Ricky Jordan's Blog » SolidWorks User Groups

Knoxville Bound!

Ricky Jordan — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 04:47:03 +0000

I’ll be headed off to Knoxville, TN tomorrow to present my SolidWorks Tips and Tricks at the Knoxville-Oak Ridge Innovation Valley User Group. The group leader, Jeff Bohanan, has been doing a GREAT job in bringing this SolidWorks User Group back to life. If you are in the area, come on by! One of the things I enjoy most about being part of the SolidWorks User Group Leader network is traveling to see other groups and occasionally present at their meetings. I hope to do this a little more often this year so perhaps this will be first of a few more to come in 2009. The meeting will be held at the ModernTech headquarters in Knoxville. Check out the KORIV site for directions if you need them!

I hope to see you there tomorrow night! Stay tuned….more to come!

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SolidWorks World 2009 Monday: A Special Honor for a Special Guy

Ricky Jordan — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 05:27:57 +0000

At the end of the day Monday the 2009 SWUGN International User Summit was held. It is the annual User Group Meeting held at SolidWorks World that is open to SolidWorks User Group Leaders, Members, and any other conference attendee who wants to attend. This year’s Summit had a special ending this year. About six months ago I got an e-mail from Devon Sowell who had the idea of honoring SolidWorks User Community Manager Richard Doyle with a special award. We all immediately jumped on board with the idea and thanks to a few folks at SolidWorks Corp. we got a plan set in motion to present Richard with the award at the end of the meeting. We were even able to give SolidWorks CEO Jeff Ray in on it! During the meeting SWUGN rep Phil Sluder surprised Richard with a crown for him to wear during the presentation. All of the SWUGN Committee members then donned Jester hats! Richard knew something was going on prior to the meeting and I have a feeling that he thought that was it….but no…it was only the beginning. Here’s a picture of Richard giving the presentation donning his crown and you can see a few of the Jester hats as well.

After Richard finished up his presentation SolidWorks CEO Jeff Ray came in and surprised Richard again with his speech honoring Richard’s MANY accomplishments as the SolidWorks User Community Manager. After Jeff was done, Devon took the microphone and told the crowd a little bit about the award we were to present to him. Devon then asked me to say a few words about Richard before presenting him with the award. Richard is the man that made sure I knew what I needed to do when I revived the North Alabama SolidWorks Users Group 4 years ago. My story was merely an echo of the things Richard has done to help every other User Group worldwide getting started. Richard also had a hand in convincing me to start this site! About 2.5 years ago gave me a call and asked me what I thought about Blogging. I’ll fully admit that at that point…I wasn’t all that familiar with Blogs at all. After he explained the basics to me I told him to count me in as I would love to “give it a shot”. At that point I had no idea that it would take me where I am today with this site. So yes…you all have Richard to thank if you are reading this post. (Sometimes I wonder if Richard thinks he might have created a monster!) Before I wrapped it up I honored Richard with his own special Tweet on Twitter that was sent as we were presenting him the award.

Below is the copy of the award presented to Richard along with a gift certificate. SolidWorks User Groups would be NO WHERE NEAR as successfull as they are today without Richard’s hard work, dedication, and undying enthusiasm.

Stay tuned….much more to come….Live from SolidWorks World 2009!

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Additional Notes to the Knoxville User Group Post

Ricky Jordan — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 04:54:59 +0000

I added some additional notes and links to photos tonight to the previous post on the Knoxville User Group Meeting that I attended last night. All of the additional notes were in reference to Jon Hirschtick’s discussion of the Future of CAD. Check it out when you get a chance!

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Knoxville SolidWorks User Group Meeting

Ricky Jordan — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 04:41:45 +0000

From Left to Right: Jon Hirschtick, Rodney Hall, Ricky Jordan, & Jeff Bohanan

Tonight I had the privilege of attending the Knoxville SolidWorks User Group meeting which featured SolidWorks founder Jon Hirschtick. I’ve been hearing LOTS of great things about this group and their new leader, Jeff Bohanan. I was not in the least disappointed. It was evident that Jeff had meticulously planned EVERYTHING in detail for the event which resulted in a smoothly run meeting. Jeff even went to the trouble to setup the serving table with a spot for each type of pizza and the spot was labeled! The crowd was well fed with 31 pizzas from Papa John’s plus a couple of boxes of wings!

The meeting was held at the Technology 2020 building which is a joint venture between many companies in the area to help promote start up businesses. The presentation room was large enough to hold quite a few folks. All total 75 people were in attendance there tonight!

Jeff kicked off the meeting with some prize giveaways from SolidWorks. After that he reminded those in attendance that SolidWorks World will be coming up in February 2009 and that registration is now open.

Jeff then handed over the meeting to SolidWorks founder Jon Hirschtick. Jon’s presentation outlined the History and Future of CAD. The origins of today’s CAD systems had roots in the 1960s with Dr. Ivan Sutherland’s PhD thesis on “Sketchpad” which used a light pen to draw lines on a computer monitor. The early 1980s saw the first breakthroughs in variational geometry (which led to parameter driven 3D models) by Dr. David Gossard in MIT’s CADlab. Dr. Gossard was a mentor to Jon who was a student at MIT during this time. It is amazing how much of Dr. Gossard’s visions of 3D modeling became reality as the 1980s progressed.

Jon also discussed his thoughts on the Future of CAD. His thoughts included the advancement of more Hosted Applications. He did say that he thinks that SolidWorks running as a hosted app is still pretty far down the road. He did feel that in the near future you could see more 2D applications like DWGeditor running as hosted applications. (An example of this is BluePrint Now which is available at SolidWorks Labs.) Open Source was also a major topic discussed. Jon pointed out that Open Source Applications are gaining in popularity and use these days and that there could be inroads into the CAD Industry in the future.

At the end of the meeting Jon fielded questions from the users in attendance. By far the most popular question brought up by multiple users was if backward compatibility would ever be built into SolidWorks. Jon said that he has heard this request quite a bit lately and that he definitely can see the benefits of it from the user’s perspective. Jon promised to pass the feedback along to the folks at SolidWorks. If you are a user of SolidWorks and would like to see this functionality I HIGHLY encourage you to visit the Customer Portal and fill out an enhancement request.

I was happy to see fellow User Group leader Rodney Hall of the Catawba Valley SolidWorks User Group at the meeting tonight. I’ve seen Rodney several times at SolidWorks World but we never have had much time to talk. It was nice to have some time to get to know Rodney a little better and hear about the exciting things he is doing with his User Group. Like me, Rodney took personal time off work and drove 4 hours to attend the meeting tonight. Rodney had a much better camera than I did and will be e-mailing me some pictures from tonight. I’ll make sure to post them later so you can check them out.

I’d like to thank Jeff Bohanan and the entire Knoxville Group for a great meeting tonight. One of my favorite things to do is visit other SolidWorks User Groups and I hope to do it more in the future.

That’s all for now….stay tuned….more to come!

UPDATE 1: 10-29-08

I have corrected the attendance count and posted a picture sent to me by Rodney Hall.

UPDATE 2: 10-29-08

I was so wrapped up in the presentation last night, I didn’t take notes very well and did leave out a few other things that Jon discussed in regards to the Future of CAD. Thanks to Rodney Hall, who sent me some PICTURES of the event (along with some snapshots of the slides), I remembered a few other points that Jon made that I feel are very noteworthy and should be added to the notes from the meeting.

In addition to the Future Trends of Hosted Applications & Open Source which were mentioned above, Jon discussed three other trends which he thinks will impact CAD in the future. Those items were, Video Games, Touch Interfaces, & 3D Printing.

Jon made a very good point with Video Games. In the past if you wanted to see the “best” high end graphics, you would look to models and renderings produced on CAD workstations. Today if you want to see the best graphics, you look to video games. If you own an XBox 360 or PS3 you know what I’m talking about. If you don’t, just take a look at some of the screen shots on the web of the games being released for these consoles. The images are beyond amazing. Video games have already had a direct effect on SolidWorks. The enhancements to RealView and addition of the PhysX engine to SolidWorks 2008. Another feature that had direct roots from Video Games is the Ambient Occlusion option. Since the DISPLAY of 3D models in SolidWorks in the graphics area is actually a tessellated mesh, one could wonder if more technology could be leveraged from the gaming industry to enhance the performance of 3D model display in the future.

As Neil pointed out in his comments to this post earlier today, Direct3D rules the gaming world and there are more and more users that are calling for this graphics technology to be implemented in SolidWorks vs. the current OpenGL setup. One of the key advantages of Direct3D is that you can successfully use less expense “gaming video cards” in place of the high priced workstation grade graphics cards. Other CAD companies are already making the switch. Perhaps the influence of Video Games will lead SolidWorks down this path as well. Time will tell.

Jon also talked about Touch Interfaces. This is an area that is of keen interest to me. If you ever have played with an iPhone, you can get a taste of what perhaps we will see in the future. There are many companies working on this technology and I can see many applications that could be implemented in 3D CAD software.

The last Trend that Jon discussed was 3D Printing. Jon believes that we will one day treat 3D prints in a similar manner to paper coming off a printer. If you are not satisfied with it, throw it away and print another one. In the present day you hopefully wouldn’t dream of throwing away the 3D print you just paid $1,000 for, so it will definitely take some time to get to that point. With the advances in the 3D printing industry over the last several years, perhaps we will get to that point sooner than most think.

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NASWUG Happenings

Ricky Jordan — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 04:20:23 +0000

We had a special guest at our North Alabama SolidWorks Users Group (NASWUG) meeting last week. Follow the links below to check out the write up and some images from the meeting. SolidWorks User Groups are a GREAT way to learn more about SolidWorks and network with your peers. If you aren’t currently involved in a SolidWorks User Group, check out the SWUGN site to find a group near you!

NASWUG September 2008 Meeting Notes

NASWUG September 2008 Meeting Photos

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SWUGN Technical Summit Nashville – 2008

Ricky Jordan — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 02:20:45 +0000

The 2nd SWUGN Technical Summit of 2008 was held in Nashville, TN today. An enthusiastic crowd of 86 SolidWorks users came out to see presentations on both general and specialty topics. Richard Doyle, who is the User Community Manager for SolidWorks, had a last minute scheduling conflict and had to miss this year’s Summit in Nashville. Look for Richard to return to the Southeast later this year on a User Group meeting tour. I volunteered to step in and give the presentations for both the opening and lunch sessions. I’m sure I wasn’t quite as thorough as Richard but I was happy to help out. It’s always a fun time for me when I get to talk about the SolidWorks User Group Network!

One of the topics discussed in the opening session was the search for a new User Group Leader for the Nashville area. If you are reading this post and are interested, e-mail me and I would be happy to discuss it with you!

The morning breakout sessions featured Brad Williamson of Progressive Technologies, Dana Parrish of SolidWorks Corp., & Rich Hall of Westwind Corp. Brad gave two presentations on Assembly Design & PDMWorks. Dana gave an information packed presentation on the Who, What, When, & Why of COSMOS. Rich gave an excellent presentation on Sheet Metal.

Next up was the lunch session. We received one entry for the One Minute Tips Contest. Chris Hairell of Gas House Inc. submitted a tip that describes how to insert symbols into drawing notes using Windows standard codes. Here is his tip:

If you hold down the ALT button and type 0216 a Ø symbol pops up. This is great for eDrawings, SolidWorks Drawings, and DWGeditor.

Other combinations that work for symbols:

ALT+0153 =™ (Trade Mark)

ALT+0169=© (Copyright)

ALT+0174=® (Registered)

ALT+0176=° (Degrees)

ALT+0177=± (Tolerances)

ALT+0216=Ø (Diameter)

One caveat that was discovered with this tip is that you must use the “keypad” numerals if you are using a laptop keyboard. Most laptops allow you to use a “Fn” key to mimic the keypad numbers on a normal keyboard. If you have a Dell laptop you will find them on the right side of the keyboard. A BIG thanks to Brian McElyea (the CADFANTIC himself) for figuring this one out as it had me stumped!

Since Chris was the only user to submit a One Minute Tip, he won the contest and choose the SolidWorks branded iPod Nano as his prize. (Future SWUGN Summit attendees should take note of this.) Congratulations Chris!

Next we raffled off three grand prizes and some SolidWorks SWAG in the form of hats, lens cleaners, and pens. Major prize winners were:

Jeff Skinner – 3DConnexion Space Navigator

Jeff Hammock – Nvida QuadroFX 1700 video card

Dan Traylor – Free Admission to SolidWorks World 2009

Congratulations to all the prize winners.

The last part of the lunch session included a COSMOS FloWorks demonstration by Ramesh Lakshmipathy of SolidWorks Corp.

After lunch Brian McElyea and myself gave the presentation on CAD Management while Jeremiah Davis of ModernTech Mechanical presented some Tips and Tricks on Drawings. The rest of the afternoon sessions included sessions on Imported Geometry and SolidWorks Tips and Tricks by me and a Weldments session by NASWUG-RSA president Gary Hall.

I can’t say enough about the users from Tennessee, Alabama, & Mississippi who attended this event. Although we didn’t break the attendance record like last year, the enthusiasm and excitement at this year’s event was unmatched.

I would like to thank Richard Doyle for doing all the preparation work for the event which made my job easy today. I’d also like to thank all the presenters whom all did an absolutely wonderful job. I would especially like to thank Rich Hall, Dana Parrish, & Gary Hall for coming in early to help with setup and registration. Also thanks to Brian McElyea for taking pictures of the event.

A big thanks goes out the the event sponsors: SolidWorks, 3DConnexion, Nvidia, & ModernTech Mechanical.

Over the next couple of days I will gather all the presentations for this event and post links to download them.

Stay tuned….more to come!

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2008 SWUGN Technical Summit – Nashville

Ricky Jordan — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 01:18:03 +0000

In just over a week (Wednesday April 9, 2008) SolidWorks users from all over the Southeast will gather in Nashville, TN for the 2008 SWUGN Nashville Technical Summit. Last year’s event set a record for attendees with over 115 people! If you live and work anywhere near this event, you don’t want to miss it! Cost for the event is only $40.00 which includes a continental breakfast and lunch. Click HERE to register. SWUGN Technical Summits give more users the opportunity to experience an event that has many similarities to one day at SolidWorks World. Attendees will be treated to opening and lunch sessions along with access to 5 breakout sessions featuring 10 topics to choose from.

The presenter line up this year includes Richard Doyle, Kevin Stuart, Dana Parrish (All from SolidWorks Corp.), Brad Williamson, Gary Hall, Richard Hall, Jeremiah Davis, and yours truly! I will be preparing a brand new presentation on working with Imported Geometry. You can see a complete line up of the sessions at the Nashville Summit page on the SWUGN site.

This year’s lunch session will include a 1-Minute Tips trivia contest. SWUGN Technical Summit attendees will be invited to submit their own 1-Minute Tips prior to the event. Submitting your tips is easy. Send a complete text description to Richard Doyle (rdoyle@solidworks.com). You can include models if desired, or even a video if you have the capability. If any questions come up, someone will contact you for clarification. Then, at the SWUGN Summit in Nashville, Richard will demonstrate each 1-Minute Tip submitted for the attendees, and we’ll all vote for our favorites. The top submissions will walk away with some great prizes like 3D Connexion Space Explorers, SolidWorks branded iPods, or free admission to SolidWorks World 2009 in Orlando. You might even see your 1-Minute Tip on the SolidWorks website.

I can’t say enough how exciting these events are and how valuable they can be for everyone from the SolidWorks beginner to the SolidWorks expert. Don’t miss your opportunity to network with SolidWorks users from all over the Southeast, gain some valuable knowledge of SolidWorks, and win some GREAT prizes!

I hope to see you in Nashville.

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COSMOSWorks 2008 Arrives in Huntsville

Ricky Jordan — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 01:03:34 +0000

An impressive turnout of 38 NASWUG members were treated to a special event tonight as Dana Parrish of SolidWorks Corporation made his second trip of the year to Huntsville to present at our user group meeting. Any successful SolidWorks User Group has topics that are member driven. The topic of this meeting was a result of several inquiries by NASWUG members to learn more about the COSMOS line of products and how the tools offered can improve their designs. After giving a great presentation on COSMOSFloWorks earlier this year, Dana was nice enough to make another trip up to help our users learn more about COSMOSWorks.

The meeting started out tonight with an exciting announcement for NASWUG members. SolidWorks is launching a Beta Program for the newly created Certified SolidWorks Associate (CSWA) exam. Attendees tonight earned an opportunity to take the CSWA exam as part of the Beta experience for FREE! This test is less strenuous as compared to the Certified SolidWorks Professional (CSWP) and will provide many members the opportunity to begin their journey towards certification in SolidWorks. To learn more about the CSWA, click on the link provided above. After some other announcements, Dana was set to begin his presentation. To me, demonstrations of analysis products are most effective when given using “real-world” examples. This is exactly where the presentation started. Dana presented several design scenarios in which the audience was asked which design would yield the best results. After all the “guesses” were made, the results were shown to the crowd along with descriptions and images showing just how those results were attained. This really was a hit with the crowd! Also as part of the presentation, Dana showed off some of the enhancements to the COSMOS line of products in the 2008 release. This was the first time that the new SolidWorks 2008 interface was shown publicly in Huntsville. My favorite COSMOSWorks 2008 features shown were the new alternate mesher (This REALLY could save some time!), Design Insight Plots (Helps you remove materials without effecting structural integrity), and the improvements to Bolt Connectors! You can read more about the enhancements by checking out the SolidWorks 2008 What’s New Guide or the COSMOSWorks What’s New rundown. Dana did a great job with the presentation and answered many questions from the attendees in the Q&A session. Thanks Dana!

I’m really proud of the turnout tonight, especially due to the fact that it was 106 degrees (F) in Huntsville today! The long hot summer will be hopefully drawing to a close soon. Next up for NASWUG members will be What’s New in SolidWorks 2008 presentations. Thanks to all in attendance tonight!

Stay tuned…..MORE to come!

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John McEleney visits Huntsville

Ricky Jordan — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 03:35:40 +0000

History was made in many ways on June 11, 2007 in Huntsville, AL. SolidWorks CEO John McEleney started off his Southern Swing user group tour with a visit to our North Alabama SolidWorks User Group meeting. This was John’s first trip to Huntsville to visit a SolidWorks User Group. The users in the area responded with a record turnout. All total there were 55 attendees at the event. To say this event was a blast would be a vast understatement!

Food for the event was provided by Guthries. The users were treated to chicken fingers, fries, cole slaw, Texas toast, iced tea. We also had chocolate chip cookies for dessert! (My wife loves to bake and our group loves to eat!) The strong reimbursement & support program that SolidWorks has in place for user groups enables group leadership to provide food for events like this without having to deal with funding issues. I bring this up because sometimes I don’t think enough is said about this. The program headed up by Richard Doyle is what allows us to put events like this on for our users. Speaking of Richard, he was also able to make it to Huntsville for the meeting. (Great to see you again Richard!) More on Richard a little later.

After we all finished stuffing our faces, yours truly quickly ran through the group announcements. By 6:00pm, it was time for John McEleney to begin his presentation which was on the History of CAD. I have been fortunate enough to witness several of John’s speeches throughout many years and they are ALWAYS interesting. He talked about the early days of CAD. He revealed some VERY interesting facts about the vision that some of the early pioneers of Computer Aided Design and Solid Modeling had and how amazingly similar they are to CAD today. Other topics discussed were some information on the early days of SolidWorks. When the company was started, it was called Winchester Design Systems. As they moved along in developing a product, a new name was given which is of course is the name we all know so well today. John shared with us some of the other names that were under consideration when SolidWorks was chosen. Can you imagine what it would be like if the name “PowerDesign Corporation” was selected instead? I agree with John when he said that he thought the right name was picked!

Other topics that John discussed dealt with Globalization and some really interesting insight into how some of the new features of SolidWorks 2008 were developed. John is an absolutely amazing speaker. I had at large number of users who shared this opinion with me after the meeting was over.

Richard Doyle was up next. Richard has been giving a Tips and Tricks Trivia Contest presentation on several occasions recently and as usual it was a BIG hit with the crowd! Users take a timed test with 21 questions. After all the answer sheets are turned in, Richard goes through each answer and includes a live demonstration in SolidWorks to explain many of the detailed questions on the software. A big thanks to Gary Hall for grading the answer sheets while Richard went through his presentation. First place in the contest went to Richard Hall of Westwind Technologies Corporation. Brian McElyea (The CADFANATIC) of Miltec Missles was second. Richard won a 3DConnexion SpaceNavigator while Brian won a VERY nice SolidWorks hat! 3DConnexion continues to show why they have won the award for SWUGN Participating Partner of the year two years running! A big thanks to them for donating this GREAT prize!

What an absolutely awesome event! I’d like to thank a few people for helping make this event the huge success that it was. First I’d like to thank John McEleney and Richard Doyle for taking time out of their busy schedules to attend the event. I’d like to thank the SolidWorks Resellers who helped promote the event. Representatives from Alacad, Concepts in Production, & ModernTech Mechanical were all there for the event. Next I’d like to thank the members of our group who helped me with the event: Gary Hall, Tracey Christensen, Johnnie Paul, Brian McElyea, John Petek, & Ben Yeskie. I couldn’t have done it without you! Thanks to Dynetics for providing a state of the art conference room/facility for the event (and all of our other user group events).

I said something after this event that I haven’t ever said before. “It’s going to be hard to top this one!” Thanks to all our group members for making this the most successful NASWUG event in history.

Brian McElyea and Richard Doyle have great posts on their Blogs about this event. Brian was able to take lots of pictures and he has them posted on his Blog. Brian also videotaped the event and will be working on getting it produced to a format so that we can share it with everyone.

Stay tuned….MUCH MUCH more to come soon!

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SWUGN Summit – Nashville

Ricky Jordan — Wed, 23 May 2007 01:50:34 +0000

For the first time ever, a SWUGN Summit was held in Nashville, TN today and SolidWorks users from across the region were there in record numbers. All in all, 110 users, presenters, and resellers were in attendance. This was the first SWUGN Summit that I have had the privilege to attend. All I can say is it was an absolute BLAST! (Can you tell I’m excited?)

The event kicked off at 7:30am with breakfast. Despite the heavy traffic, more than half the attendees were there before breakfast began. After a healthy mix of fruit, muffins, bagels, sweet rolls, juices, & coffee, we were all set to start the opening session. Richard Doyle kicked off the event with a great opening presentation. Richard talked about the successes of SWUGN in the past year and recognized the SolidWorks User Group Leaders in attendance. A video review of SolidWorks World 2007 was shown and many of the attendees showed interest in going to SolidWorks World 2008 in San Diego. An outline was given showing the agenda for the day and the speakers who would be presenting were named. Richard Doyle, Matt Lombard, Brad Williamson, Chris Sonon, Gary Hall, and yours truly would be handling the presentations for the day. Richard gave me a few minutes to speak to the crowd about out upcoming User Group meeting next month in Huntsville featuring SolidWorks CEO John McEleney.

At 8:45am the general session ended and everyone was off to the first set of breakout sessions. The first two sessions being shown were Assemblies (Brad Williamson) and E-Drawings (Richard Doyle). The second breakout sessions followed which were Sheet Metal (Richard Doyle) and Animator (Matt Lombard).

Next up was the Lunch session which brought everyone back together in the main ballroom. We were all served at our tables a full course lunch featuring salad, roast beef, potatoes, vegetables, and cheesecake for dessert. Everyone was really impressed with the meal. As we started dessert, Richard kicked off a Tips and Tricks Trivia presentation. Everyone was handed an answer sheet and a timed trivia test was given via PowerPoint. After all the answer sheets were turned in, Richard went through each question revealing the answers. Some of the answers were demonstrated live to the crowd in SolidWorks. The format for this presentation was without a doubt one of the most unique ideas I’ve seen presented for users. It was definitely a hit with the crowd!

After lunch we had three more breakout sessions. First up was Drawings (Richard Doyle) and PDMWorks (Chris Sonon). That session was followed by Weldments (Gary Hall) and PhotoWorks (Matt Lombard). Just before the final session, Richard announced the winners of the Trivia Contest. The top 14 users in the contest received door prizes. The top three finishers were:

1st Place – Byron Morgan (Hunter-Douglas) – Tupelo, MS – Prize: 3DConnexion Space Navigator

2nd Place – Bobby Weber (Digital Fusion) – Huntsville, AL – Prize: Free pass to SolidWorks World 2008

3rd Place – Michael Langley (Digital Fusion) – Huntsville, AL – Prize: SolidWorks 2007 Bible

The final breakout session followed with COSMOS (Brad Williamson) and Importing/Repairing Geometry (Ricky Jordan). I have already made my presentation available for download for those interested. Click HERE to download it.

I can’t say enough about how great this event was. I’ve been telling many of our NASWUG users that this event was going to be similar to one day at SolidWorks World. After experiencing it, I can’t think of a better description for it. Events like this really show the power of the SolidWorks Community and how information sharing can benefit all users.

I’d like to thank all the SolidWorks Resellers who helped promote this event to their users. Alacad, Concepts in Production, MLC CAD, & ModernTech Mechanical all sent out dedicated e-mails to all their customers for this event.

In closing, I’d like to thank Richard Doyle and Matt Lombard for putting together this event. Richard to this day still has the most passion for SolidWorks of anyone I have ever met. Richard is the User Community Coordinator for SolidWorks Corporation. Under his guidance, SolidWorks user groups have grown to a total of 112 groups worldwide. Matt’s presentations were not only informative, but also hilarious! Matt has the unique ability to inject humor in many different areas during his presentation. Most of it is completely off the cuff. I got my first look at the Matt’s SolidWorks 2007 Bible today. This is simply the most awesome SolidWorks book I have ever seen. I’ll be ordering my copy soon! You can order Matt’s book directly from his website.

I’m already looking forward to the 2008 Summit. (Should I start a countdown clock?) Check the SWUGN site for the remaining Summit dates for 2007. If there is one coming to a city near you, register as soon as you can. You won’t be disappointed.

Stay tuned….more to come!

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