Are You a High Risk User?

One of the things that is so incredible about the SolidWorks software is the sheer range of people that it has to accommodate. Everybody from crusty old tin-knockers, to overworked and underpaid machine designers, to unconstrained product designers to 9-12 year old girls.

I’m just doing what I usually do to learn about the software. SolidWorks rarely comes right out and tells you why they have done something, and the documentation is not often helpful, so this sort of reverse engineering is necessary in order to really understand the software. I can only imagine why we are seeing so many fussy graphics and pastel-ish purple hues in the software is that they are marketing to 9-12 year old girls. What else could it be?

Anyway, that’s not really what I want to talk about. I just wanted to focus your attention on the fact that there is this wide range of users from vastly different backgrounds, with vastly different experience and expectations, all converging on this one software package that bills itself variously as powerful or easy to use, depending on who they’re talking to at the moment. Not unlike Obama whispering about those angry gun toting religious types while talking to over-educated atheists.  Just can’t stay on track today.

No, what I want to talk about today is the high risk user. You know him. Fast and loose with everything. First he makes everything in-context, then breaks all the relations. He uses all the new features, and has been known to use Flex here and there. Dome is easier than a revolve. Under defined sketches, complex stuff when simple is actually better. Uses all that shiny sh@t that makes things soooo easy. He’s got Multiple Contexts turned on, Override Dims on Drag, uses contours habitually for things like extrudes. Lots of sloppy sketches that don’t follow any rules. He’s even been known to use the Synchronous Technology approach in SolidWorks (if you don’t like a hole you made, just fill it in, if you made a boss that isn’t needed any more, cut it off). Ok, that was a cheap shot, but I’ve seen it.

All of this is the CAD equivalent to drunk driving, changing dimensions in Autocad without updating the geometry, removing the tags from mattresses or swimming immediately after lunch. You’re gonna pay for behavior like that some day. I don’t mean to preach … well, not too much anyway, but you should respect yourself more than that.

Models like this, well, we’ve all seen them, and cursed them, and are probably guilty of making one or two of them ourselves. It’s the kind of modeling you did quickly just for a concept, and suddenly somebody has it up on the FTP sending it to a machine shop. You probably didn’t intend for it to get out, but it did.

So what do we do with people who do this high risk modeling? Is there such a thing as a CAD condom you can wrap them up in so that you don’t get any of that on you? When I get a model like that, I’ll usually see if I can rebuild it cleanly. Sometimes there’s a reason why the model is that way, like it started life as one thing and had to adapt in some unnatural ways. I’ve definitely got some models I’m not proud of, because they’ve been through 40 layers of contradictory impossible changes that someone needed yesterday. We’re all guilty. At least I know I am.

Still doesn’t answer my question. Maybe just being aware of it will help make the problem go away. Maybe we could form a support group called M.A.D.D. – Modelers against dumb design.

Part of the problem is that SolidWorks (and electronic society in general) believes all difficult tasks should be pushbutton easy. You shouldn’t have to go to school for decades to be able to do brain surgery. Any person capable of carving a turkey twice a year should be able to do it. Some people approach SW that way too. It’s not always a matter of just pressing the right buttons.

So next time you have the temptation to try a shortcut or a cheap trick, think where you’re gonna put that thing when you’re done with it.