AAA Drafting Blog

A SolidWorks designer talks about stuff related to CAD and mechanical design

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Amazing 3D animation technique using iPad

This video shows a pretty amazing 3D animation technique developed through dragging and iPad though space while it plays back a seemingly incoherent series of image.

Through stop motion photography the true nature of the images are revealed.

Go big or go home

Dealmaker Peter Pocklington used to say that it takes just as mutch time, effort and energy to build a million dollar deal as it does to build one for several thousand dollars. The same could be said about the time spent making information based content websites to attract new prospects to your business.

Regardless of whether you are trying to attract prospects to buy screen doors or complete subdivision developments you still have to devote the same amount of time, effort and energy in developing your all important online reputation.

A few simple paragraphs about how wonderful your company and product is on your home page just is not going to do the job. You need to research the customer and find out what they are searching for, and create tens if not hundreds of pages trying to address the needs of those visitors searches.

Research is never one hundred percent accurate, no matter how powerful the metrics and software behind it. It will be necessary to over-deliver on content to make sure that a good number of your pages meet the needs of the visitors and subsequently get into the top ten search results at Google and other search engines.

This illustrates the time, effort and energy part of creating the website. Those pages will consistently deliver targeted prospects for your business as the prospects come to regard you as a trusted expert source of information. It's just that you have to put a lot of work into gaining that expert recognition.

Content based information websites are a great fit for industrial companies. The recognition you get from the internet can cut though old networks developed by companies who have wined and dined and schmoozed customers at yearly conventions. It can give the new players a fighting chance.

Once you establish your online reputation, prospects will call you directly and most times they will be already sold before you pick up the phone because they believe they know who you are. All because you put all that initial time, effort and energy to develop that all important online reputation.


Sunday, November 14, 2010

Engineering Scales - How to use them in your drawings

Engineering Scales is a short power point presentation with sound that I have put together to help drafters put together scale drawings.

Sometimes when drawings are created, objects are plotted onto paper at whatever scale they may fit, but this does not alsways help the people who have to read the drawings.

Drawing at accepted scales helps in the checking process as well as helping contractors and tradespeople interpret the drawings

Friday, November 12, 2010

Will free drafting software cause problems for AutoCAD ?

For years AutoCAD has been the most popular 2D drafting software. AutoCAD's one program for everybody approach and backward version compatibility has always been appreciated by mechanical, civil, structural and architectural drafters and designers alike.

To compete with AutoCAD, other CAD software firms use the same file format that Autodesk created and even go as far as copying commands word for word in their software. I cant think of too many industries where the competition virtually duplicates the look and feel of an existing piece of software.

Companies such as Dassault Systemes are now giving away 2D drafting software for free. Their new DraftSight 2D CAD software product is a fully functional CAD drafting program. Google's Sketchup continues to enjoy wide acceptance by the architectural world and its 3D “push-pull” features are even being copied by AutoCAD in its latest 2011 release.

The key here will be whether Google and Dassault can maintain consistent releases of their free products and provide the support to keep their user base happy. To the extent they do, they will gain the trust and of the CAD community. Without that support, CAD users will probably stay with what they know best.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

New engineering drawing sizes video

I have been experimenting with making Flash videos and made a new one titled
Drawing Sizes based on a power point presentation. I hope to add more videos in this way to create a series of tutorials for some of the more common tasks in setting up drawings.

Monday, November 08, 2010

Geometric Dimensioning & Tolerancing Course results

My apologies to the students for not posting this information sooner. Here are the results of the recent GD&T course at Metro College.

Subject: GD&T





Start Date: 11/10/2010












# Student Number Test Exam Final Score
1 30% 1 50%
1 DSP- 4250-0710-F196 73 22 77 54 76
2 DHR-4250-0810-F219 96 29 95 67 95
3 DHR-4250-0810-F221 88 26 96 67 94
4 DHR-4250-0810-F220 75 23 89 62 85
5 DHR-4250-0810-F228 61 18 93 65 83
6 DHR-3800-0710-F204 57 17 89 62 79
7 DHR-3800-0710-F213 92 28 84 59 86
8 DHR-3800-0810-F247 39 12 91 64 75
9 DHR-4250-0810-F251 78 23 98 69 92
10 DHR-4250-0910-F263 69 21 91 64 84
11 DHR-4250-0910-F267 88 26 86 60 87
12 DSP-4200-0910-F282 100 30 98 69 99
13 DHR-4250-0910-F287 88 26 88 62 88
14 DHR-4250-0910-F291 71 21 91 64 85
15 DHR-4250-0910-F290 94 28 98 69 97
16 DHR-3800-1010-F298 78 23 89 62 86
17 DHR-4250-0810-F233 100 30 95 67 97
18 0 0 0 0 0 0
19 0 0 0 0 0 0
20 0 0 0 0 0 0

Thursday, November 04, 2010