What Your Blog Says About You

In Simon Booker's Weekly News email that I received this morning, he mentions a website called Typealyzer, that analyzes your blog and comments on what the blog says about its author.

So I am always game for these types of fun applications so of course I immediately clicked on the link and went to Typealyzer at http://typealyzer.com. All you have to do is enter the URL of your blog and it gives you an analysis of the type of person you are, based on the language used in the blog that reflects the person's psychological type and his or her motivations or interests. So I am ready to share with the world the type of person I am, according to Typealyzer:

ESTJ - The Guardians

The organizing and efficient type. They are especially attuned to setting goals and managing available resources to get the job done. Once they have made up their mind on something, it can be quite difficult to convince otherwise. They listen to hard facts and can have a hard time accepting new or innovative ways of doing things.

The Guardians are often happy working in highly structured work environments where everyone knows the rules of the job. They respect authority and are loyal team players.

I have to say this is a dead-on quick analysis of me and my personality. Try it - it's fun!

No Better Time to Invest in SolidWorks as Adversity Fuels Inspiration

Below is an article that appears on Twitter and in the Mass High Tech online journal.

Friday, March 20th, 2009
By Jeff Ray, CEO of SolidWorks Corporation

When Barack Obama uttered this line before 1.6 million Americans on the National Mall, he was speaking directly to millions of U.S. engineers: “In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that … the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things … have carried us up the long road toward prosperity and freedom.”

Engineers are the makers of things, and they love the challenge the president poses. Historically, engineers have stepped up. Adversity has fueled innovation.

The Great Depression didn’t stop them from innovating. In 1935, DuPont created the first synthetic fiber, nylon, enabling the company to sell 64 million pairs of stockings in the first year. Nylon soon went into parachutes and tents for World War II and is still the second-most prevalent synthetic fiber in the world.

A few years earlier, the Galvin brothers, who sold current converters for battery-operated radios, put a radio in a Studebaker, parked it on a pier in Atlantic City and turned up the volume. Orders flowed in for the first “car radios.” Galvin Manufacturing became Motorola.

In 1937, Hormel developed the recipe for canned spiced ham. By 1994, Hormel had sold one billion cans of Spam. Funny food, serious success.

The recession of 1969-1970 didn’t stop engineers from innovating, either. That was when engineer Bill Hewlett of Hewlett-Packard committed to a far-fetched idea — building a calculating machine that could fit in your pocket.

The dot-com bust of 2001 shattered a lot of dreams, but it didn’t stop the development of the iPod. Or the growth of JetBlue.

Today’s circumstance — call it a recession, depression, disruption or collapse — is no different. Though painful, it will redistribute talent around better ideas and lay the groundwork for a robust recovery. Those who show courage now will be in the best position to thrive. Colleagues of mine, for example, are working on ideas every bit as audacious as putting ham in a can or 5,000 songs in your pocket: A Burlington company led by Tufts-educated entrepreneur Michael EastonMicroWind Technologies) is about to test a roof-mounted turbine capable of generating 60 percent of a home’s electricity with a mere 10 mph wind. Engineers in Ontario have designed and built a system that harnesses UV light — not dangerous chemicals — to disinfect as much as 2.2 billion gallons of New York City drinking water every day. Local engineers and doctors (Design that Matters of Cambridge and Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology of Boston) are developing a sub-$1,000 infant incubator made from car parts. Headlights provide the heat. Every year more than 4 million infants in developing countries die within a month of birth, many of whom could be saved with a warm, clean and easy-to-repair environment.

Although “innovate or die” is a bombastic way to put it, the concept is true. As always, it’s survival of the fittest. “Economic downturns just speed up the process,” writes investment strategist Andrew Mickey. “It’s accelerated Darwinism.”

So, my fellow makers of things, back off your R&D commitment at your peril. Rather, let the urgency of today’s dire economic conditions intensify your innovation efforts. Step to the fore, generate new ideas, support the good ones, and execute them. While politicians can inspire, we can get the job done.

ComScore Data and the Mobile Revolution

The number of people using mobile devices to get daily news and information doubled to 22.4 million in a year. The number of people who used devices for social networking and blogging jumped to 9 million, from 1.8 million.

Heather Green, Associate Editor at Business Week, posted a great article about how behavior is changing globally concerning how we send and receive information. Below is Heather's post from March 16th, 2009:

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I covered the wireless media market in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the last promised revolution was supposed to happen. You know, we were going to get location-based advertising, stocks, videos and weather updates on your phone. Never happened. And the hype was so high that it’s been best to be skeptical since then. But ComScore’s numbers about the mobile Internet paint a compelling picture that the mobile Internet is for more than just early adopters and is truly part of a pattern of changing behavior.

According to ComScore, the number of people using their mobile devices to get news and information daily from the Internet doubled to 22.4 million from a year ago. Now that’s interesting and shows that the devices and the networks are living up to their billing as a way to get mobile data for more people. But what’s just as interesting is that the number of people who used their devices for social networking and blogging jumped to 9 million, from 1.8 million. Because mobile devices are inherently social and if anything will drive their success long term, it’s the ability to stay in touch with other folks in new ways.

White House Playground Set Designed in SolidWorks

First daughters Malia and Sasha Obama are climbing, swinging and sliding on a playground set designed with SolidWorks 3D CAD software so President Obama can watch his daughters playing through his Oval Office windows.

Rainbow Play Systems recently delivered “Malia & Sasha's Castle,” to the White House for installation just a few yards from the West Wing. The company used SolidWorks software to develop multiple configurations of parts and subsystems that made customizing the final design layout for the Obamas a simple process. The play set includes a double bubble, overhead monkey bars, shimmy bars, four standard swings, a race car tire swing, rock wall, step chain ladder, slide, binoculars, periscopes and chalkboard. Rainbow Play Systems flipped the set’s design from the standard model so that the "double bubble" faces the Oval Office, where President Obama can keep an eye on his daughters at play.

Read the rest of the Press Release on Ten Links.

How to Prevent Memory Errors using 4GB of RAM on 32-bit OS

I recently added two blog posts entitled "How to Setup Performance Monitor" and "Some of the things I learned at Solidworks World 2009". I received one comment for each post. This post is in response to both comments.

It's not uncommon for SW to use a lot of memory upon start up, but there are some things you can do to use less memory and get a faster start up:

1) Deselect all your Add-ins and only turn them on when you need to. You can also setup a shortcut key to turn on the Add-ins menu so you make this process faster when you want to turn on an Add-in.

2) If you have installed 4GB of RAM on your machine and Windows only sees 3.25 Gigs of RAM my question is... are you using the 3GB mode? This mode has to be turned on with 32-bit systems to utilize the 4GB. The limitation is 2GB by default. If you do not have this option selected, then you will still only use up to 2GB of RAM, even though Windows sees the 4GB. To turn this option on you have to add "/3GB /userva=2900" to boot.ini file. This will tell the OS to allow Applications to use up to 3GB and Windows can use 1GB. Here is a link I have sent to many users - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms791558.aspx - that helps explain the 3GB mode.

Here is how I setup my Boot.ini file on my personal XP machine:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Media Center Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Media Center Edition 3GB" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /3GB /userva=2900

You should see two selections that are nearly the same. I do this in case something goes terribly wrong and it gives me away out. I recommend that you set this up this way versus changing the original boot procedure. You can see the above in red, showing you where to add the information.

3) This suggestion will not only help you with SW using a lot of memory at startup, but cutting out the extra processes will help you with memory usage on your machine. I always recommend to try and remove all unnecessary processes that you do not need during your session of SW. I remove Itunes, swboengine.com, Google Toolbar, anything that is using memory that is not needed. These all take memory away from SW and can cause you memory issues/stability.

4) If you have enabled the 3GB mode and you have cut your processes and you still get memory errors or run out of memory and crash, then it's time to consider moving up to a 64-bit machine. They handle memory far better than 32-bit and the memory limitation is 128GB.

5) Video RAM as far as I know cannot be tracked, but it is VERY important that you have installed the certified driver for your certified video card. Not having the certified hardware and software can lead to instability.

3 Dudes Gone 3D Advertising Campaign

Check out SolidWorks Latest Advertising Campaign, featuring 3 engineers in a contemporary situation comedy format this multi-media campaign is designed to resonate with the social media , online and YouTube generation in a fresh slant on 3D.

Just watch the videos at 3DUDESGONE3D.com

WDTN Channel 2 News in Dayton, OH Features No Engineer Left Behind

Displaced Engineers Get Vital Training

Updated: Monday, 09 Mar 2009, 7:25 PM EDT
Published : Monday, 09 Mar 2009, 3:34 PM EDT

* By, Kennan Oliphant

CENTERVILLE, Ohio (WDTN) - "You know, I didn't think it would be this difficult to find another job."

Engineer Keith Konya has made it his mission to look for work after getting a pink slip from his Columbus manufacturing job.

"I've been looking for a few months now and I've probably applied to over a hundred jobs."

And Konya is running into an uncomfortable truth.

"If you don't have the exact skills and the exact criteria the employer is looking for you get weeded out right away and employers can be very picky right now and they can get their choice of candidate."

Roderick Bannister is in the same boat as Konya.

"I've been out in the job market and one thing I've seen as far as a lot of job opportunities is the lack of skill I know I have in terms of engineering graphics."

Bannister and Konya, along with a couple of other engineers, are here at FISHER/UNITECH to expand their Computer Aided Design knowledge through a SolidWorks course. The three day seminar, dubbed "No Engineer Left Behind," trains engineers in CAD programming to design many things consumers use says President of FISHER/UNITECH, Charles Hess.

"It's developing a skill they did not have so that they can reenter the job force with a more competitive posture."

Hess says after the seminar, students take home software to practice skills and perform an unpaid internship at one of their customer sites.

"One of the students that went through a class in Cleveland and took the internship afterwards has already been hired and received a job."

This is the kind of opportunity Konya and these other engineers are hoping will happen to them.

"CAD is a powerful tool for engineers, there's always a need to build or design things and especially SolidWorks because it is a 3D CAD program and it's fantastic."

This program will run over a three month period in 10 Midwestern cities. Participants must be unemployed within the past year and have previous experience using CAD. Sign up is a first come, first serve basis and space is limited.

If you would like to sign up for No Engineer Left Behind, click here.

No Engineer Left Behind Grads are Happy Campers

The accolades keep on coming from our No Engineer Left Behind grads.....

From an email sent to FISHER/UNITECH:

I'd just like to let you know that the No Engineer Left Behind class was quite beneficial.....I have solidly added to my skill set and would like to thank all of the staff at FISHER/UNITECH [for making] this program happen. Vernon in the KC office was a good teacher who was able to answer any questions we had.

Once again, many thanks to all the staff at FISHER/UNITECH for a remarkable program to help others in this time when many companies are doing everything they can to cut costs.

Terec Morgan-Willson

FYI - Our No Engineer Left Behind Program is featured in the March 2009 issue of Manufacturing News Midwest, page 39.

How to Setup Performance Monitor

Are you running out of memory and are not sure why or whether or not SolidWorks is to blame?

With Microsoft Windows Performance Monitor you can track the amount of memory SolidWorks is using or any Windows process you want. This process is much more accurate than your Task Manager\Performance tab. The info under the Performance tab has been known to be approximately .6 MB off from what the real usage is. That is why its important to set this process up to monitor your true memory usage.

This post will show you how to Setup Performance Monitor to track the amount of memory SolidWorks is using (this tool can be used for many different processes other than just SolidWorks.)

1) The first step is to launch Performance Monitor. You can browse through the menus Start\Programs\Control Panel\Admin Tools\Performance







2) You will see three items already in the list that Performance Monitor is tracking. Remove all of them. We do not need or want these trackers. Select each of them individually and click the “Delete” key.







3) Now we can add our own tracker. Click the Plus sign at the top of the toolbar (marked with a red rectangle around it).







4) You will need to set up the counter to look like the one above except your computer name will differ. Pick the Performance object to be a process, then Select Virtual Bytes, and then select the “sldworks.exe”. NOTE: SolidWorks must already be running to select this process.







5) You will see the counter is running at what looks to be 100%. Well that’s not a % at all, that is indicating the amount of RAM being used. So if you have 2 GB of RAM on your machine then you would want to have the chart show higher. So for this example I am going to set the chart to read 3Gigs.







6) To do this you need to RMB (right mouse click) the chart and select “Properties” and then select the “Graph” Tab. Then change the Vertical scale Maximum to 3000 and click ok.







7) Here you can see that sldworks.exe is only using 300 Megabytes per the 2 Gigs on the machine.

You can also save this information out as a text or .CSV file so others can view the track.