I’ve heard from several different several tech podcasts this week about WikiScanner, a new tool developed by Virgil Griffith, that can uncover salacious edits to Wikipedia articles.

Franco Folini of the NOVEDGE blog took the time to use this tool to uncover some of the edits from companies such as SolidWorks, Autodesk, and Adobe on their competitors Wiki entries.

I don’t think this is anything new, just a new way of spreading the FUD.  I do think it’s pretty funny that there is now a way to see what has been going on!

What do you think?

As reported by Richard Doyle and Josh Mings, CADCAMNET TV is a bi-weekly IP TV show that reports on the happenings in the CAD industry.

Several months ago, I was contacted by SolidWorks in regards to a prospective customer that was considering switching from Autodesk® Inventor™.  The prospect had several years worth of MIL-spec and NAS hardware libraries modelled and was concerned about reusing that data in SolidWorks.

We went through the same situation when we switched to SolidWorks.  Believe it or not, there is a way to reuse the library data from Inventor™ instead of recreating everything from scratch.

The iPart data can be exported out of Inventor™ to an Excel spreadsheet.  This data can then be used to populate a Design Table in SolidWorks.  You can also bring the solid data into SolidWorks.  I discuss this in the notes below.

For a simple part, this process is relatively quick and easy.  For a more complex part, it will take a little longer to set up, but you can still quickly populate the driving Design Table.

I have created a short video demonstrating the process using a socket head cap screw.

There are a few notes to consider about the video:

• This process does require a valid license of Autodesk® Inventor™ in order to get the library part information from the iPart.
• I chose to export the Inventor™ iPart to STEP format.  This being a simple part, it was easy to bring it into SolidWorks and run FeatureWorks on it.  If it had been a more complicated part, it may have been easier to rebuild it from scratch in SolidWorks.  That is a consideration that must be made on a per-part basis.  It should also be noted that SolidWorks 2007 can directly open Inventor™ parts up to version 10, but this part was in version 11.
• You can copy and paste from the Inventor™ spreadsheet directly to the SolidWorks Design Table, but I chose to save a copy out so that if I had to, I could manipulate the data without impacting the original iPart.
• I didn’t go through the steps of adding the cosmetic threads, but it is easy enough to do by adding the features and using the Design Table to control the suprression states.
• I apologize for there being no audio, but my mic seems to have quit functioning!

I hope this helps anyone out there who needs to move library data from Autodesk® Inventor™ to SolidWorks.  Of course, you could use a similar process to go the other way, but why would you want to do that? 

I kid, I kid!  Seriously, simplifying data transfer between various CAD packages is one of the main gripes I have and one that I hear a lot of out there in the community.  It seems to be getting a little better, and hopefully all CAD vendors will continue to work to make that process less painful and more automatic in the future.

As there was no audio, if there are any questions on any part of the video that need further clarification, please leave a comment!

The main focus of this blog will be on the administration and support of SolidWorks software, as that is part of what I do at my job along with design.  I plan to post about the software and design issues that come up where I work and how we go about resolving them.  My hope is that this blog will become a repository of information that others may find useful.

Of course, other topics relating to SolidWorks and CAD in general that pique my interest will also be covered.  So, check back soon!

Ok, so maybe you’re asking yourself, “Who is this guy, and what qualifications does he have?”  Well, I’m nobody special, just a regular user like yourself.

My name is Brian McElyea and I am a Design Engineer and CAD Manager/Support for Miltec Corporation.  I am a Certified SolidWorks Professional (CSWP), and a founding member of the North Alabama SolidWorks User Group (NASWUG). I began this blog because I wanted to be more involved with the SolidWorks Community and have a little input.

My first exposure to CAD software was AutoCAD™ 10 in my college drafting class.  The bulk of the class was still on drawing boards at that time, but we did spend the last 2 weeks on the computers!

After I graduated college, I went to work as a manufacturing engineer building Carrier HVAC units, tanning beds, and USPS drop-boxes (the big blue ones you see on street corners).  While I was there, I played around on AutoCAD™ 12 at that time helping to develop sheet metal flats.  From there, I went on to more of a quality engineering-type position using AutoCAD™ 13 (ack!) and a third-party software that worked vaguely similar to Mechanical Desktop™.

I had another brief manufacturing stint at another contractor before coming to Miltec.  I started at Miltec in January 1999 using AutoCAD™ 14, and we quickly moved on to Autodesk® Inventor™ as soon as it was released and ran with it until R8.  (We still have a few current seats for legacy’s sake so I still play around on it some, but my skills have become rather rusty.)

I have used SolidWorks software since October 2003 (starting with SolidWorks 2004), and was instrumental in the conversion from Autodesk® Inventor™.  I currently support 10 seats of SolidWorks, and we plan on adding several more very soon!

I’m very excited and pleased with the direction SolidWorks is moving in, and anticipate each new release with bated breath.  I also like to keep abreast of the CAD industry in general and all the new technology and capabilities being introduced (hence the name CADFanatic – nifty, huh? .

You can usually find me hanging out on mCADForums, so I hope to see you around!

Brian McElyea
Mechanical Design Engineer
CAD Manager/Support
Certified SolidWorks Professional (CSWP)