Here is a picture showing 168 threads of rendering goodness on a large format, single frame render.

SolidWorks scene file courtesy of Rob Rodriguez ofAxis CAD Solutions.

I am just starting to experiment with the new network rendering capabilities in PV360. It uses the master/slave rendering client from Modo, which can be a bit quirky at times. But works pretty well once you understand how best to setup the render nodes.

I will explore its quirks and share some of my techniques for rendering across multiple render nodes over the coming few weeks.

Anna'sSolidMuse, Author: Anna Wood

While I am sitting here in my office watching a PhotoView 360 animation render through 1351 frames, I think it would be a good time to start exploring the new release of SolidWorks 2012. This 20th release of SolidWorks went Pre-Release 1 on September 6th.

This year I was invited to the SolidWorks Blogger/Press Event at SolidWorks Headquarters in Concord, and was able to get a good look at the new features of SolidWorks 2012 with a 4 hour briefing by Jeremy Regenerus. The event was very informative and I came home to Phoenix with a much different view of SolidWorks 2012 then what I had when I arrived in Concord.

Like I do every year during Beta, I downloaded theWhat’s New In SolidWorks 2012 pdfand gave it a good cover to cover read. My initial impression of SolidWorks 2012 was a bit ho-hum, not much there. There really isn’t a big wow feature this year, that is a must have for my workflow.

That impression changed after attending Jeremy’s briefing in Concord.  While I still believe there is not a big new WOW set of features, SolidWorks 2012 delivers a lot of improvements to existing functionality.  This release continues on the themes of the last few releases in polishing the UI and many of the commands we use every day.  A lot of thought has gone into many of the features to make them easier to use, less mouse miles and adding some more spit and polish to the functionality to make it work better and easier.

What are my favorite new features?  Feature Freeze, the new Form Tool Wizard, Large Design Review, the new Equation Dialog and many of the UI improvements come to mind.  For those users that are squarely in the 90% of what a typical SolidWorks user uses the program for, this release offers a lot.

Over the next few weeks, I am going to go through the What’s New pdf and explore some of my favorite new SolidWorks functionality and consider its possibilities to improving my workflow.

Disclosure: SolidWorks covered my airfare, hotel and Monday night dinner for my trip to the SolidWorks Blogger/Press Event.

Anna'sSolidMuse, Author: Anna Wood

Time for a bit of blatant self promotion on a new venture I have been working on the last few months.

I have been working to build a small render farm for network rendering Modo 501 scenes.  Also have built a high-end workstation for rendering SolidWorks 2011 PhotoView 360 files.  I am hoping to market the farm as a service to users to off load some of their rendering tasks on those jobs that are a bit to big for their workstations.

The name of my new venture is RenderBay LLC.

All the computers are up and running on the render farm.  I am in soft launch mode, slowly going out to potential customers to work out the bugs in the farm and hopefully start to build a customer base.

Added a dual socket, overclocked, water-cooled Xeon X5690 system to the farm over the Memorial Day holiday weekend. It is running stable at 4.4 Ghz with 12 physical core and another 12 virtual cores.  I have Modo 501 and SolidWorks 2011 PhotoView 360 installed on the system.  This will be my PV360 render node for those that need to farm out PV360 tasks.  It is a nice compliment to the other render nodes I have for Modo.

With all my render nodes up and running I will have 150 Ghz plus hyper-threading available for Modo jobs.  For PV360 there is 53 Ghz plus hyper-threading available. I plan to not charge for hyper-threading. Rates will be 2/4/8 cents a Ghz Hr for low/medium/high priority rendering on the farm.

This is not a huge farm by any stretch, I am focusing on SolidWorks users that use PV360 and Modo in their workflow.  I will consider some of the other rendering packages like Blender, Maxwell, Shot and Keyshot if there is enough demand to justify the time and software investment.

You can find out more details about the farm atwww.RenderBay.com

Cheers,

Anna

Anna'sSolidMuse, Author: Anna Wood

Here is the e-mail I received today from Dassault’s PR firm. We are getting a peek into the future of SolidWorks v6 with these applications finally coming online. The infrastructure is coming into focus with Dassault’s partnership with Amazon Web Services.

Earlier today, at its annual Application Innovation Conference in Paris, France, Dassault Systemes (http://www.3ds.com) announced the availability of its PLM and 3D software over the cloud, the launch of its new 3D store, a deal with Amazon.com?s Amazon Web Services arm, and the launch of the latest edition of its manufacturing software platform, V6R2012.

Here?s the high points from each release:

Amazon Web Services Deal:

Dassault Systèmes announced a cloud-based partnership with Amazon.com?s Web Services arm that will enable clients to use its 3D design and manufacturing software remotely over the cloud.  PLM and 3D software is traditionally memory-intensive, but by partnering with Amazon Web Services, DS will be able to offer clients a preconfigured environment to remotely run 3D and PLM software without having to buy expensive hardware.  The full release is available here:http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110628007170/en/Dassault-Syst%C3%A8mes-Cloud-Amazon-Web-Services

Dassault Systèmes is leveraging multiple AWS services to power its Version 6 software platform, providing the following resources:

• High performance and highly available resources: Dassault Systèmes is utilizing the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) to provide discrete compute environments for each customer.
• Geographic reach: Dassault Systèmes leverages the AWS global footprint to provide the best experience for their customers, regardless of their physical location. By leveraging AWS? Regions, Dassault Systèmes can ensure that data required to stay within a geographic boundary remains so.
• Storage of easy-to-access design content: Using Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Dassault Systèmes can store volumes of design data without having to support an extensive array of legacy platforms. The combination of Amazon EBS and Amazon S3 allows customers to have immediate access to large storage volumes, coupled with the resiliency native to Amazon S3 for back-up purposes.
• Dassault Systèmes will also provide their large community of developers with a complete online environment to deliver, monetize and run lifelike experiences leveraging AWS.
• In addition, Dassault Systèmes is working to take advantage of AWS High Performance Computing Solutions to enable complex 3D virtual universes, and the heaviest computational workloads, such as tightly coupled parallel processes found in such domains as CFD, structural and system-of-system simulations. Amazon HPC solutionsare specifically designed to combine high compute performance with high performance network capability. The objective is to deliver to customers the same high compute& network performance that they get today from custom-built infrastructure, while benefiting from the elasticity& flexibility of the AWS cloud.

Cloud Release:

Dassault Systèmes today announced its new online Version 6 platform, available over the cloud.  With Version 6 cloud-based solutions, users can get what they need, when they need it. Offered as a flexible subscription model, without upfront investments in additional infrastructure, long-term volume commitmentsor administrative burden, Version 6 Online solutions are designed to adapt to the needs of organizations or projects of any scale. The full release is available here:http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110628007175/en/Dassault-Syst%C3%A8mes-Cloud-Version-6

Version 6 will be open for the developer community, delivering simple mechanisms to configure on-the-fly, extend with mash up capabilities, and develop new applications and experiences.  DS will also provide the large community of developers with a complete online environment to develop, deliver, monetize and run lifelike experience solutions.

DS also announced its new 3DStore online (http://swym.3ds.com/#3DStore). The 3DStore will premier several cloud-based 3D and PLM business services:

• 3DSWYM, DS? new social innovation solution
• n!fuze– for SolidWorks customers- andn!volve-for CATIA Version 6 customers- both taking advantage of award winning ENOVIA Version 6 technology
• Access to 3DS products including 3DVIA and Draftsight
• Access to experiences and applications from partners and customers.

DS also announces its strategic investment in Outscale, a start-up providing next generation SaaS (software as a service) operator services.  Dassault Systèmes will rely on Outscale services to manage its SaaS services based operations. With Outscale, Dassault Systèmes dedicates a highly specialized world class structure to ensure 24×7 service, and will leverage dynamic public cloud resources allocation to provide best availability of its online applications, globally. Adopting its own PLM core technology to manage multiple cloud physical locations provides a competitive advantage.

V6R2012:

DS also announced the latest update to its Version 6 software platform today, V6R2012.  In this release, DS delivers an open collaborative platform to its customer base and beyond. It broadens the value of digital assets into new solutions such as immersive retail store experiences and global production system planning. The full release is available here:http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110628007167/en/Dassault-Syst%C3%A8mes-Launches-Version-6-Release-2012

Some of the features include:

• Supporting a variety of implementation environments, Dassault Systèmes has continued to enable an immersive ENOVIA Version 6 data management experience, now available in CATIA Version 5 and SolidWorks, as well as in Pro/ENGINEER, Inventor, NX, SolidEdge, Adobe Creative Suite, and other solutions.
• V6R2012 introduces new interoperability solutions, based on XML schema and Web services, between Version 6 and other PDM systems, offering bi-directional exchanges of 3D design product structures with exact geometry in STEP and CATIA V5 formats. New levels of integration between Version 6 and ERP solutions are also now available, enhancing the exchange of product, process, and resource data.
• 3DVIA V6R2012 includes 3DVIA Shopper, a new and ready-to-use business solution for retailing and brand merchandising, realistically simulating retail settings inside immersive 3D environments. Using 3DVIA Shopper, merchandisers and retailers can easily visualize and better assess store layouts and comparative product positioning, while analyzing consumer shopping behavior for maximum sales potential. More information on 3DVIA Shopper is available here:http://www.3dvia.com/products/3dvia-shopper/
• 3DVIA V6R2012 also includes several improvements to 3DVIA Composer.  It enables you to create clear and effective product documentation such as assembly instructions, product manuals and maintenance and repair guides.  With the new rendering enhancements and visual effects you can create stunning graphics for marketing collateral and sales tools that will make your products stand out from the competition.  For more on 3DVIA Composer V6R2012, see this video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehuXUsgCLrw&feature=player_embedded.
• CATIA V6R2012 introduces multiple advances in systems engineering, the multidisciplinary design methodology which integrates requirements, functional, logical and physical (RFLP) product definitions. The CATIA Systems portfolio now includes interoperability with leading system controller vendors, such as Simulink, as well as full RFLP definition and traceability within CATIA.

Anna'sSolidMuse, Author: Anna Wood

Doing a speed test with the SpiderBot-Animated_01.lxo animation file found in the Modo 501 Sample directory.

3 nodes of my Core i7 2600 machines (24 threads at 3.4 ghz) versus my dual socket Xeon X5690 machine (24 threads at 4.4 ghz).

The Core i7 machines are smoking the Xeon system. Speaks well of distributed computing for rendering animation frames.

The performance of the Core i7 2600′s are great. Very happy with these low cost render nodes.

Final results:
Core i7 2600: 02h 20m 57s
2x Xeon X5690: 03h 28m18s

Pretty amazing……..

Anna'sSolidMuse, Author: Anna Wood

The SolidWorks 2012 Beta website went live today. It has been newly redesigned and looks great. Looks like Beta for SolidWorks 2012 is scheduled to start at the end of June.

Be sure to check out the Beta website and get signed up to participate. It is a chance to see what SolidWorks has planned for 2012 and give some feedback on the new features.

http://www.solidworks.com/beta/default.htm

Anna'sSolidMuse, Author: Anna Wood

One more week until the Phoenix SWUGN Technical Summit on Tuesday, April 12th.

Be sure to head over to
http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=216550
and register for the event .Registration is required.

Complete details can be found at
http://www.swugn.org/swugn/events/6664_ENG_HTML.htm

Regards,

Anna

——————————————————————————-

The Phoenix SWUGN Technical Summit features presentations by SolidWorks Product Managers and local SolidWorks expert users.  User registration is $40.00 and includes meals and giveaways.  Join fellow SolidWorks users from the Phoenix and Tucson areas for a full day of learning and networking, and of course, a little fun.

Tuesday, April 12th, 2011
Holiday Inn Phoenix Airport North
1515 N. 44th Street
Phoenix, AZ 85008

Scheduled to appear:

Anna Wood– Auer Precision
(Tips for the Product/Tool Designer)

Doug Landers– Taser
(Real-World Use of SolidWorks Simulation)

Dave Zamora– Ability Dynamics
(Design for Machinability)

Phil Sluder– Triaxial Design and Analysis
(10 Essentials You Must Understand To Use SolidWorks Effectively)

Devon Sowell– 3-D Design Solutions
(Manage Your Data with SolidWorks Explorer)

Lou Gallo– Digital Dimensions
(SolidWorks n!Fuze)

Patrick Rainsberry– DS SolidWorks
(SolidWorks Greatest Hits– 2007 to 2011)

Sal Lama– DS SolidWorks
(Library Features)

Mike Puckett– DS SolidWorks
(Using Advanced Mates in SolidWorks)

Richard Doyle– DS SolidWorks
(Finding SolidWorks Resources)

Technical sessions are geared toward users of all levels.

Agenda:

7:30am– 8:00am
Registration opens/Breakfast

8:00am– 8:45am
Opening session, orientation

8:45am– 10:00am
Session 1A– 10 Essentials You Must Understand
Session 1B– Finding SolidWorks Resources

10:15am– 11:30am
Session 2A– Using Library Features
Session 2B– Design for Machinability

11:30am– 1:00pm
Lunch

1:00pm– 2:15pm
Session 3A– SolidWorks Greatest Hits– 2007 to 2011
Session 3B– Real-World Use of SolidWorks Simulation

2:30pm– 3:45pm
Session 4A– Manage Your Data with SolidWorks Explorer
Session 4B– Tips for the Product/Tool Designer

4:00pm– 5:00pm
Session 5A– SolidWorks n!Fuze
Session 5B– Using Advanced Mates in SolidWorks

For complete details and registration see

http://www.swugn.org/swugn/events/6664_ENG_HTML.htm

Registration is required.

Anna'sSolidMuse, Author: Anna Wood

Phoenix Metro Area SolidWorks User Group
Next Meeting

Wednesday, February 16, 2011
4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Gateway Community College
108 N. 40th Street
South Building, Room 1340  (SO-1340)
Phoenix, Arizona 85034
http://www.gatewaycc.edu

Click For Campus Map and Directions

Agenda:

Omar Zohni, Technical Manager, SolidWorks Simulation Products

Omar will be discussingSolidWorks Simulation.  This will be your chance to a more depth review of SolidWorks Simulation and learn how you can use it to improve your designs.

Please RSVP with the meeting sign-up form located at www.phxswug.comso we can plan refreshments for everyone.

Looking forward to seeing you February 16th.

Regards,

Anna Wood

Anna'sSolidMuse, Author: Anna Wood

I have been in San Antonio since Friday enjoying the city and SolidWorks World. Saturday and Sunday spent in alpha testing and focus groups, with plenty of spare time for exploring this fantastic city. The Riverwalk is very cool, makes for a very walkable city, easy to see and explore much of what it has to offer.

This morning the activities at SolidWorks World really crank up with the opening General Session. Jeff Ray kicked off the event and officially passed the hat, cowboy hat that is, to Bertrand Sicot, new CEO of SolidWorks. Bernard Charles is also here in San Antonio and took the the stage for this general session.

For me the highlight was hearing the talk given by Gene Kranz and Jim Lovell about the Apollo 13 mission. I was a youngster during the days of Apollo and the early first flights into space. I remember being glued to the tv watching Walter Cronkite report about the space missions. A very different time for our country. A time that inspired a generation of us to explore careers in engineering. To me these men are true American hero’s and represent some of the best qualities that we possess as Americans.

Anna'sSolidMuse, Author: Anna Wood

Phoenix Metro Area SolidWorks User Group
Next Meeting

Wednesday, December 15, 2010
4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Gateway Community College
108 N. 40th Street
Main Building, Room 1100N  (MA-1100N)
Phoenix, Arizona 85034
http://www.gatewaycc.edu

Link To Campus Map:http://www.gatewaycc.edu/Campus/Map/ 

Agenda:

Patrick Rainsberry, Technical Manager, SolidWorks

Patrick will be discussingWhat’s New in SolidWorks 2011.  This will be your chance to look at the new features in SolidWorks 2011 in more depth and learn how you can use them to improve your workflow in SolidWorks.

Please RSVP with the meeting sign-up form located athttp://www.phxswug.com/so we can plan refreshments for everyone.

Looking forward to seeing you December 15th.

Anna'sSolidMuse, Author: Anna Wood