NOVEDGE blog

Interview with James Coleman: "What started as a result of not being able to move more than a few meters a day has ended being in a very strong position teaching one of the most powerful 3D/CAD render engines in the world."

I discovered James Coleman's work on Twitter and invited him to talk about being a student in England and becoming a certified instructor of Maxwell Render. Little did I know James had needed all his determination to study and work while battling a rare disease.

Novedge: Tell us about yourself and what you do.

James Coleman: I am a student of product design, currently in my last year at the University of Brighton. I also teach fellow students at the University and I have my own YouTube channel with tutorials on Maxwell Render.

 

I studied physics, electronics and maths (pure & mechanics) at college when I was 17, and chose to study mechanical engineering in university. Then something happened that would, for better or worse, shape the rest of my education forever. In 2007 it was discovered that I had a condition called chronic hypersensitivity that affects 300,000 in the UK, and the root cause is still unknown, as is a cure. The recovery period is approximately half the patient's age, in other words, I still have 5 years of recovery ahead of me, but at least I now have a diagnosis and I am receiving treatment.

Once I found out about my condition, I started to use my spare time to make 3D models of spaceships in SketchUp and decided to change my course to Product Design Bsc.

Novedge: How did you get into teaching? 

James Coleman: Whilst in my second year, my renders kept garnering attention, and I started showing groups of students how I made them. Then I setup some lectures in the afternoon. The first was hugely successful and I became the official Maxwell Render Mentor at the University of Brighton Center for Design Technology. When Next Limit announced their certification program I signed up immediately!

In the summer of 2012, I set up my Youtube channel and started recording basic tutorials, things like resolution and focal length, with the occasional overview of certain setup techniques. I also upload tutorials based on the questions my students asked me most frequently.

Then one day I was looking for inspiration for a new tutorial and I saw that VizPeople had released a free model of a DeLorean DMC12, which has always been one of my favourite cars. By coincidence, Maground had also recently released a free HDRI set with environment and backplates on hdri4u.com. I decided to strike while the iron was hot, and I made a series of tutorials involving setting up the model and then rendering it in a variety of different environments. The DeLorean Series got the attention of cadjunkie.com, which I was already a fan of. I ended up producing 10 free and 6 premium tutorials for them, Studio Lighting Techniques In Maxwell Render. The series went on to great acclaim, and like the DeLorean tutorial, continues to be one of the most popular videos on my channel.

 

Currently I am working on the tutorial series’ Maxwell Render Hot Tips and What Not To Render. There’s currently a new video in each playlist every week and there will be until April.

Novedge: Your university didn't have instructors to teach you how to render using Maxwell Render. How did you learn?

James Coleman: I learned by doing: I spent my time using the program, looking for answers in online forums and  watching online tutorials. 

Novedge: What software do you use? 

James Coleman: I started out with SketchUp all those years ago for one very simple reason: it was free. I can’t remember exactly where I first heard about it, but I do remember using it with friends and learning from each other. It was also really helpful that SketchUp didn’t have high system requirements, the interface and the “sketchy” style made it approachable, and although it was designed for architecture, we used it for whatever we liked.

After I became frustrated with the limited modeling tools in SketchUp, I started searching for a more advanced alternatives. 3ds Max has a huge reputation on the web, but is only available on Windows, and I use a Mac. I heard about Cinema 4D and downloaded the demo. I loved it’s interface and I understood the basics almost immediately. The tutorials available online were extensive and it wasn’t difficult to find an answer to a problem. I decided to keep it and I’ve never regretted it. I still use it today when making quick drafts, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone starting out in product design, but plenty of other students on my course use it for animations, and for times when they need to make a model quickly and easily. 3ds Max is also popular with Windows users as an alternative to CAD centric software.

The CAD software we use at the university is less a matter of choice and more a matter of logic. SolidWorks is practically a requirement on CVs at the moment. Rhino is also available. When I started the course, I found Rhino to be more similar to Cinema 4D and hence I preferred it at the time. But now that I’ve used both for years, I always open SolidWorks before Rhino when I need to make a prototype, even for models with complex curves.

When I first became interested in photorealistic rendering, V-Ray was very appealing to me, but once I actually had V-Ray for Cinema 4D, I realized that I didn’t want to spend a lot of time adjusting settings, I wanted to spend more time designing and modeling. A few internet searches later and I found Maxwell Render. When I first tried it, it was still version 1, and it won me over in terms of ease of use and quality. One of the first images I ever made showed the model casting a shadow on the floor, when the only lighting in the scene was an HDRI. I’d never seen that before and it was enough to make a lasting impression. I dabbled between Cinema 4D’s own render engine, V-Ray and Maxwell Render for a while, but when Maxwell Render 2 was released I didn’t look back. For me it still delivers fantastic results, whether the image is complicated or simple, very easily. 

And something I wish someone had told me when I started: whenever you see a render that really impresses you, 10-25% of all the work that went into making that image came from Photoshop, which is why it is also another vital tool in my arsenal of software. Alien Skin Exposure is a plug-in for Photoshop that I couldn’t work without, it mimics the effect of certain types of photographic film, but with a lot more control and subtlety than Instagram.

Novedge: What is a recent project that you worked on?


James Coleman: The most surprising thing about my product design course is that we focus on teaching communication, technology, professionalism, history, etc. It’s a doctrine that actually I agree with. Not just because it follows Dieter Rams’ principles, but also because we have the rest of our lives to design, so we might as well use the time now to make sure we know how to do it right, and then later on we can be eccentric if we like. Very often in product design, designers can get too caught up in the aesthetics of a product and forget about ergonomics, engineering, or any other topic. That’s not what’s taught in Brighton, and that's what makes it stand out from other, more “arts” based courses.

One project I enjoyed was making a “Revolutionary” product, with the tag-line of “It doesn’t look like a “X”, but it does what a “X” does”. I was inspired by one of my favorite ideas in product design, “the new application of an existing technology”, and because we were so pressured to design something that would be completely revolutionary, I decided to include some technologies that were theoretically possible but not available yet. I based the project on audio loudspeakers, because the technology in them hasn’t really changed for nearly 150 years, they’re still as electrodynamic as they were when they were first invented. The end result is the Levitating Superconducting Speakers concept. 

After starting to use Maxwell Render 2, one of my projects was to identify a product which exhibited evolutionary design, and to continue that design onto its next generation. For my project I chose the Kodak Brownie, despite being out of production since the 1970’s, its design when it was discontinued was very similar to when it was originally conceived at the beginning of the century. Kodak would often make special edition cameras for major events and I immediately themed the project around the upcoming London 2012 Olympic Games. The project was small and it only took a few weeks to complete, but it went on to be featured on Yanko Design, and after that it was very popular on the web, I still see the occasional tweet about it! I put the amount of public interest in the project down to the quality of the renders. I approached Kodak to see if they would be interested in taking the project further, and although they weren’t interested at the time, they invited me to contact them about employment upon my graduation.

Novedge: What innovations do you see in your field (now or in the future)?


James Coleman: I think predicting the future has never really involved specific technologies, but instead looking at habits, lifestyles and routines, and then the technology is left to catch up. Touch screen technology, for example, was mostly a gimmick that had little real world value, until you could touch simultaneously in more than one place at once, and it was applied to a mobile phone. In hindsight it seems obvious that that’s how it should be used. So predicting specific technologies that will be developed, find a niche, and become cheap enough to be in common use, is much more difficult than imagining overall work flows and customs. My Levitating Speakers involved several different technologies that are not commonplace yet, or do not exist at all, including superdiamagnetic levitation, wireless power transfer, and flexible screens. It is certain that these technologies will develop over time, in fact when the project was completed, wireless speakers were still revolutionary, but now AirPlay is commonplace. The question is, will there be a benefit to having Levitating Speakers?

3D printing has got a lot of press lately regarding its potential. I agree that one day we may have 3D printers in every home, and in one end you would put waste, and then products, food and other luxuries will come tumbling out of the other. I think that one day, we will have “Star Trek” style replicators, powered by electricity which will probably come from fusion reactors. But not within my lifetime. At the moment, 3D printing and rapid prototyping often seem limited to making spare components when objects break. Even then they have to come from 3D files made by a professional. Consumers will want to be able to print complete objects, like kettles, laptops or phones. Even though 3D printers which are capable of making multi-coloured objects, and printing multiple components connected together have existed for some time, as someone who has worked with 3D printers for many years, I think we still have some way to go. But when we are there, they will change the world in ways which no one has yet imagined, and copyright and piracy laws will once again be brought into question.

In my particular area of interest (medical design), there are plenty of issues which are commonplace and well known. Drug resistant infections, obesity related complications, and aging population are the three problems which I expect to encounter in my design career. In much less than a century, certain bacteria have evolved to become almost immune to many typical antibiotics. If this trend continues, product design will have to play a major role in increasing the hygiene of hospital environments. Anti-microbial materials such as copper are already seeing a comeback, and although cloth bedsheets interwoven with silver (again for its anti-microbial properties) is a hugely expensive concept at present, if it becomes cheaper than treating patients, it will become a reality. 

Despite being prepared for these trends, I don’t think there is anything that can or will prepare me for the problem of ageing population. There are practical, medical, and ethical issues where product design will be called upon to help. These issues are nothing new, but will be exaggerated in the future. With higher demand, and larger markets, products specifically for the elderly will become more commonplace, and inclusive design will have more influence over everyone. This effect is visible now, for example with non-step access to buildings being a legal requirement, and this trend shows no sign of stopping.

Novedge: What are your plans after graduation?

James Coleman: My ideal job would be a product designer at a company specializing in the medical industry. My overall impression of the purpose of product design is to make our lives more efficient, where is that more important than when well being, potentially lives, are at stake? Medical staff are often overworked and underpaid, and then they have to use equipment made by the lowest bidder. Then this equipment will not be updated unless it breaks or is recalled (the standard that dictates the design of an IV drip stand is nearly 50 years old, and has never been updated). And with humans living longer and getting fatter, the market is just going to get bigger (some pun intended).

My family is a big reason I feel this way. Three generations have in some way or another worked in the medical industry. I’m not brave enough to be on the front line like they are, but I wouldn’t mind sitting back at a comfortable distance and making the equipment that they use everyday a little bit more efficient. 

Most of all, though, I’m going to recover from the condition that has practically dictated my life for the past 5 years. It’ll take another 5 years to be completely rid of it, but I’m looking forward to being able to walk to places without running the risk of being housebound the next day. I’m looking forward to working to improve the services that have served me for so long.

Interview with Josh Mings and Adam O'Hern: "Your brain is full of ideas, most of them very bad"

Here at Novedge, we are big fans of Engineer Vs. Designer, Josh Mings and Adam O'Hern's joint podcast on product design. While they are taking a break from their series (and working on new projects), I asked Adam and Josh to share a bit about themselves, the software they use and the innovations of the future. 

True to their style, they sent me this awesome recording. So here it is, enjoy!

 

EngineerVsDesigner: Novedge Interview from EvD Media on Vimeo.

 

Catch up on Engineer Vs. Designer on its website and on Twitter.

Adam O'Hern is the founder of Cadjunkie, join the community and find him on Twitter.

Josh Mings is the man behind SolidSmack and you can read his latest tweets here.

Interview with the Afinia Team: Aaron Pratt

Novedge: Tell us about yourself and what you do

Aaron Pratt: I’m Afinia’s Vice President of Marketing. In my personal life, I’m a husband and a father of seven, and I love playing the piano and reading. 

 

Afinia is the new business division of Microboards Technology, which has been developing robotics and printers in the CD/DVD industry for twenty years. In the new business division, we are experimenting with all kinds of printing-related robotic technology. 3D printing is the most prominent of them. But we're also playing with very high speed label printing, and with some devices for the medical industry as well.  It's a fun place to be. And we know 3d printers especially well because we use them in our own design and prototyping every day.

 

Novedge: What inspires you?

Aaron Pratt: I’m inspired by ideas. I spend a lot of time reading about ideas.  I like reading about foreign policy and economics, about communications and language, and about art and science.  To me it is important not only to test ideas and see if they work, but to choose to see the world through models and ideas that bring about good – good art, good relationships, good feelings.  I see 3D Printing as a tangible manifestation of that - enabling creation, transferring ideas to the physical world – making us all designers and artists. 

One of the best books I read last year was Seth Godin’s Linchpin. It talked about making good art and giving it away. As an artist, I was inspired by the idea of seeing my work as art and a gift to the world, and seeing income and career as a residual effect instead of the purpose. 

Not long after I read Godin’s book, I had a visit at my office from a 3d Printing Enthusiast named Peter Leppik.  He’s an endearing person, very smart and enjoyable to talk to.  He showed me a set of toy gears that clip together he’d designed for his nephew for his birthday.  You can see them (and download the files) here http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:30981.  What a great way to give something of yourself.  Maybe Sam will grow out of the gears someday, but what a great expression of love to design and print something like that. 

We also have another user who volunteers his time designing devices for helping disabled children. Because of how children grow and change, assistance devices require much more customization.  This guy is a talented mechanical engineer and designer. Before he bought a printer I invited him to send me a design he was trying to wrap up and printed it for him.  Even though I had put many hours in at one of our printers I was awed at how beautiful this part was when it came off the printer.  I remember we did it in yellow at his request, and it was the first time I'd used our yellow filament, and it worked absolutely perfectly, the first time, and was something that I was really proud to send him.

 

Novedge: What are you most proud of at Afinia? What is the biggest challenge you overcame? 

Aaron Pratt: I’m proudest of our out-of-box experience. If that sounds like a product pitch, well, it is, but it really is our highest accomplishment.  We were what you would call a “late market entrant”.  We came in to the market because we know how to commercialize a product, and we saw a lot of companies that don’t know how to do that.  Things that are painful to users are not obvious to companies that are experts in the technology.  We worked with a manufacturer and said “Let’s fix this.  Mount the LED here. Make sure it comes out of the box in one piece.  Fix the little tiny bugs. Rewrite the manual.”  We went around the country meeting with users. We toured supplier facilities in China. We’ve tested dozens of filament suppliers.  We changed everything, right down to the packaging itself, to make sure that users would want to tell their friends how easy we were to use, especially compared to whatever tinker toy they had pulled their hair out trying to assemble last.  You can see a very detailed description of the out-of-box experience as my counterpart, John Westrum, steps you through it here:

In it, he describes every step and every accessory in the box – in less than 30 minutes.  When I’m setting one up at a show, it takes me under five minutes to have it set up and recognized by the PC. 

Getting the product just right is what will allow us to recreate Peter’s experience tens of thousands of times.  One of our users designs customized parts for assistance devices for disabled children.  I just talked to another guy who builds airships who wants one for his shop and to introduce his son to design and prototyping.  That’s just a small handful of the many stories we’ve been involved in. 

Design by @dizingof

Novedge: What is special about Afinia's 3D printers? What software is best used when designing an object to be 3D printed with them?

Aaron Pratt: What's special about our printers is the experience.  The speeds and feeds of the various devices on the market is all about the same.  It’s what happens around the machine that makes us awesome.  Try calling our tech support – if they don’t answer immediately, they will within a business day. (Seriously – try it – 952.279.2643).  Or e-mail us. Or Twitter us. Or Facebook us.  We’re very responsive. 

The software is strong too – again, all part of having a flawless user experience.  Our software is one step: open the STL and hit print.  You can do some manipulation, of course – scaling it, placing it where you want it to print, rotating it, adjusting support material and so on.  But there’s no pre-processing, exporting G-Code, and so on.  That’s all done in the background. And once the file has been sent to the printer, you can unplug the USB cable and walk away.

So far we’ve had great experience with all the design software that can output STLs. In-house, we’re a Solidworks-centric company. But lots of our designers use the other major packages.  (And some of the obscure ones, too.)

Design by @dizingof

Novedge: What innovations do you see in your field now or in the future?

Aaron Pratt: The big ones that everyone is talking about are print envelope (larger part sizes), speed, and materials.  I see all three as part of the near future.  I think the first one you can expect to see from us is a larger print envelope.  We also recently announced an enhancement in resolution (from .20 mm to .15mm), and I anticipate there will be more of that in the future.  The one I am most excited about is materials.  I can’t promise anything yet, but I am really looking forward to being able to make some announcements about different plastics and beyond.

All images courtesy of Afinia.

The 2012/13 Winter Contest: This Winter, Novedge is Giving Back to You

At Novedge, we believe in innovation. We love to find out about a new project, to discover the latest software, and to hear from the people who tirelessly work behind the scenes to create what becomes our world.

That's why this year we decided to celebrate high school students who are embarking on a life of design and innovation. We are giving away a student license of either SolidWorks or Rhino, to the five high school students who impress us the most with their proposals.

Here are the details of our 2012/13 Holiday Contest:

Who can participate: Any high school student currently enrolled in high school and residing in the USA.

When: Enter the contest now, until January 31^st, 2013. No proposals will be accepted after 11:30 pm PST on January 31^st, 2013.

What you need to email us in order to enter the contest:

1. Tell us a bit about yourself and your school, in no more than one page.

2. You get to choose which of the two programs we will send you if you win. Tell us what you will design with Rhino or SolidWorks: make us believe your project is the best! Make sure your proposal fits in one page. If you can, include links to previous work and/or to sketches related to your proposal.

 

If your proposal is selected, you will need to prove you are a student by providing us with a copy of your student ID and class schedule in order to win and receive the prize. Please review the requirements for Rhino here and the requirements for SolidWorks here.

The team at Novedge will review all entries and will announce the five winners on Tuesday February 12^th, 2013.

We are looking forward to reading about all your projects! Please email your proposal and any questions you might have about the contest to Aurora Meneghello at aurora@novedge.com

Happy Holidays from the entire Novedge Team!

Interview with Lou Gallo, SolidWorks Power User and CAD Podcaster

In the past, if someone asked me to come up with improbable or strange combinations of technologies I would have suggested things such as 3D animations and Twitter or CAD and podcasts. I have since learned that if something looks improbable or strange to me it doesn't mean it's impossible or even wrong. Tackling those apparently impossible combinations requires both vision and determination, qualities which characterize Lou Gallo, the SolidWorks Power User who started a regular podcast about SolidWorks.
Not only is Lou Gallo proving the combination of a CAD podcast possible, he is also showing how this combination can be successful. While listening to his podcast in the morning drive to work, it becomes obvious that podcasting about SolidWorks makes perfect sense, but who could have seen this opportunity? I honestly didn't. Here is my interview with Lou to understand how he does it.

Lou can you tell us a bit about yourself and your professional activities?

I began listening to podcasts, mostly on tech, in 2004...

Sure. I am a mechanical engineer from Wisconsin with a background in robotics and automation systems. My interest in CAE tools began in college. After graduation, I began working in the mechanical and semiconductor industry and am currently with Digital Dimensions, a SolidWorks reseller in Arizona, San Diego, Fresno and Sacramento. I have been in the CAD industry now since 2001 and enjoy visiting customers and helping solve problems within engineering and design. I began listening to podcasts, mostly on tech, in 2004 and realized that I wanted to provide tech content of my own back to the SolidWorks community. I started my own podcast in January of 2006. The podcast is now joined by a blog and a Twitter-like community called THE HEaRD. I have always been a bit of a technology junky so I tend to spend time discovering new technologies in web-based applications and CAD related tools.

While podcasting might seem to be an odd option for a graphic and visual context such as CAD, your success proves opposite. How did you get started, and how do you involve people?

[podcasting] can be challenging in selecting a topic that will not require a visual aid

This is a common question I am asked, but when I started the podcast, my goal was to provide SolidWorks and tech related content that users could take on the go. Since most of my podcast listening was done in the car on my commute to work, I figured this was a space that could be filled by news and tips on a CAD tool used not only by my customers, but any SolidWorks user worldwide. It can, however, be challenging in selecting a topic that will not require a visual aid like a blog or video. Another goal of mine is to bring awareness as well as useful tips, so if after listening you try or lookup how a feature or tool works, I have done what I set out to do. As far as involving the listenership, I try to get them to interact on THE HEaRD or Twitter, however I get a fair amount of interaction thru email and comments through the website.

Based on your experience, what are the main differences between a blog and a podcast from the end user point of view? What type of content fits best for each of the two channels?

It is all about the enclosure. A blog is really no different than a podcast as far as the "feed", except a podcast has an enclosure or something that the reader can then take with them. In my case, that is an MP3 which they can either listen to from the website, be consumed through an RSS reader, or more commonly through a podcatching client like iTunes. By publishing my content to my website, the user can choose to consume the content from the web, leave comments and read the show notes, just like a blog, or have it delivered automatically by subscribing. I started doing a blog as well since there were topics that required that platform to best communicate certain topics (pictures and/or video).

How do you interact with your listeners? What type of feedback are you getting from them?

I encourage my listeners after every show to send me feedback via email, comments, or the micro-blogs (Twitter or THE HEaRD). I get feedback from all of these outlets.

What did you learn moving from listener to author?

the first couple of shows took an hour to record a 5 - 10 minute show

Great question. A lot! Before my interest in podcasting, my audio recording experience could be summed up in three words, Windows Sound Recorder. I had been recording webcasts live and using video capture software but never mixed in music or tried to fade in/out transitions before. This took a lot of research to learn what equipment to use (mics and mixers) and what software was the best to use for recording. The other issue was the RSS creation. When I started there were very few people that podcasted and most were technical so building the feed was typically a manual process which I did in Notepad. This made it a lot of work but it was educational and helped me find a better workflow to get shows recorded and posted. The first couple of shows took an hour to record a 5 - 10 minute show, then an additional hour or so to get all the posting and feed creation done. Today a 20-30 minute show takes me about 45 minutes to an hour to record, write show notes and post!

Can you describe your audience, for instance - how large is it? Where are they located? What is their professional level?

the podcast has gotten over 100,000 downloads

The podcast has gotten over 100,000 downloads since I launched and the monthly downloads seem to be increasing as podcast awareness grows. I started this solely due to my love of the recording technology and my desire to share my SolidWorks and tech knowledge with the community. The size of my audience is really not important to me as long as I know I'm helping people.
The reach of the show is worldwide. A majority of the listeners are in the US & Canada but I have listeners across the globe in Europe, Asia, and Australia.

How do you select the content you provide to your subscribers?

Since 1-2 shows a month relate to tech news or new technologies, the industry will provide me content to cover. On the SolidWorks front, since so many of us use CAD tools a certain way every time, we tend to get into ruts. I try to choose new toolsets or useful tools that are typically missed by most users. I also spend time covering new toolsets as well as products released on the SolidWorks Labs site. I will occasionally get groups of Bloggers together to chat about tech topics and do a 15+ part series each year covering the What's New for new releases of SolidWorks. I have recently gotten into doing live coverage of events like SolidWorks World and COFES 2009. I am always interested in feedback or topics for future shows and will cover that when requests are sent in.

What type of integration do you have among Podcast, Twitter, and your blog?

The podcast is a weekly show which I have published every week since 1/1/06. It can be found in iTunes, but it is fed through Feedburner, so any mechanism that people have to download blog/podcast feeds will work. I also have links go out in my HEaRD account which echos to Twitter (@gol10dr). All podcasts are posted on my site along with their show notes at http://solidworksheard.com/podcast so listeners can leave feedback through the comment system. However they can also find me here at Novedge as well! Thanks Franco for the interview and the work you do at Novedge!

In my opinion CAD systems such as SolidWorks have been affected only marginally by the Internet and Internet technologies. What is your opinion and which web technologies and tools are more likely to have an impact on CAD systems from the end user point of view?

I am a huge fan of web applications and their success is typically enhanced by offering their users a local experience

I agree. In general most Desktop CAD systems are only marginally affected by Internet technologies but that is going to change as web-based applications become more ubiquitous. I am a huge fan of web applications and their success is typically enhanced by offering their users a local experience or Desktop integration. As design teams become more global, these web-based technologies are going to offer a bridge to unifying concurrent engineering efforts by allowing real time communication and data sync.
Tools are emerging now that allow in-CAD conversation like Vuuch Discussions but even tools like GoToMeeting are bringing remote teams closer and allowing real-time interaction that local design departments have at their dispose. Social technologies are also allowing engineers to get ideas and feedback right from the customer so this is an exciting time to be an engineer.

I would like to thank Lou for taking the time to answer my questions. If you have any questions for Lou or for Novedge, please leave a comment below and we will be glad to answer.

Franco Folini

Interview with Gaetano Tavano, Founder of MechWorks

When Solidworks was first released in 1995 it changed forever the way design and manufacturing companies approach CAD software. Compared to the contemporary 3D modeling systems, Solidworks had a significantly lower price and was much easier to learn and use, with almost no compromise on features. This was a clear call for a new generation of PDM systems. As designers were rapidly switching to Solidworks they started asking for new software tools to manage all their design documents and models powerful enough to handle the dynamic and flexible processes typical of small and medium companies. One company stood ready to answer this demand for a new generation document management system. That company was MechWorks. Today MechWorks software is used by thousand of designers and remains faithful to its original mission of delivering an affordable solution without compromising on the functional level. The people who envisioned this new generation of PDMs and who were able to deliver it to all Solidworks and now Inventor users are Ciro Ettorre and Gaetano Tavano. Here is my interview with Gaetano Tavano.

Gaetano, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your company?

MechWorks was incorporated in 1998 to develop add-ins for SolidWorks with the scope of porting our legacy CAD/CAM product. We soon realized the total lack of document management and decided, based on our previous experience, that a database based Document Manager was needed.

more than 12000 designers are benefiting from DBWorks/DBInventor

We started the development of DBWorks together with the porting of our 3 axis cam software. 2 years later we made the decision to focus entirely on Document Management and sold our CAM product business. Today more than 12000 designers are benefiting from DBWorks/DBInventor Data Management.

Document Management, more than any other software category, has to compromise between simplicity and features. How do you handle this intrinsic dilemma at MechWorks?

In the past we have seen the slogan “Out of the Box” used extensively by some PDM vendors. It was needed to comfort the customer that the software could be used right after installation. This was misleading.

[the concept of] “Out of the Box” PDM was misleading

By nature the PDM implementation needs to understand deeply the company’s processes and therefore need to be tailored to the company’s needs. What must be really understood is that the PDM system must offer a blend of basic functionality with a comprehensive API toolbox to make this happen in terms of weeks and not months or years. In DBWorks we try to accomplish this by offering a very rich set of options giving the user the possibility to add /remove specific functionality.

Many PDMs solutions are forcing companies into rigid processes leaving little space for flexibility. How important is flexibility for your customers and how can it be implemented with DbWorks and DbInventor?

Our European customers see flexibility more important than our US customers. In order to accomplish this DBWorks and DBInventor API’s have the possibility to override certain restrictions and make the “special case” part of the implementation.

You have been working with SolidWorks for many years. In the mean time SolidWorks and parametric feature-based technology have become almost mainstream. How has the way people use SolidWorks changed through the years?

The most fundamental change we have seen through out the years is the fact that the companies would like to model their entire product in 3D. At the beginning just portions of the product was modeled in 3D due to performance issues and software limitations.

today the software limitations are falling but we still see performance issues

Today the software limitations are falling but we still see performance issues that limit the size of complete machinery that can be managed with today’s hardware. Of course more complex the machinery modeled more challenge for the PDM system. At the very end it looks like performance is never enough.

How critical is a product like DbWorks for companies making a decision to adopt SolidWorks as their main CAD system?

The choice of the PDM system that will rule the CAD implementation and product development is becoming a very important factor for all companies. While in the past the CAD system was chosen first, and afterward the PDM, it has become clear now that you must think about the PDM from the beginning.

many PDM implementations are taking place in companies that have worked with the CAD system for years up to the point where product development was not manageable anymore

As a result of this many PDM implementations are taking place in companies that have worked with the CAD system for years up to the point where product development was not manageable anymore. On the other hand starting with the PDM in first place may make the 3D CAD system usage slower at the beginning but with a long term advantage.

Your products offer an extensive API to support customization and integration. Can you share with us some of the most unexpected uses of API done by your customers?

The ability to define relationships between documents and projects, independent from the 3D CAD documents, has been used by our customers to model their product structures in DBWorks/DBInventor from various perspectives. An interesting application of this has been the definition of spare parts kits defined as a logical generic document container related to 3D cad documents. Also a customer managing URLs as documents was quite unusual but very effective.

How is the US market for Document Management different from that of Europe?

We see major differences between the two markets. Part is due to the fact that the US market is composed of bigger companies and that they are geographically present in more than one state so global collaboration is more a requirement.

workflow is much more adopted in the US than in Europe

The other difference is a higher level of a formal product process definition in the US. Workflow is much more adopted in the US than in Europe. Partially this does depend on the company size but also on mentality. I also think that the European users are more open to evaluate solutions and are less marketing driven than the US users.

I would like to thank Gaetano Tavano for taking the time to answer my questions. If you have any questions for Gaetano or for Novedge, please leave a comment below and we will be glad to answer.

Franco Folini

CAD Companies Push the Marketing Frontier on Wikipedia

Reading Paul Wilkinson blog, I discovered a sophisticated and pretty useful online tool called Wikipedia Scanner created by Virgil Griffith. Using the WikiScanner anybody can check the anonymous editing of Wikipedia pages done from computers registered under company domains such as Autodesk, SolidWork, and Adobe.
A search for edits from the Autodesk domain returns a long list of Wikipedia editing activity, spread over several topics, with only a few related to CAD and AutoCAD. Some of the edits are about Autodesk products and are useful contributions to the Wikipedia project. Other edits feel more like a marketing operation than a sincere, objective contribution.

One example is from November 12, 2006, when someone from an Autodesk computer, IP 198.102.112.18, edited the SolidWorks' page, adding this sentence to the product description: "In recent years it has begun to lose ground to more sophisticated modeling systems like Autodesk Inventor, launched in 1999, and Solid Edge in 1996."

What is particularly fascinating is the variety of topics edited from Autodesk computers. You can find editing on pages ranging from the Roman Empire page (see the edit) to the Pretty Ricky, a R&B group (see the edit).

Edits from SolidWorks' computers are slightly less interesting. Someone edited the Autodesk products pages a few times, typically trimming the more explicit marketing statements (by the way, mostly posted from Autodesk computers). Here's one example where the sentence “Generally considered a latecomer to the market, Inventor has quickly become the number one mid-market modeler” later became “Generally considered a latecomer to the market, Inventor has been bundled with AutoCAD to increase usage”. The page was edited from IP 12.159.140.125, a computer on SolidWorks domain.

Another interesting example is from July 15, 2006, when someone from a SolidWorks' computer, this time from IP 12.145.143.98, edited the SolidWorks' page and added this candidly promotional sentence: "Click here to learn more about COSMOSFloWorks" (see edit).

The last pearl I found using Wikipedia Scanner is from Adobe (see all edits): on July 22, 2005 someone from an Adobe computer, IP 192.150.10.200, changed the Carly Fiorina page on Wikipedia, calling the then HP CEO, “Bitchy Fiorina” (see edit).

Franco Folini

An Interview with David Ptak, President of SolidProfessor

David Ptak is the President of SolidProfessor, a company that is revolutionizing the concept of training for CAD and CAM users. SolidProfessor is proposing a product line of high quality interactive video focused mostly on SolidWorks and related engineering tools. While video training has been around for a while, SolidProfessor is raising the bar with professionally designed and manufactured training products. I believe that training videos could allow the end-user to become independent of expensive traditional resellers thus creating opportunities for online resellers like Novedge. In order to fully understand how users take advantage of these powerful tools and how this affects the design process, I asked Dave a few questions. Here is the complete interview.

Dave, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your company?

I’m President of SolidProfessor. SolidProfessor was a business plan written while in my MBA Program at Thunderbird Graduate School of International Management back in 2003. Since launching in 2004, we’ve become a SolidWorks Solution Partner and create self-paced multimedia training and support for users of SolidWorks and other SolidWorks partner software. We’ve been in business for more than three years now and with the help of the companies we’ve partnered with, we do our best to provide the highest quality and best training and support we can. At this point we’ve helped more than 35,000 students and professionals.

I’m asking the same question I asked Matt Lombard: In an ideal world -- where CAD systems are easy to use and perfectly documented -- do we still need products like yours?

Well, our business is absolutely to support the effort toward perfect documentation and ease of use. We don’t compete with that. Our goal is to partner with companies that share our vision to make design software as user friendly as products like Word or Excel. SolidWorks is a leader in this and that’s a big reason why our business is based around supporting their success and helping their customers continue to push the design envelope.

What are the reasons for the success of your products? The popularization of CAD/CAM products, the poor quality of the original documentation, or the cost of live training?

our courses are authored by certified instructors and delivered by a professional narrator

We have success because we help people do their jobs better and help people eager to get into the design world develop the skills required to be successful and achieve their goals. We try to find ways to make the process of learning relatively complex software as intuitive as we can. We do this by incorporating three principles of learning. Our courses are authored by certified instructors and delivered by a professional narrator. We combine this with full motion video allowing users the ability to see what’s being taught right on the screen. And, we include exercises with sample parts so that users can practice exactly what they are learning in the course.

we’re a just in time problem solver to mitigate lost productivity due to a lack of specific knowledge

Another factor is that software is getting more robust every day. As a result, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for a user to retain a level of expertise using such a broad range of tools and functionality. What we do is give designers answers to their questions in real time when they get stuck. We help reduce time spent trying to “figure it out” and instead give them a resource so they can quickly learn or refresh their knowledge and continue with their project. We’re a just in time problem solver to mitigate lost productivity due to a lack of specific knowledge. That said, without the popularization of CAD/CAM and the exceptional growth SolidWorks has experienced I don’t think we would be talking today.

Regarding poor documentation I would say that it makes sense that software makers would rather focus on building their product. I feel most look at documentation as a cost center or necessary evil. However, I think what you’ll see over the coming years is that the companies that incorporate a solution like ours into their business will not only differentiate themselves from their competition, but will win sales as a direct result of shortening the learning curve for their customers. I have real stories from companies like Teksoft. We’ve created three courses for them and they make these courses available to their customers as part of the CAMWorks investment. I’ve had conversations with their VARs where I was told that they closed deals because of our solution. That’s an indication to me that we’re adding real value.

To touch on the cost of live training, I would say that it’s not as much the expense that is the issue but more the accessibility. In many cases the demand for training by the user, and the training schedule at the local VAR doesn’t match up. Or the class is too far away, or the user simply can’t get away for consecutive days to take a live class. That’s where we can come in and add value by filling the gap. Some of the largest and most respected SolidWorks VARs such as GoEngineer and Computer Aided Technology realize this value and have partnered with us to offer our solution to their customers. They offer a complete package that includes live instruction, SolidProfessor self-paced instruction and live tech support. By adopting this model these VARs help ensure that their customers are getting the best possible training and support resources out there.

Some time ago you mentioned that your customers are using your trainings in ways you didn’t expect. Can you explain this in more details?

Teksoft is using the courses we created to help educate and standardize competency throughout their global channel

In that particular case I was referring to Teksoft. They’re using the courses we created for them to help educate and standardize competency throughout their global channel of sales reps and tech specialists. A critical benefit of our solution is that it’s the same every time. So you can ensure the accuracy of what people are learning and know that everyone is on the same page with how the software works. It’s also a huge cost savings. Sending a few DVDs to the new VAR in Bangalore, India is a lot cheaper than pulling one of your tech experts off his job and flying him out for a week of product training. Looking back it seems like a no brainer, but until I saw what they were doing I never even considered that as a potential benefit of our solution. Maybe there’s a software person or two out there right now reading this and a light bulb is going off.

Can you tell us about the process of creating a training product starting from the topic choice up to the recording?

we want users to understand how SolidWorks thinks about design

You want us to give away our secrets? To be honest we’re refining the process regularly always looking for ways to reduce costs, speed development and scale the process. The same kinds of issues our customers deal with. Generally though, we gather the knowledge required to build a course from published material and actual experts on the software. We then go through the process of synthesizing this information into a format that we’ve developed over time which focuses on fundamental knowledge that one can use regardless of the product they are designing. This is an important distinction from most traditional instruction in that most of what you find will teach you the software by designing something. That’s a great exercise and we teach that way also, but before we get into exercises we focus on the fundamentals. The how and why of the software. We want users to understand how SolidWorks thinks about design so they can reach a comfort level with the software that allows them to really master their craft. Once authored, we bring in all of the other elements to make the product what it is. I think the key step in the process though is about the author. People want to know that when they invest in learning they are getting the best instructors. The ability of our instructors to clearly and concisely transfer knowledge is where we differentiate ourselves in the marketplace. Think about choosing a professor for math back in college. One teaches at 8am Monday, Wednesday and Friday and just writes a bunch of formulas on the board and tells you to go figure it out. The other breaks it all down in a way that makes sense. Who are you going to choose? We model ourselves on the second professor with one added bonus; our professor is instantly at your door to teach you what you want to learn on your schedule when you want to learn it. No more classes at 8am on a Friday!

When would you recommend live training over a training video?

in my mind training is terribly under-rated

I get this or some variation of this question comparing live with classroom training all the time. If you want to skip to the end, the short answer is both. The long answer could become a novel, but I’ll try to sum it up here. Based on the business we are in, I spend a lot of time thinking about and doing research on the pros and cons of both. Looking at the broader market of learning in general I see a clear trend toward the type of instruction that we offer. There are a lot of reasons for that, and we are just at the start of this trend. However, live instruction isn’t going anywhere. Hands on interaction with real people has been the method of choice for thousands of years. Think Socrates. We’re not trying to compete with that. What we offer is a solution that delivers accurate, consistent, professional content in a more accessible manner. The just in time learner needs a just in time solution. In my mind training is terribly under-rated. If one is serious about making products better, faster and cheaper than their competitor, the answer is to invest in a blended training solution that combines live instruction with our just in time solution.

Assuming that you could put a greater amount of resources in creating a training product, which features or aspects would you like to change or improve?

we’ve built our product to run inside the SolidWorks interface

Right now we are spending a lot of time on our SolidWorks integration. We’ve built our product to run inside the SolidWorks interface - in the Task Pane. Through this integration, we make it possible for our customers to have access to view our entire library of content at the click of a mouse. Right now we are partnering with VARs and customizing the Task Pane to offer support services that compliment the video content. We’re just scratching the surface of what we can do with this tool to make it really powerful for designers. It’s going to be really interesting to see where we take this. One example I was discussing with Digital Dimensions one of our VAR partners is to integrate live chat into their Task Pane. As a support solution wouldn’t it be great to have a live person available to help you solve your design problems without ever leaving your design environment?

Over time, do you expect the interactive video format to take over hypertext as a preferred format for the product documentation of CAD/CAM systems?

we’re currently working on a course on Advanced Surfacing with Matt Lombard

You definitely see more and more video tutorials in software. That will continue to grow as companies become more familiar with the process of creating them. However, I think it’s important to note that what we’re doing isn’t putting together a bunch of tutorial lessons on where to find this button or that button and what it does. SolidWorks and other providers already offer a bunch of that. Our instructors are experienced certified professionals that deliver insight and the kind of best practices you won’t find in a tutorial. We have a team of content creators that are leaders in the industry. For example, we’re currently working on a course on Advanced Surfacing with Matt Lombard who is one of the most talented surfacing designers out there. He’s at the forefront of his craft and an expert with SolidWorks. Courses like this are going to lift the talent pool of skilled designers in a way that follow the mouse tutorials simply don’t do. To me that’s pretty exciting stuff!

I would like to thank David Ptak for his time in answering my questions. If you have any questions for David or for Novedge, please leave a comment below and we will be glad to answer.

Franco Folini

An Interview with Matt Lombard, Author of the SolidWorks 2007 Bible

Matt Lombard (blog, website) is the author of the recently published "SolidWorks 2007 Bible", a huge volume with over 1,000 pages. His book has quickly become recognized as the reference book of choice for the SolidWorks community (see Rob Rodriguez, Anna Wood, and Jeff Mirisola), of which Matt is a very active and well-known member.  He is also a popular blogger of in depth articles, always rich in original content. I thought the publication of his new book would be a great opportunity to get Matt's opinion on a few technical topics. Here is the interview.

Matt, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your professional activities?
I'm an independent contractor/consultant, and focus mainly on complex shapes and plastic parts built in SolidWorks. I do a fair amount of medical product work, but have done things ranging from high heels to hand grenades, radio telescope dishes to fishing accessories. Most of my customers are entrepreneurs who have no CAD software or skills, but I also work on helping folks with SolidWorks specific modeling projects. Sometimes I'm just an additional modeler, and sometimes I get them past a technically difficult hurdle they were not able to achieve on their own.
Beyond the modeling side of my work, I'm also getting more involved in writing. Between the newsgroups and forums, SolidWorks 2007 Bible, some training manuals for SolidWorks Corp, specialized training manuals for individual companies, my blog and some other top secret projects, I'm not sure if I'm an engineer or a writer these days.

Your book “SolidWorks 2007 Bible” has just been published; it includes over 1,000 pages. How you where able to collect and organize such a huge amount of information?

the (SolidWorks) Knowledge Base is a fantastic source of real-world expert answers

The real difficulty was how to condense all of the available information into just 1100 pages. I had to limit it to just base SolidWorks, without any of the add-in packages. I did make a little excursion into Toolbox, which is a source of questions for many users.
Most of the information was initially tackled in smaller chunks originating from user group presentations. I'm very active in the SolidWorks user group community, and do a lot of presentations on a variety of topics. User group presentation topics naturally separate themselves into chapters. The rough outline for a SolidWorks Bible chapter often came straight from the user group presentation Powerpoints, and the details were built in after some research.
Research was a different matter. Most of the existing books on SolidWorks do not have the level of detail needed to help research this new book, so anything currently in print could not be used as a reference. The SolidWorks Help files occasionally offered a useful tidbit. Most of the useful material came from researching on-line forums or the SolidWorks Customer Portal [login required]. The Portal, in particular the Knowledge Base is a fantastic source of real-world expert answers to a lot of practical questions.
Several on-line forums also helped quite a bit. Comp.cad.solidworks is the grand-daddy of them all, since it's about 10 years old now, and a lot of high level users contribute. It's easily searchable through Google Groups. The SolidWorks forums are also a place to browse for answers because the topics are nicely organized. With either one of these, you have to sort through the replies carefully, because the quality of the answer is not guaranteed, and posts are often incorrect.
Last but not least is good old just cracking open the software and using it. Everything had to be verified this way anyway, but testing on some topics took a lot of time. For example, to figure out what the Geometry Pattern option does in patterns was tough. It turns out that the Help file is wrong and incomplete. I set up a test with some different patterns and some different settings. Results are spelled out in the book.

Let’s envision a sort of ideal CAD world, where there are easy to use CAD systems, perfect product documentation, and trained users. In such a world, do we still need books like yours?
That depends. There are two ways "ideal CAD" can go. It could go the direction where specialists are no longer needed. The software is so dumbed down that anyone can use it to its fullest extent. I think a lot of CAD software is currently pushing in this direction. The further the CAD world goes in this direction, the less we need books about technique.

great results require skills which are not possessed by just any computer operator

The other possibility is that people recognize that great results require skills which are not possessed by just any computer operator and cannot be simulated by even the most advanced software. For software where success depends on operator skills, there will always be a place for a book on techniques. The best software Help files generally only cover the "button push" type of information. "If I push this button, what happens?" Frankly, I'd like to avoid that kind of information in my book, but because most of the Help in SolidWorks isn't up to that ideal, I had to include a lot of it. The real value of higher level books is to offer a different point of view. As long as individual skills can make a contribution, there will be more than one way of doing things, and so we can learn from one another. Different techniques and styles differentiate users and their products from one another.
In an ideal CAD world, my book would still exist, but look a little different. It would focus more on the techniques, strategies and best practice, and less on the button pushes.

On CAD blogs the topic of 2D vs. 3D keeps appearing and generating a lot of discussion. Why are 3D CAD systems taking so long to replace 2D CAD systems?
I think it comes down to economics. If an industry is going to save a lot of money by switching to 3D, they have probably already switched. There are probably very few pockets left in industry where great savings are being left on the table due to factors such as CAD users simply not adopting the new technology. Management would force the change if there were substantial savings to be seen.
I don't think we will ever see a time when 2D completely disappears. When you are creating a concept, even on a 3D system, what is the first thing you do? Draw it on a piece of paper. That's 2D. That isn't going to go away. They may find an electronic way to replace paper, but flattening things into 2D is a great way to simplify an idea, and allows you to quickly describe shapes that you simply can't make without a lot of detail work in a 3D system.
No matter what the proponents of 3D CAD systems say, design happens in your head, not on the screen. All you can do on the screen is try to document what's in your head. Parametric feature-based systems make this difficult. Sketchup and Rhino make this easier.

Parametric 3D modeling as well as feature-based modeling are now considered fully mature technologies. What are the areas where those technologies can and should improve in order to fully empower the end-user?

parametrics as a technology is not all there is when it comes to modeling

Parametrics as a technology is not all there is when it comes to modeling. I think there is a lot that can be done in terms of interface (how the user interacts with the geometry creation engine) and implementation (internal technical details of how it works) before we have exhausted the possibilities with parametrics.  One of the big problems is in parametric features losing track of referenced geometry through changes, which I see as an implementation problem. Most of the really basic problems for users come from interface problems, for example, in SolidWorks you have an unexplainable difference between curves and sketches, and places where sketches cannot be used, or curves cannot be used, and no good reason at all for distinguishing between the two types. This is an interface problem.
Sometimes you hear about people asking about alternatives to NURBS and the BREP. T-splines is an interesting approach which adds a layer on top of the NURBS geometry spanning the patches, but maybe it would be best to combine NURBS and T-splines into a single native type, eliminating the tyrannical rule of the four-sided patch, and enabling curves to end in the middle of a patch rather than only at an edge. I think there is some exploring to be done in this direction. FreeDesign's FreeDimension software is trying to lower the bar with NSS (N sided surface)  technology so that you aren't restricted by the four-sided patch, and you don't have to be a specialist to do surfacing work.
The rate of change is going to be slow without some sort of an economic driver. Maybe a new venture meant to compete with AliasStudio and ICEM in the mid-range is what is needed to shake things up. That would be all about lowering the specialization bar, which is where CAD mass marketing is taking us right now.
Are parametrics necessarily married to history based modelers? History based modeling introduces a lot of logic-based problems with creating a model, but parametrics help you drive a model with "design intent". I don't know if these concepts  can be pulled apart, or if things would improve if they were pulled apart.

Recently we have seen new approaches to 3D modeling appearing on the market. In the parametric feature-based system most of the relationships and the intelligence to handle them are in the data structure, while for the new CAD system almost everything is in the editing algorithms. Do you agree with this simplified analysis?  What is your opinion about these new technologies?

the first advice to an AutoCAD user learning SolidWorks was to forget everything he knew about CAD

I assume you are talking about modelers such as Sketchup and SpaceClaim. This returns to my earlier point about specialization. Sketchup is completely the ultimate in non-specialist CAD. The most obvious way in which Sketchup differs from parametric modelers is how the user interacts with the geometry. It's an implementation difference that looks like an interface difference.
SpaceClaim enables direct editing of NURBS data, without messing with feature definition or history. Again, you are still using NURBS technology, but you are editing it directly by dragging handles rather than by changing parameters in dialog boxes. This is being marketed as a non-specialist tool. I think the real question here is not about if the technology is good or bad, but about how it should be used. Sure, you can have a machinist change a plastic part model before making the mold for it, but is that really a good idea? It depends on the change, to be sure. I think this opens a big "best practice" can of worms for design and manufacturing departments.
On the other hand, I think it is also a bad idea for the skilled designer to use a product like SpaceClaim to edit a model if he has access to the parametric model. If he doesn't have access to the parametric model, editing with SpaceClaim is a good alternative to remodeling the part in a parametric system to make changes.
How often will SpaceClaim be used to build production models from the ground up? I guess that depends on an expanded toolset in SpaceClaim, from what I've seen. In its current state, it lacks a few tools.
In the end, SpaceClaim is a "back to the future" kind of application, dumping the process orientation of parametrics, but supplanting it with the ease of direct NURBS editing, with some slick tools to make NURBS react like parametric features when needed.

The transition from 2D to 3D has important implications for the organization of a design team. These changes are even more important when the 3D CAD system is parametric and feature-based. What are your main recommendations for a company starting this transition?
I worked at a SolidWorks reseller for several years, and the first bit of advice to an AutoCAD user learning SolidWorks was to forget everything he thought he knew about "CAD". SolidWorks is not a "drafting" program, it is a "digital prototyper", much more akin to building a physical model by hand than making a 2D drawing.

I would like to thank Matt Lombard for taking the time to speak with me today. If you have any questions for Matt or for Novedge, please leave a comment below and we will be glad to answer.

Franco Folini