Western North Carolina User Group: Gone Fishin’

It was a great plan. Wes Cobb, ringleader at the WNCSWUG, proposed to combine some of my favorite things – hanging out with SolidWorks users, skipping work, and fishing. The user group was going to meet in the lodge of the rustic Deerwoode camp 2 miles outside of quaint downtown Brevard, NC, and then we all were going to skip work on Friday, and go fishing. What an incredible plan! Too often, our dreams are run roughshod over by reality, which is what happened in this case. What really wound up happening was that we held the meeting in the basement of a Lutheran church in Arden, NC (south of Asheville), and then Wes and I skipped work and went fishing. A couple of independents willing to blow off a day of work to get out on the water.

This picture is of Wes, peering pensively.

The last WNCSWUG meeting I attended, I was 15 minutes late for, which Wes reminded me about. This time, when I was on my way, just crossing the VA/TN line, Wes called to make sure I remembered the meeting. Wes knows that I need a little looking after.

The meeting itself went well. The group was active and willing to ask questions. We started out with several short questions, one of which was the ability to dimension from faces when in a sketch. It is interesting that you can dimension from a plane, but not from a planar face while in a sketch. Also reference dimensions work from planar faces, but not sketch dimensions. This actually lead right in to our main topic for the presentation. The main topic was the same as in Phoenix last week – best practice and tips. We actually got 4 slides further into the presentation this time (27 of 44). In this meeting, we had some new SolidWorks customers making the transition from Pro/Engineer from over in Greenville, SC. We talked a lot about best practice as relates to referencing geometry, mainly due to the earlier questions.

As you can see in the picture to the right, my professional presentation skills were on full display at this meeting, and Kim, my official staff photographer, always catches me at my best.

Here’s a bit of SolidWorks information that somehow hasn’t been made much of: If you make a reference to an edge by say converting entities in a sketch (with the edge selected, not the face), and then make a fillet that blows away that edge, then reorder the fillet to before the sketch, the sketch relation does not go dangling. I’m not sure how this little trick is achieved, but I’m sure there is something going on internally here which users cannot replicate or track. Why does this work the way it does? Download the part from this link to check it out. If you come up with an answer, I’d like to hear it. Why is the circle in Sketch3 not dangling?

I gave away a SW07 Bible at the meeting, and a couple of guys brought books they had bought elsewhere to be signed. I’m still a little self-conscious about signing books. I’m just a regular user, not a celebrity, and it seems a little strange that people ask for this, but I do it. It feels silly to carry a narrow Sharpy around in my computer bag specifically for this reason, but again, I do it.

After the meeting, and it never seems to fail, someone came up with a truly interesting question. This one was about a section of a parabolic dish. I wasn’t able to definitively answer his question on the spot, but I did give him several methods for evaluating where the problem was coming from. This is one of the best things about user groups to me. Bringing together different people with different experiences and learning a little from each one is what its all about. When other people ask questions, I like to learn as much as I can while trying to figure out an answer.

After the meeting, I followed Wes to the campground. Wes lives a couple of miles from the camp, so it was really just me and Kim going to stay there. We were following him deep into the woods on a narrow twisty road. Nervously, Kim asks “How well do you know this Wes guy?” “Oh, well enough, he’s a friend of Ray’s.” That settled it. Kim has seen my folder of email attachments from Ray. Everyone has a friend like Ray, it seems, and a folder of attachments that they can’t let respectable folks see. The fact that Wes was a friend of Ray’s just meant that he was “mostly harmless”. Anyway, we hung out for a while and had a few beers with Wes before turning in.

Next morning Wes and I met at a very foggy 7 am and hit the ponds looking for bass. There were obviously several nice size ones in there, although we caught mainly smaller bass (10-14″) and nice crappies. Wes fished most of the time on a plastic lizard which the bass found irresistable. I brought a vest full of tackle, but fished mainly with a deep diving lure and a rubber frog. I also had my fly line with me because I would rather catch a single fish on a fly than 5 on a spin rig. It’s just more fun because you are more directly connected to the fish. You do (or I do) catch far more fish on the spin rig, but it doesn’t have the same thrill.

To the left is Wes rebaiting after a bass savagely mangled his lizard.

If you ever get to this end of North Carolina, it is far different from the NASCAR state found in Charlotte and, well, everywhere else. This actually reminded me of the Adirondacks of Upstate NY. The RedWinged Blackbirds, the Brown Thrush, the water, the peace and tranquility.

Wes has inlaws who live near another private lake in the area which he also got permission for us to fish. This was a bit of a surprise for me. We were out in a canoe and his dogs swam along with us. I had never fished from a canoe when a couple of 80 lb yellow labs were trying to get into it before. We tried to fish as the dogs swam around the canoe. With something like that going on, I was equally afraid of the dogs drowning, the dogs spooking the fish, the dogs trying to get into the boat and drowning Wes and I, and last but not least, hooking one of the dogs with a lure.

Anyway, I soon forgot about the dogs. I saw a swirl to port, and quickly changed my cast with the fly line. I cast just to the side of the swirl. Before I knew it, there was tension on the line, and I set the hook. The fish danced a few times for us the way that only a trout can dance. It took a while to bring it in, it spooked each time it got near the boat, a 14″ Rainbow. I was using a big grasshopper fly. I was glad I had brought the big 9′ 5wt rod which was set up for bass instead of the 7 1/2′ 4wt set up for brookies. Beautiful fish. We caught 3, 2 rainbows and a brown. There were also some less remarkable bass in this lake, and a big rainstorm came through and soaked us to the bones, but undaunted, we fished on.\n\nThe next morning the owner of the camp invited Kim and I to come up and fish the pond next to his house. Kim wanted to learn how to fly fish, so I set her up with the trout rod and I took the bass rod again. Kim and fly fishing again gain the term “mostly harmless“. She didn’t hurt anyone or anything or any fish, but she enjoyed that “swooshing” sound and the rrrrrRRRRIIP!! sound the line coming off the water too fast makes.

Yankee that I am, and not accustomed to the local terms for things, I find that “brim” are sunfish. “Perch”, at least in this part of the world, are also sunfish. Fortunately, these “brim” and “perch” are hand fed daily and were as big as both of your hands. I caught about a dozen of these things (bluegills and pumpkinseeds, terms that are probably equally confusing to southerners) which fought like the dickens on fly tackle (yellow poppers). The bass wouldn’t touch them, but the bluegills loved ‘em, and since the poppers float on top, you got to see each strike, which adds a little to it which you just can’t get with a spinning set up.

I’ve been trying to find something to tie together my love for fishing and my obsession with SolidWorks, and the only thing I could find is a name tag retractible tether given to me at an interview at SW Corp. This was intended to take your badge and allow you to swipe it through the security card reader without taking it off. I put it on my fishing vest and use it to tether my pocket knife. Partially I like the irony of using something from the corporate world in the very un-corporate pursuit of peacefulness. Plus, it’s just a really (or should I say “reely”) geeky thing to do.