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SolidWorks 2012, First Impressions

September 13, 2011 By 4 Comments

While I am sitting here in my office watching a PhotoView 360 animation render through 1351 frames, I think it would be a good time to start exploring the new release of SolidWorks 2012. This 20th release of SolidWorks went Pre-Release 1 on September 6th.

This year I was invited to the SolidWorks Blogger/Press Event at SolidWorks Headquarters in Concord, and was able to get a good look at the new features of SolidWorks 2012 with a 4 hour briefing by Jeremy Regenerus. The event was very informative and I came home to Phoenix with a much different view of SolidWorks 2012 then what I had when I arrived in Concord.

Like I do every year during Beta, I downloaded the What’s New In SolidWorks 2012 pdf and gave it a good cover to cover read. My initial impression of SolidWorks 2012 was a bit ho-hum, not much there. There really isn’t a big wow feature this year, that is a must have for my workflow.

That impression changed after attending Jeremy’s briefing in Concord.  While I still believe there is not a big new WOW set of features, SolidWorks 2012 delivers a lot of improvements to existing functionality.  This release continues on the themes of the last few releases in polishing the UI and many of the commands we use every day.  A lot of thought has gone into many of the features to make them easier to use, less mouse miles and adding some more spit and polish to the functionality to make it work better and easier.

What are my favorite new features?  Feature Freeze, the new Form Tool Wizard, Large Design Review, the new Equation Dialog and many of the UI improvements come to mind.  For those users that are squarely in the 90% of what a typical SolidWorks user uses the program for, this release offers a lot.

Over the next few weeks, I am going to go through the What’s New pdf and explore some of my favorite new SolidWorks functionality and consider its possibilities to improving my workflow.

Disclosure: SolidWorks covered my airfare, hotel and Monday night dinner for my trip to the SolidWorks Blogger/Press Event.

Filed Under: SolidWorks 2012

A New Venture, RenderBay LLC

August 1, 2011 By 5 Comments

Time for a bit of blatant self promotion on a new venture I have been working on the last few months.

I have been working to build a small render farm for network rendering Modo 501 scenes.  Also have built a high-end workstation for rendering SolidWorks 2011 PhotoView 360 files.  I am hoping to market the farm as a service to users to off load some of their rendering tasks on those jobs that are a bit to big for their workstations.

The name of my new venture is RenderBay LLC.

All the computers are up and running on the render farm.  I am in soft launch mode, slowly going out to potential customers to work out the bugs in the farm and hopefully start to build a customer base.

Added a dual socket, overclocked, water-cooled Xeon X5690 system to the farm over the Memorial Day holiday weekend. It is running stable at 4.4 Ghz with 12 physical core and another 12 virtual cores.  I have Modo 501 and SolidWorks 2011 PhotoView 360 installed on the system.  This will be my PV360 render node for those that need to farm out PV360 tasks.  It is a nice compliment to the other render nodes I have for Modo.

With all my render nodes up and running I will have 150 Ghz plus hyper-threading available for Modo jobs.  For PV360 there is 53 Ghz plus hyper-threading available. I plan to not charge for hyper-threading. Rates will be 2/4/8 cents a Ghz Hr for low/medium/high priority rendering on the farm.

This is not a huge farm by any stretch, I am focusing on SolidWorks users that use PV360 and Modo in their workflow.  I will consider some of the other rendering packages like Blender, Maxwell, Shot and Keyshot if there is enough demand to justify the time and software investment.

You can find out more details about the farm at www.RenderBay.com

Cheers,

Anna

Filed Under: RenderBay

The Future Is Here Today With Dassault Systemes Cloud Initiative

June 29, 2011 By 7 Comments

Here is the e-mail I received today from Dassault’s PR firm. We are getting a peek into the future of SolidWorks v6 with these applications finally coming online. The infrastructure is coming into focus with Dassault’s partnership with Amazon Web Services.

Earlier today, at its annual Application Innovation Conference in Paris, France, Dassault Systemes (http://www.3ds.com) announced the availability of its PLM and 3D software over the cloud, the launch of its new 3D store, a deal with Amazon.com’s Amazon Web Services arm, and the launch of the latest edition of its manufacturing software platform, V6R2012.

Here’s the high points from each release:

Amazon Web Services Deal:

Dassault Systèmes announced a cloud-based partnership with Amazon.com’s Web Services arm that will enable clients to use its 3D design and manufacturing software remotely over the cloud.  PLM and 3D software is traditionally memory-intensive, but by partnering with Amazon Web Services, DS will be able to offer clients a preconfigured environment to remotely run 3D and PLM software without having to buy expensive hardware.  The full release is available here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110628007170/en/Dassault-Syst%C3%A8mes-Cloud-Amazon-Web-Services

Dassault Systèmes is leveraging multiple AWS services to power its Version 6 software platform, providing the following resources:

  • High performance and highly available resources: Dassault Systèmes is utilizing the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) to provide discrete compute environments for each customer.
  • Geographic reach: Dassault Systèmes leverages the AWS global footprint to provide the best experience for their customers, regardless of their physical location. By leveraging AWS’ Regions, Dassault Systèmes can ensure that data required to stay within a geographic boundary remains so.
  • Storage of easy-to-access design content: Using Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Dassault Systèmes can store volumes of design data without having to support an extensive array of legacy platforms. The combination of Amazon EBS and Amazon S3 allows customers to have immediate access to large storage volumes, coupled with the resiliency native to Amazon S3 for back-up purposes.
  • Dassault Systèmes will also provide their large community of developers with a complete online environment to deliver, monetize and run lifelike experiences leveraging AWS.
  • In addition, Dassault Systèmes is working to take advantage of AWS High Performance Computing Solutions to enable complex 3D virtual universes, and the heaviest computational workloads, such as tightly coupled parallel processes found in such domains as CFD, structural and system-of-system simulations. Amazon HPC solutions are specifically designed to combine high compute performance with high performance network capability. The objective is to deliver to customers the same high compute & network performance that they get today from custom-built infrastructure, while benefiting from the elasticity & flexibility of the AWS cloud.

Cloud Release:

Dassault Systèmes today announced its new online Version 6 platform, available over the cloud.  With Version 6 cloud-based solutions, users can get what they need, when they need it. Offered as a flexible subscription model, without upfront investments in additional infrastructure, long-term volume commitments or administrative burden, Version 6 Online solutions are designed to adapt to the needs of organizations or projects of any scale. The full release is available here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110628007175/en/Dassault-Syst%C3%A8mes-Cloud-Version-6

Version 6 will be open for the developer community, delivering simple mechanisms to configure on-the-fly, extend with mash up capabilities, and develop new applications and experiences.  DS will also provide the large community of developers with a complete online environment to develop, deliver, monetize and run lifelike experience solutions.

DS also announced its new 3DStore online (http://swym.3ds.com/#3DStore). The 3DStore will premier several cloud-based 3D and PLM business services:

  • 3DSWYM, DS’ new social innovation solution
  • n!fuze – for SolidWorks customers- and n!volve -for CATIA Version 6 customers- both taking advantage of award winning ENOVIA Version 6 technology
  • Access to 3DS products including 3DVIA and Draftsight
  • Access to experiences and applications from partners and customers.

DS also announces its strategic investment in Outscale, a start-up providing next generation SaaS (software as a service) operator services.  Dassault Systèmes will rely on Outscale services to manage its SaaS services based operations. With Outscale, Dassault Systèmes dedicates a highly specialized world class structure to ensure 24×7 service, and will leverage dynamic public cloud resources allocation to provide best availability of its online applications, globally. Adopting its own PLM core technology to manage multiple cloud physical locations provides a competitive advantage.

V6R2012:

DS also announced the latest update to its Version 6 software platform today, V6R2012.  In this release, DS delivers an open collaborative platform to its customer base and beyond. It broadens the value of digital assets into new solutions such as immersive retail store experiences and global production system planning. The full release is available here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110628007167/en/Dassault-Syst%C3%A8mes-Launches-Version-6-Release-2012

Some of the features include:

  • Supporting a variety of implementation environments, Dassault Systèmes has continued to enable an immersive ENOVIA Version 6 data management experience, now available in CATIA Version 5 and SolidWorks, as well as in Pro/ENGINEER, Inventor, NX, SolidEdge, Adobe Creative Suite, and other solutions.
  • V6R2012 introduces new interoperability solutions, based on XML schema and Web services, between Version 6 and other PDM systems, offering bi-directional exchanges of 3D design product structures with exact geometry in STEP and CATIA V5 formats. New levels of integration between Version 6 and ERP solutions are also now available, enhancing the exchange of product, process, and resource data.
  • 3DVIA V6R2012 includes 3DVIA Shopper, a new and ready-to-use business solution for retailing and brand merchandising, realistically simulating retail settings inside immersive 3D environments. Using 3DVIA Shopper, merchandisers and retailers can easily visualize and better assess store layouts and comparative product positioning, while analyzing consumer shopping behavior for maximum sales potential. More information on 3DVIA Shopper is available here: http://www.3dvia.com/products/3dvia-shopper/
  • 3DVIA V6R2012 also includes several improvements to 3DVIA Composer.  It enables you to create clear and effective product documentation such as assembly instructions, product manuals and maintenance and repair guides.  With the new rendering enhancements and visual effects you can create stunning graphics for marketing collateral and sales tools that will make your products stand out from the competition.  For more on 3DVIA Composer V6R2012, see this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehuXUsgCLrw&feature=player_embedded.
  • CATIA V6R2012 introduces multiple advances in systems engineering, the multidisciplinary design methodology which integrates requirements, functional, logical and physical (RFLP) product definitions. The CATIA Systems portfolio now includes interoperability with leading system controller vendors, such as Simulink, as well as full RFLP definition and traceability within CATIA.
Filed Under: SolidWorks Musings
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