MCAD Tech News #192

Designer uses CoCreate’s OneSpace Designer Modeling to build the next snowboard

Several years ago, ok, on my 40th birthday, I decided to learn a new winter sport -- snowboarding. I enrolled in a day-long snowboarding class, but was intimidated by the fact that I was by far the oldest student in the class. I think the next oldest student was 14. That first day did not go well, and I knew it. In fact, the instructor pulled me aside and told me that I might want to pursue other winter sports. Although I was very discouraged after that first day, I was more determined than ever to get the hang of it. After countless painful crashes and tumbles since then, I’m now able to board on just about any slope in Colorado. I don’t do the pipe or the park, but I do like to cruise and carve.

So, what’s this got to do with mechanical design? Well, while to the uninitiated, snowboards may look like rounded slabs of wood with upturned ends, they’re actually quite sophisticated in terms of design, materials, manufacturing process and, of course, graphics. While there are some gimmicks in regards to snowboard design, nothing truly revolutionary has come out for several years. That is, until I heard about Deuce Snowboards and its aptly named product Deuce. Read more>>

By Ron LaFon

After a period of small, incremental performance gains, this latest generation of CAD/engineering workstations makes a big leap over previous systems. The four systems reviewed here are the fastest workstations that Cadalyst has ever seen. Credit for the improvement goes primarily to Intel's speedy new Core 2 Extreme processors, which are used in three of the four systems received. One system is based on the AMD Athlon64 FX-62 2.8GHz processor that until recently had been the leader on Cadalyst performance tests. Read more>>

Mark Your Calendar: MCAD Events

The Power of Adobe Acrobat 8 Seminar
Various 2006 dates
Various locations
Attendees will learn how Adobe Acrobat 8 can be used to improve workflows, and can choose from 90-minute breakout sessions designed for AEC/manufacturing, creative/marketing, general business/IT, legal and education/e-learning professionals, as well as a developer briefing. Read more

ESI Group CFD Training
Various 2006 and 2007 dates
Various locations
ESI Group has added 2007 dates to its training schedule. The company's CFD (computational fluid dynamics) training solution takes basic, intermediate and advanced training needs into consideration. Read more

North American Symposium on the Integration of Analysis in Product Design
November 13, 2006
Chicago, Illinois
In a roundtable format, industry leaders will share their vision for the future of analysis as an integrated component in product design. Attendees will have the opportunity to hear directly from the developers about how they plan to handle integration challenges in coming years. Read more

RhinoMarine Seminar
November 14, 2006
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Representatives from Proteus Engineering, McNeel Europe, Design Systems & Technologies and RhinoCentre NL will present the capabilities of the latest versions of Rhino and RhinoMarine during this no-cost seminar. Read more

FEA and CFD: Challenges and Best-Modeling Practices for the Aerospace Industry
November 15, 2006
Anaheim, California
This industry-focused workshop will bring together analysts from across the aerospace industry to discuss, review and discover best-modeling practices, while highlighting the challenges that all users of analysis, and their management, should be considering. Read more

ESPRIT World Conference 2007
May 8-11, 2007
Newport Beach, California
ESPRIT World Conference 2007 is the basis upon which the company will launch the next version of ESPRIT. The foundation of the program will be education and technical training on this new version. Read more

For Cadalyst's full calendar of events, click here>>

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November Tutorials Live Online: The latest editions of all your favorite Cadalyst tutorials for AutoCAD as well as SolidWorks, Solid Edge, Inventor, Alibre Designand more are now live on Cadalyst.com.

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Cadalyst Daily Update
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• Do’s and Don’ts of Publishing Online Parts Catalogs: Offering downloadable 3D CAD files for product designers is a smart business move, but it’s not necessarily easy.