Interview with John Stoltzfus

John Stoltzfus is a guy that I, like a lot of you, I assume, met on the SolidWorks forum. Helpful guy, full of information that he’s willing to give away. It might not be surprising that he’s a machine and furniture designer, and has been using SolidWorks since 1997. His work as an abstract digital artist is well known, especially on the forum.

But what made me decide to interview him was that he has developed a system called SSP – Skeleton Sketch Part. Especially after my previous articles on Horizontal Modeling and Resilient Modeling. His motto in this system is Design For Change. Does that sound familiar at all? That’s my name for Design Intent in my books. I think the phrase captures what we all aspire to, or claim to aspire to when creating SW models that have to be reused, changed or updated in some way.

I was able to find another interview with Mr. Stoltzfus from 2012 in the Amish America blog. You might want to check that out as a view of the man from a different perspective.

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First, tell me a little about you. How did you get into engineering and what company do you work for (and what types of products)?

A short story background is that I started working for LD Industries, Inc in Myerstown PA in Nov of 1985, which was a Custom Job Fabrication Shop and also fairly big in the Dry Bulk Handling Systems. I started in the cutting department and a year and half later I was the Supervisor of the Welding and Finishing Departments. Spring of 1986 I started a Home Correspondence Drafting Course and soon after got my first and only Drafting Machine. I did a few jobs on the side doing hand drawings and loving every minute of it. My quick advancement through the shop at LDI was because I was one of the only guys in the shop that could actually read a drawing or at that time “Blue Prints”. Five years later I was transferred to Sales as the Sales Coordinator and was at that position till I got laid off in Oct of 1995 just prior to my tenth anniversary. I started my own Material Handling and Custom Machinery Design right after, and closed shop in 2000. From there I had numerous jobs, mostly in management and or design. The products that I helped design were from a vast variety of products, but mainly Custom Fabrication or Custom Material Handling Equipment Design, having Customers that had material handling issues and solving them with a design and equipment that worked for the process etc… I do have a portfolio on 3dcontentcentral.com (some ok and some not ok) – I did anything from Plastics to Castings to product line developments, design to market, and did work for a few Fortune 500 companies, on a very small scale of course, the top feather in my hat was DuPont.

What was your first exposure to SW and what did you use before that?

First things first – I am a Designer not an Engineer Just give me a picture and I’ll model it etc…

In 1997 I needed to produce my own drawings instead of paying someone $60 per hour, using AutoCAD, so we bought our first seat of AutoCAD in late summer of 1997 and after we were using AC for a few months they introduced us to SW. When I had seen the software in action, I just knew that is exactly what I need and here we are today and I’m still using SW, we were one of the first in the area that used SW and it was amazing what could be done even way back then.

I’ve only been back to the SW community for a year, before that I spent 4 years doing community stuff for Solid Edge. So there’s a lot that has happened in the last several years that I’m not familiar with.

Being out of the Community for (4) four years was probably the best 4 years you missed, because of all the issues between 2013 and 2017 etc, only kidding. Even though a lot has changed over the last few years, there is one thing that has been a constant with SW, you still need to pick a Plane and Draw a line, that’s where it all starts, what happens after that is up to everyone else’s discretion. The 2016 UI Debacle, Backdating and the One Two posts made it all the way to SolidWorks Headquarters and told us users that our voices were heard, I am an advocate for the little guy and at the same time I don’t like to hear people ranting about SW when they themselves don’t understand the software.

How did you come to the realization that a system like SSP was needed?

That is a really good question and it’s one of the hardest to answer. The entire concept was introduced to me in the early to mid 2000’s I’m merely guessing around 2005 or so, I had a One on One Advanced Assembly Training from Neil Sardinia who worked for Prism Engineering from Horsham PA, which was later bought by Fisher Unitech.

After I had my training session Neil showed me his model of a full scale Steam Engine complete with the Coal Car etc. This was still work in process, as I remember he was working on the Kerosene Lamps over that time. Then he showed me how he had everything in zones and those zones were all part of a Master Model that had a combination of Solids and Sketches. Had I known at the time I would have spent more time in evaluating his techniques. Back to your question, I think the realization kicked in when I worked for a Fabrication Company and I was designing Grain Coolers and Large Feed Bins. They had a few different Models of Grain Coolers so it was nice to do a Pack & Go for the next sizes, however I was still having issues with models falling apart and the feature tree being all red. Even now I would hate to open those models, because they were the beginning of my SSP modeling attempts and only now 13 years later do I have 100% confidence in all my designs. Even though I was here for over 4 years, I can truly say that it was only about a year ago or less that I still had a few struggles with some of the designs, they weren’t 100% – nothing really bad, but sometimes just a few glitches.

Setting up an assembly with a primitive SSP got me my job here at Keystone Collections, basically showing them a simple assembly and making a few changes – bingo – new size.. I thought that designing furniture would be an easy walk in the park, but what a surprise, primarily because all the changes. Our network of Designers come up with the “New” hot fad, so we can have numerous changes that occur before it even hits the manufacturing floor, and then there are post prototype changes and post finish changes that can occur. Here they love the fact that all they need to say is; take this out, put this in or change the thickness of the leg etc and it takes only minutes to make those changes, plus there are many times in the design process that I may Pack & Go 3 or 4 different styles or sizes so they can review them side by side, with either 3D pdf or eDrawings etc.
For me it is very rewarding to be able to delete any part in the feature tree and not have “Any” errors except maybe if there are two or more instance of the same part that need to be mated, the errors are the broken mates. It is very easy to add components and again the rewarding part is knowing that if I connect the lines where they need to be, the new part will fit right in place. The process that I use virtually eliminated the need to check for interferences, if you create the SSP correctly.

Here we also do a lot of Customs and a lot of those customs are from our product line and have slight size modifications, so our custom project process is to Pack & Go the original model and use the Select/Replace feature to change the Part #’s and then all I need to change are the Custom Properties etc and review the drawings and the project is complete.

Could you describe one or maybe two of the situations you found yourself in?

Over the years I have found my modeling techniques questionable to say the least, there seemed be that little glitch or sometimes I thought it’s quicker to go on and add an extrude to cover a hole, because the hole sketch was related to another part, so it ended up being a cumbersome and sloppy model, if someone would have taken a look at the feature tree. Now I know it is much quicker to start over if you need to, because if you don’t SW will bite you in the end.

For me it is difficult to see guys and gals struggling like I did over the years, which is one of the main reasons to get this process out to as many people as possible, there is no need to struggle, Design can be fun and rewarding, challenging definitely but fun. My main focus is “Design For Change”, if you just take a few minutes as you go along and ask yourself, if I do this what will happen to what I already did and what will change if these dimensions change, is the model still dancing a nice ballet or did it just come out of step and ruin the whole show..

I would like to add that having used SW for as long as I did and being exposed to many bugs and SW issues, I have come to the conclusion that 90% or more of my issues were self-inflicted, because there is little chance that the issues were based on a bad program, with SW you can do anything, period… Just take a few minutes, go on the SolidWorks forum search for Alin Vargatu [ed: Alin is the technical editor of my upcoming Mastering SolidWorks book] and go to his page and take a look at his “content”, specifically all of his “Challenges”  These challenges prove to me that there are many instances that the tool we use on a daily basis is totally underrated…. “Go SolidWorks”

I understand you’re a bit of an artist.  What can you tell us about your artist activities? Where/when it started, how you developed these extraordinary techniques, and maybe why? It’s a long way from bulk material handling machinery to computer driven abstract geometrical art.

Shane McKeena [ed: link to Shane]  was my inspiration for Art and helped me find something in me that I didn’t have any idea it even existed. Shane uploaded the first Art pc that I’ve ever seen using SW as the “Brush” and the pictures were uploaded on Greg Hynd’s “Pictures Of Solidworks Project” post – – see page 66

I have always appreciated Art and there are many great Artists that can paint fur on an animal or milkweed fluff, including nature scenes, cityscapes and people, but Abstract Art has a special pull that other Art doesn’t. Art is very subjective, a love hate relationship. I find that other SolidWorks users get pulled into the image trying to figure out how it’s made and then they get close enough to see the detail and appreciate the pics a lot more. Personally when I get hit with a so called bug, I get bit hard and that’s almost the only thing I can focus on, but will burn out later, it’s like running an engine full throttle for 2 years and then it just falls apart. That is a little bit what happened to me, I literally have well over a thousand good images. Once in a while I will create something new. When I first started my goals were to have the Art hanging in the SolidWorks Headquarters in MA and that became reality in the summer of 2012 and my wife and I are forever grateful to SolidWorks for giving us an all paid trip to Orlando FL for SWW 2013. Here is a thread that I started on the SW forum showing some samples and I also shared a little bit of the story. My second goal is to have my artwork as a subtle backdrop in all their marketing material, to prove that all things are possible when you use SW, we are only handicapped in our mind. My third goal would be to show the SW developers there could be a small offshoot SW Art creator software, with just the basic features, the Art that I create with SW is unrepeatable and there is no way someone could copy it with any Art Software..

Have you got anything outside of work that is inspirational or philosophical that you would like people to know about you? Maybe a story about your family or an idea that shapes what you do in many areas?

I would say the most inspiration needs to go to one of my former (and current part time), employers Mr. Richard Weaver, previous owner of LDI, for teaching me that “No” is not an answer and he taught me how to sell things that were never built, forever grateful to get back and do small jobs for him today, there is wisdom in older people. Philosophical – I’ve been called a Faith Walker, God has always provided and will again- my belief is all based on The Son Of God, Lord Jesus Christ, who will one day come again. – Plus never forget Karma – Plant good seeds and the harvest will be great.. My family and I are members of the Old Order Amish community here in Lebanon, PA which is an offshoot of the Lancaster County Amish Country. Even though it is frowned upon to have electronics in our homes and certain convenience’s, they are more lenient in a workplace environment. My wife Miriam & I are parents of 5 children 3 girls (29, 28 & 16) and 2 boys (19 & 14), and we have 3 awesome grandchildren Eli (7), Karen (4) and Erma (1), so our spare time is …(we don’t have spare time anymore) – I love to fish, play pond hockey with the boys in the winter and going hunting.

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I’d like to thank Mr. Stoltzfus for sharing some of his wisdom with us. Very inspirational mixture of ideas. Thanks again!