For those who could not attend the inaugural WA SolidWorks User Group you missed an engaging presentation by Well Ops and a captivating presentation on Surfacing by Malcolm Cook. Please, if you have not signed up to be on the mail listing do so now by going to http://www.waswug.net/. This will ensure that you are notified for the next User Group meeting that is planned for the 1st Wednesday in May. An agenda is yet to be formalised so please feel free to drop an email with any topics you would like to see covered. The meeting started with Pizzas and beer and chance for old colleagues to catch up and new connections and friends to be made. It was a great turn out with around 30 people almost all making it right from the start of the night with a few making it in through the evening.
Owen Hethrington from Well Ops and also the organiser gave the first presentation on how SolidWorks is used within the operations that Well Ops conducts. Well Ops is a Subsea Intervention company so they have a great need for reusing and modifying equipment and managing large numbers of files with varying numbers and experience of Engineers and Draftsperson's. Owen explained how Well Ops uses PDMworkgroup and a Design Library to manage their data and how that data can be used with ease by the Engineers and Draftsperson's. A lively debate was also sparked when Owen went onto explain the document numbering system used by Well Ops, which lead to questions on how, why and if document numbering is needed. The presentation was a nice insight for most on the operations of a Subsea Oil and Gas company and allowed some users to see the potential their SolidWorks license could achieve.
Malcolm Cook then gave a presentation on Surfacing tips and tricks and how he uses it for sheetmetal fabrication. A quick show of hands from made it clear that almost no one used surfacing and this is a shame as it is a very powerful feature for 3d modeling. Malcolm also showed how surfacing is used to create car body shapes and went through the 1st few steps of a free Camero tutorial of which the link is supplied on the WA SolidWorks User Group website.
The night drew to a close at 8pm with a prize giveaway of baseballs, shirts & key rings supplied by SolidWorks. To all that attended thank you for your support and we hope that you found it worthwhile and for those that could not make please see if you can make the next event.
