Well, it’s done, D%&$ it!
The recent flurry in swearing at the software was surely brought on by all of the modeling for the surfacing book. Spending too much time out in those yellow and orange bands.
I thought I’d offer some previews of some of the models in the book.
I’m glad to be done with it.
Although there is a bit of editing left to do…
It’s funny how many models have to do with food…
Or sleeping, which is something I miss (he says as he posts to his blog at 1:20 AM)
The book is supposed to be available in May. It’s already up on Amazon, and it’s already discounted to the bargain basement. The book is supposed to be in color and should cost in the $60-$80 range (I’ve seen some SW surfacing training manuals sell for over $200 on ebay recently). The Surfacing book will come in at around 500 pages.
I think in this book, I show that the software is generally capable, and in some ways and for some things it is magnificently capable. The one impression I got while developing the material for the book is that there are a lot of half measures here. You can argue and say that half measures are good, like Mike, but that’s asinine. All putting one half measure into the software accomplishes is leaving resources for the next half measure.If I could direct surfacing development, I would put some more time into the wondertools, Fill and Boundary to make them even better. They are both pretty good success stories right now, but Boundary in particular has some weak spots. I would make sure that every place where it makes sense, there would be tangency and continuity with weighting controls. I’d also start bragging on the filleting. Regardless of what anyone says, SolidWorks filetting is really pretty good. The one thing I’d add (besides fixing some interface for Face Fillets and Full Rounds) would be user definable sections and multiple selection Face Fillets.
Of course there are the things that are extremely weak, like curves, mirroring curves, dealing with absorbed curves in history, setting minimum radius values for sketches, curves and surfaces using analysis tools for design, documentation on anything related to curvature, tangency and tolerances of the software in recognizing what is tangent. Also, if we are going to be hog-tied by history, we need to be able to at least straighten it out and see it for what it is – please give us a linear feature manager now, and the ability to move things in it as much as makes logical sense to a normal person (not necessarily a SW employee).