Solidfacts

Next Meeting – 30th May 2012

Admin — Mon, 07 May 2012 23:59:56 +0000

UPCOMING – VICTORIAN USER GROUP MEETING

WHEN: 6.30pm – Wednesday 30th May 2012

WHERE: South Oakleigh Club

1 Victor Rd, East Bentleigh, Melbourne

Details to come

Solidworks World 2012 Presentations

Admin — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 01:29:44 +0000

If you we’re not as fortunate as the many who attended Solidworks World 2012… never fear… all the presentations and other swag can not be viewed here!

Running Solidworks on a Mac

Admin — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 09:40:35 +0000

It seems when ever I’m around other Solidworks users and I have my Mac with me, a lot of people ask me if Solidworks runs on a Mac. I figured enough people had asked me to warrant putting up a short article on topic. In short, yes you can run Solidworks on a Mac and yes it runs fine. Now when I say run it on a Mac I am talking about the Mac hardware only, Solidworks is not support by the Mac OS and will not run natively under the Mac OS. Ever since Apple switched to Intel chips as standard on all their machines you have been able to install and run Windows on a Mac which in turn allows you to run Solidworks.

You have two options for running Solidworks on Mac. 1) Bootcamp, which requires you to reboot into Windows to access Solidworks, or 2) to run a Virtual Machine (Parallels or VMware Fusion) which allows you to run a VM copy of Windows from within the Mac OS.

Option 1. Boot Camp

Boot Camp is a neat tool provided by Apple which allows you to partition the hard drive on your Mac and install a second (or more) OS on the new partitions. This allows you to install Windows on a Mac as if it was any other computer hardware. Once complete you simple select which OS you want to run when the Mac boots up. The down side is you don’t have access to any part of the Mac OS when in Windows and vice versa so you are basically are just running Windows on Apple hardware. You cannot run the two OS’es side by side.

Option 2. Virtual Machine

Option 2 still requires you install a bootcamp partition and a copy of Windows however using additional software you can set up a Virtual Machine (VM) from within the Mac OS which allows you to boot up your installation of Windows and run Solidworks with out leaving the Mac OS. The big advantage of this is you have full access to both the Mac OS and the Windows OS along with all the installed programs. The downside is that all your Windows software thinks its running in a new machine so you will need to re-activate Windows and Solidworks (I recommend to transferring your license of Solidworks from within native Windows before opening a VM within the Mac OS). You only have to do this once, unless you plan on booting up Windows natively which means you go through the activation/transfer process again.

I have personally only used Parallels and have not had any experience with VMware but Parallels seems to work fine once you have gone through all the set up which can take some time.

Performance

The Performance of Solidworks when running within a native Boot Camp install of Windows is as per you would find on a similar spec’d PC. The only limitation is the graphics card as its not a certified card so you don’t get all the fancy real time reflections and glows that the “Real View” provides. I personally don’t like Real View and find it slows down systems even with approved hardware hence I turn it off, so its not a great loss for me. Running windows natively is definitely my recommendation for Solidworks users with big assemblies, complex parts of if you just don’t give a hoot about the Mac OS. However when running Solidworks under a VM from within the Mac OS the performance of Solidworks is no where near as good as when running natively. The biggest slow down I find is when you select a part or object and Solidworks highlights all the edges so you know what you have selected can take ages to highlight all the edges. This is on fairly basic parts too.

Conclusion

If you want to buy a Mac because you like their hardware, want to run Solidworks, but don’t care about the Mac OS than going for a Boot Camp install of Windows and running it natively is the best choice. However if you really want or need to run the Mac OS but need to access Solidworks without the trouble of rebooting and your parts/asm are not that big or complex than running a VM is a great option… If I didn’t want to run the Mac OS for everything else I do a part from Solidworks I would just use Windows natively. So until Solidworks is ported to the Mac OS, I’ll have to juggle operating systems.

Cheers

Chris

Meeting #49 – 7th March 2012

Admin — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:26:50 +0000

Get excitied. We are proud to present Travis Hardy from 3D Systems (Formerly Known as Formero) who will be talking about their recent aqusition by the US Giant 3D Systems. He’ll also be running through some new services and products that they had added to their line up. We also have Alby talking about his experience at Solidworks World 2012 and what the future of CAD holds and Chris Peters is going to give us some insight into how the Internet and Crowd Funding is giving inventors a chance at getting their ideas off the ground using other peoples money!!!

WHEN: 6.30pm – Wednesday 7th March 2012

WHERE: South Oakleigh Club
1 Victor Rd,

East Bentleigh, Melbourne.

AGENDA:
6.30pm – 6.40pm: Meet at South Oakleigh Club

6.40pm – 7.20pm: Presentation 1A – Solidworks World 2012
Haldun (Alby) Olguner - The Future of Solidworks and Hamburgers.

Presentation 1B – Crowd Funding your ideas
Chris Peters – How Crowd funding is changing the Product Development Game

7.30pm – 8.20pm: Food served, Lucky Prize Draws

8.20pm – 9.00pm: Presentation 2 – 3D Systems (Formally Formero)
Travis Hardy – New 3D Printing Services and Products from 3D Systems

9.00pm – 9.30pm: Questions and Answers – General Discussion

Don’t forget to forward this to your friends and work colleagues so they can sign up to our mailing list at www.solidfacts.org.auand be invited to our future meetings!

Please RSVP to info@solidfacts.org.au by 5/02/2012

Look forward to seeing you there!

Cheers

Alby and Chris

November meeting

Admin — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:29:33 +0000

23rd November 2011 @ South Oakleigh Club VIC

Presentations:

Alex | Interacd | Solidworks 2012

August Meeting

Admin — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 06:00:34 +0000

24th August 2011 @ South Oakleigh Club VIC

Presentations:

Kevin Wawick | Scan Xpress | 3D scanning products and services

Ben Mott | Mechanical Engineer & Patent Attorney | WADESON | Patent & Trade Marks Attorneys

Design Validation Seminar – Wednesday 13th April 2011

Admin — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 04:11:06 +0000

What a great turn out we have at out special Design Validation meeting. Solidworks were kind enough to cover the cost of the event and put on a great show of Design Validation using Solidworks Simulation. A big thankyou goes out to Chris and Varda from Solidworks. It was great to a see a lot of new faces attending and we hope to see you all at the next meeting.

VIC – Next Meeting – 24th November 2010

Admin — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 06:04:58 +0000

Next Victorian Solidworks User Group Meeting

Wednesday 24th November 2010 @ 6.30pm

South Oakleigh Club
1 Victor Rd,
Bentleigh East , Melbourne

http://maps.google.com.au/maps?q=South+Oakleigh+Club&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&ie=UTF8&hl=en&ll=-37.931488,145.077682&spn=0.015638,0.033023&z=16&iwloc=A

Agenda details at the link below.

http://gallery.mailchimp.com/c5a3f8b47f4f76aa9ae3e0bf9/files/agenda_issue_44.1.pdf

Sorry for the late notice but we hope you can make it and look forward to seeing you there for our final meeting of the year.

Solidworks 2011 launched

Admin — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 01:27:16 +0000

Yes its that time of year again, and in case you haven’t heard Solidworks 2011 is offically out in the wild. The Australian resellers SolidTec and Intercad have been busy touring the country showing off the new features at various locations in all major cities. If your keen to see the new features I’d suggest contacting your local sales rep or come along to our next meeting!

Meeting #43 – Heavy Metal & Great Mates

Admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:51:03 +0000

Once again we had a great turn out for the Solidfacts usergroup meeting on the 1st day of Spring (although it was that bloody cold outside you would have sworn it was the first day of winter!). It was also good to see some new faces mixed in with the regular attendees.

First up we had Stalin from NC Computer systems give a great presentation on Metaworks for Solidworks. Metaworks is a highly advanced integrated sheet metal programming solution that ties the core engine of MetaCAM seamlessly into the SolidWorks design environment.

Manuel from Solidtec was next up to teach some of the old dogs new tricks with his advanced assembly techniques. No matter how long you’ve been using Solidworks or how well you think you know the software, it amazing how many of the little things that exist that you never knew were there. Manuels presentation was a classic example of this and it was entertaining to see the response from a lot of the on lookers as they discovered you could do things that they didn’t think was possible.

The Oakleigh club put on their usual spread of seafood and caviar and everyone caught up on the Solidworks Gossip.

A big birthday shoot out to Kate from PeterNormalPersonal – Kate kindly dropped in to the meeting before heading off to the town for a big 21st celebration!

The next meeting will be held late November. We are looking for people interested in presenting so if you’re interested let us know info@solidfacts.org.au

Solidworks 2011 due to be released in a few weeks. We’re hoping for a heap of new cool features, more stability and integrated Photoview 360… Fingers crossed!

sales@nccs.com.au

manueal@solidtec.com.au