The 2nd SWUGN Technical Summit of 2008 was held in Nashville, TN today. An enthusiastic crowd of 86 SolidWorks users came out to see presentations on both general and specialty topics. Richard Doyle, who is the User Community Manager for SolidWorks, had a last minute scheduling conflict and had to miss this year’s Summit in Nashville. Look for Richard to return to the Southeast later this year on a User Group meeting tour. I volunteered to
step in and give the presentations for both the opening and lunch sessions. I’m sure I wasn’t quite as thorough as Richard but I was happy to help out. It’s always a fun time for me when I get to talk about the SolidWorks User Group Network!
One of the topics discussed in the opening session was the search for a new User Group Leader for the Nashville area. If you are reading this post and are interested, e-mail me and I would be happy to discuss it with you!
The morning breakout sessions featured Brad Williamson of Progressive Technologies, Dana Parrish of SolidWorks Corp., & Rich Hall of Westwind Corp. Brad gave two presentations 
on Assembly Design & PDMWorks. Dana gave an information packed presentation on the Who, What, When, & Why of COSMOS. Rich gave an excellent presentation on Sheet Metal.
Next up was the lunch session. We received one entry for the One Minute Tips Contest. Chris Hairell of Gas House Inc. submitted a tip that describes how to insert symbols into drawing notes using Windows standard codes. Here is his tip:
If you hold down the ALT button and type 0216 a Ø symbol pops up. This is great for eDrawings, SolidWorks Drawings, and DWGeditor.
Other combinations that work for symbols:
ALT+0153 =™ (Trade Mark)
ALT+0169=© (Copyright)
ALT+0174=® (Registered)
ALT+0176=° (Degrees)
ALT+0177=± (Tolerances)
ALT+0216=Ø (Diameter)
One caveat that was discovered with this tip is that you must use the “keypad” numerals if you are using a laptop keyboard. Most laptops allow you to use a “Fn” key to mimic the keypad numbers on a normal keyboard. If you have a Dell laptop you will find them on the right side of the keyboard. A BIG thanks to Brian McElyea (the CADFANTIC himself) for figuring this one out as it had me stumped!
Since Chris was the only user to submit a One Minute Tip, he won the contest and choose the SolidWorks branded iPod Nano as his prize. (Future SWUGN Summit attendees should take note of this.) Congratulations Chris!
Next we raffled off three grand prizes and some SolidWorks SWAG in the form of hats, lens cleaners, and pens. Major prize winners were:
Jeff Skinner – 3DConnexion Space Navigator
Jeff Hammock – Nvida QuadroFX 1700 video card
Dan Traylor – Free Admission to SolidWorks World 2009
Congratulations to all the prize winners.
The last part of the lunch session included a COSMOS FloWorks demonstration by Ramesh Lakshmipathy of SolidWorks Corp.
After lunch Brian McElyea and myself gave the presentation on CAD Management while Jeremiah Davis of ModernTech Mechanical presented some Tips and Tricks on Drawings.
The rest of the afternoon sessions included sessions on Imported Geometry and SolidWorks Tips and Tricks by me and a Weldments session by NASWUG-RSA president Gary Hall.
I can’t say enough about the users from Tennessee, Alabama, & Mississippi who attended this event. Although we didn’t break the attendance record like last year, the enthusiasm and excitement at this year’s event was unmatched.
I would like to thank Richard Doyle for doing all the preparation work for the event which made my job easy today. I’d also like to thank all the presenters whom all did an absolutely wonderful job. I would especially like to thank Rich Hall, Dana Parrish, & Gary Hall for coming in early to help with setup and registration. Also thanks to Brian McElyea for taking pictures of the event.
A big thanks goes out the the event sponsors: SolidWorks, 3DConnexion, Nvidia, & ModernTech Mechanical.
Over the next couple of days I will gather all the presentations for this event and post links to download them.
Stay tuned….more to come!