March, 2000
A beautiful day and new venue sets the mood for SMUG
by Jim Hole
50 plus Users from West Michigan managed to avoid the temptation to play outside on the nearly 70 degree day and met at Irwin Seating for the first Southwest Michigan Users Group meeting of 2000.
New Venue
Mark Miles welcomed us to the auditorium style conference room with a brief overview of Irwin Seating and a run down of their use of Pro/ENGINEER.
Rand
Dan Hansen is the new Rand sales representative, dedicated to Grand Rapids. Previously, this area was serviced out of the Detroit Office. Currently, Rand handles accounts for PTC under $50 million in sales.
SMUG Website
Adam Bush (SMUG Co-Chair and Webmaster) demonstrated the new SMUG website. The site contains an on-line membership form and a new SMUG email exploder so you can keep abreast of upcoming meetings and other general Pro/E information. Links to many other useful and informational sites can be found at (http://www.prouser.org/rugs/smug). Also, be sure to vote on the current survey.
Assembly Build Analysis
Next up was Robert Gardner and Erik Salisbury of Varatech. They demonstrated their Assembly Build Analysis software named Sigmund. This was very impressive software that promised to Evaluate, Validate and Optimize your design. Using patented algorithms, the software will virtually build a given number of parts and assemblies and plot the results in many forms. This greatly reduces or eliminates the iterative process, allowing the user to gain a "deductive understanding" of their assemblies. In the process of analyzing your parts and assemblies, the software helps you apply GD&T. In fact, it won't allow you to violate the rules. In my view, with the proper inputs and training, this would be very effective niche software. Varatech also demonstrated a "1D" product aimed at tolerance stack-up problems.
Mechanism Design
After a short break, Jon Hadley, a regular SMUG presenter and Steelcase employee, impressed us all with his ability to completely shutdown the software with his Mechanism Design demonstration. We look forward to the next SMUG meeting for Jon's presentation. We know now to "horsepower test" the demo computer for Jon's needs.
Datum Curves
Tim Field (SMUG Co-Chair) ended with an informational segment on Datum Curves. Tim addressed many different ways to create datum curves, including: sketched splines, projected, 2 projections, though points, and equations. He also offered up some equations for making ellipse, helix, and spiral curves. While discussing sketched curves, Tim showed the difference between tangent and continuous curvature and how to apply the proper constraints.
The next SMUG meeting is scheduled for July 12, 1:00pm-4:00pm. Be sure to check the website for the location and agenda.