can now copy and paste drawing sheets, both in the same file and into different files.

Repeat Mates - Allows you to place, say, a bolt and mate it and then click on another hole to place another mated instance.

Advanced Mechanical Mates - Screw mate, linear coupling mate, and path mate.

Dynamic Dragging - You can sketch a profile and then drag it to extrude or cut without having to use the feature manager. I was told that it will also work for shell. There is a "ruler" that pops up while you are dragging to enable acurate placement without having to enter values from the keyboard.

Instant 3D - Allows you to automatically dissect parts into their defining features/sketches to enable easier data reuse.

After the demo was over, Jeff Ray talked to Leonard Nimoy and commented on how some of the science-fiction Star Trek technology is now real-world technology.

<a name="goals">He also stated three goals that they have commited to.

1. To continue to provide improvements to focus on design, not CAD (i.e., make technology bend to humans, not the other way around).
2. Help people save time by increasing reuse of existing designs.
3. To help customers design with confidence.

John McEleny closed out the session by iterating the concept of "Absurdly Ideal". I didn't post about it Monday, but he showed the SawStop table saw and commented on how they came up with it by asking not, "How can we make a table saw safer?", but by asking, "How can we make a saw that will cut wood, but not flesh?" Kind of "out of the box"-type stuff.

He also announced the dates and location of SolidWorks World 2008 as January 20-24, 2008 in San Diego, CA.

Well, I guess that does it for SolidWorks World 2007. I hope these posts were informative. I'm off to my last sessions, and will be flying back home in the morning. It's been a blast, and I can't wait to see 2008!

Great posts Brian. Thanks for the updates. Wish I could have been there.

That’s great. What I read is… I’ll be able to have std components detailed… bring a bunch det. drawing into a new drawing… move the detail views onto one sheet… Sweet.



Sounds…KWIK! Hehe. Now SW needs a KWIK way to mate multiple parts to planes.


Wow… Those ARE advanced. “linear coupling mate”? So when 2 parts come in contact they mate together?

I was real excited about getting the “Width” mate… but I thought for sure it would be flaky. I haven’t driven it too hard but it seems to be rock solid.

That sounds like the whole “SWIFT” philosophy. Tell the machine what you need and let it figure out how to do it. Does swift has the WOW with the users that it does with the salesmen? Looks to me that swift uses the computer power to evaluate the problem then presents you with the possible solutions. But often the problem requires a small change outside of the scope of the problem.

I don’t like that #1 goal… You can tell me this saw won’t cut me… but I wouldn’t let you take the guards off.


I hope that means working on better parmeters.

I wouldn't either........still I would use that saw over any other for the "just in case" factor. Co-worker of mine ripped two of fingers up pretty good on a table saw. He didn't lose the fingers luckily for him.

Wonder if it damages the saw when it stops the blade.

He ran it through with a hot dog and all it got was a little nick. I don't recall the time, but I think he said that the blade would only advance 2 teeth when contacted. It measures a difference in electrical resistance.

The blade and mechanism is destroyed, as the brake slams into the blade, but that is a small price to pay to save a finger or hand...

Small price indeed!!!

Here are some pics of the SawStop unit. As Brian said the braking mechanism in destroyed. But it looks to be easy to drop in a new unit.

I just got home today and after a long nap this afternoon I am just coming back to life from the whirlwind week.

It was great to meet the Alabama gang and all the rest of the folks that I see out on the web. This SWW was better then last year for me because I knew so many really great people from the web and was able to meet them in New Orleans.

I plan to post some of my thoughts on SWW over the coming week on my blog.

Regards,

The stop does look impressive. Is that a 9 pin sub-d on the side? Is it vista compatible? Haha.

SawStop got the hot dog demo on their web site. They said there is a table saw accident every 9 minutes. But I bet most of those are with the cheap$129 “home” saws.

In high school a kid cut off his thumb with a circular saw in shop. I almost cut off mine. I tried to rip a piece on a radial arm saw. About a ½” into the cut the blade grabbed and shot though the wood instantly. My thumb was just a hair away from getting hit… I hadn’t even thought about my hand position. That was the eye-opener that probably saved me from a more serious accident later. I don’t even look at machinery without saying to myself… recognize and avoid.

On their site they said it takes 5 thousands of a second. 10x faster than an airbag.

I have cut fingers on a tablesaw - when I was 14. I didn't lose any, but it took 4 hours of surgery to remove all the bone fragments, reattach blood vessels, and install pins.

There was a article in Inc magazine about this company about a year ago. When the guy was developing it he used hotdogs. Finally he decided he had to test it on a human.

He put novicane cream onto his finger and prepare to stick it into the blade. He said it took 10 mins to build up the courage and then he trust his finger into the blade. It made a small nick and the saw stopped.

The main focus of the article was that saw manufacturers were not included to add this feature to their saws as they thought it was too expensive.

Here's the article...

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20050701/di ... -gass.html

I was wondering if it was ever human tested. I figured they used animals. What you wanna bet he used left hand pinky.

That was a good read. Here’s a clip.

"According to Dan Lanier, the Defense Research Industry attorney, all of the manufacturers approached by Gass independently tested and evaluated the technology. And each one, Lanier said in an e-mail, encountered "significant problems." "The primary problem," he said, "was an unacceptably high rate of false trips of the braking device when cutting wet, green, or pressure-treated lumber."

We all know about workers bypassing safeties because it’s triggering for no reason. Everytime the sawstop false-fires cost you a $100 blade, a $80 stop plus changeout time.

First thing I thought about was how the grime and sawdust that gets caked under the table affects the stop. And contractors who work through drizzle.

But you got to hand it to Glass. He couldn’t find a manufacturer so he became the manufacturer. In 10 years he’ll have his field test.

Till then… don’t take the guards off.