General

One of the nice things about not being employed by Microsoft is that I need not live in fear of receiving an email like this from Bill Gates.  This email from Bill Gates to the people responsible for Windows is worth a read if you have time.  It is a nice little rant on Windows from the guy most responsible for making Windows the most ubiquitous operating system on the planet.  The next time you get ready to verbally abuse Bill Gates when Windows frustrates you, take a deep breath and relax with the knowledge that BIll is using the software too and giving ‘em hell when it needs to be improved.

Note:  The Microsoft Mullet and other funny mullet pictures can be found at http://www.mulletmadness.com/.

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Well, it’s over again.  Every year it just flies by in three blinks of the eye.  This year started out with a little irony (my connecting flight to Atlanta was cancelled due to inclement weather [30degrees F with snow] so I had to fly through Minneapolis instead where it was -15 F) but quickly turned into a great experience. 

My favorite thing about the conference was all of the people that I met.  I discovered that people do really read my blog (thank you Adrian from Intercad) and I met some of the other bloggers (although I am not really a blogger by the estimation of Richard Doyle of SolidWorks).  Some of the guys that I met were Lenny Kikstra of SolidWorks Macro fame, Josh Mings from SolidSmack (the best SolidWorks blog out there), Ricky Jordan and Ben Eadie of SolidMentor.  I also ran into a few of the bloggers that I had already met in person (e.g. Matt Lombard of SolidWorks Surfacing and SolidWorks Bible fame, Rob Rodriguez – the Grandmaster of PhotoWorks).

In addition to the great networking, I got to see a few really good presentations and a few duds.  My two favorite presentations were Michael Craffey’s presentation on regulatory compliance issues related to software and Jonathan Freeson’s presentation on developing PDMWorks Enterprise add-ins.   The stump the chump session was pretty good too even though some took advantage of the format by trying to get free consulting.  The major thing I got out of the stump the chump meeting though was that far fewer companies than I had previously thought have switched to SolidWorks 2008.  They don’t know what they are missing.

Finally, I got to see a few cool products that I am excited about.  My favorite is Template Wizard by 3Dawn.  The voice recognition software was pretty cool too.

Breakfast sucked as usual (hard bagels, fruit and yogurt just don’t do it for me in the morning).  I am excited that SolidWorks World will be back at Disney World again next year.  Mickey Mouse pancakes with eggs and bacon are my favorite!  See you next year.

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I will be in San Diego for my fourth SolidWorks World. If you see me there, then by all means say hello.

For those of you that have had positive feedback on the blog over the past few months, I appreciate it. It is for you that I write the blog. I hope someone finds it useful.

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Every developer has a set of tools, books and websites that they rely upon for help in their quest to build quality software.  I thought there might be some folks out there doing SolidWorks API programming/development that would appreciate finding out tools other developers are using.  Hence, this post.

Below is a partial list of some of the tools that I rely on.  I hope you find something that is useful to you.  You may also have some tools that you rely upon that might benefit the rest of us.  If so, then let us know with a comment.  I will be posting a list of books and websites that I use also.

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Although I like the old “Daily WTF” better than the newly named “Worse Than Failure,” it is still a great place to go in order to feel better about your projects.

The site’s latest post, “Avoiding Development Disasters,” discusses the now infamous FBI software fiasco known as Virtual Case File and is a pretty good read.   For those short on time,  I think their picture, “The Code To Ruin,” says it all.

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