The Javelin Technologies Blog

North Bay. To any respectable Ontarian, the town is synonymous with snowshoes, snowmobiles and, of course, freezing temperatures. However, what you should be thinking about when someone mentions North Bay is ICAMP. The brain child of Canadore College President George Burton, Director of Corporate, Community & Alumni Partnerships Brad Gavan and Manager of Corporate Relations Charles Gagnon – ICAMP (Innovation Centre for Advanced Manufacturing & Production) will change the way any engineer views that little town north of … well, everything!

This revolutionary idea was born just over a year ago, the way most good ideas are: over dinner. Burton felt that in order to ensure industry and education would thrive in Northern Ontario, it was extremely important to think outside the box when enticing companies to operate in North Bay. With this in mind, his team began tackling the tough questions – what would bring companies to the Bay? And, after they were there, what would make them stay?

The answer was found in the creation of ICAMP. The centre will provide the resources needed for companies to have the ability to research and create new products without any heavy investment in specific technologies. It’s an industrial centre focused on product innovation, with the added bonus of opportunities for Canadore students to learn from leaders of the manufacturing industry.

Currently under construction, the facility is set to open in September of 2013. With SolidWorks 3D CAD software and Objet 3D printing technology as tools, the centre is already prepared for design and rapid prototyping. Plans for incorporating the ICAMP centre into Canadore’s curriculum, Javelin’s excited to keep everyone updated on the progress of ICAMP over the next 6 months.

Architects, contractors and college staff are all feverishly working towards making ICAMP the facility that establishes North Bay as a hub of manufacturing and production activity. There is no other school in Canada that is engineering such an innovative project – that being said, Canadore is one of the only schools worldwide to tackle such a feat. Officially trail blazers, Javelin’s ecstatic to be supporting a school on the cutting edge of technology.

More updates to come! Congratulations ICAMP!

At our Javelin office in Oakville, we’re lucky to work in a colourful, spacious and social work environment. Here are some tips that you can easily follow to increase productivity and over-all mood at your office!

• #1 Be happy. Being in a good mood increases productivity. Studies outlined on Voxeu.org conclude that happiness and productivity are directly correlated. In an experiment conducted by Daniel Sgroi, we can see that participants who were shown a 10 minute long comedy clip answered more questions correctly (10%) than the participants who were not shown a clip. The takeaway: maybe that ‘Funny Cats YouTube Clip‘  is not such a time waster after all. Doing little things to improve your mood can go a long way.

• #2 Eat right. Eating nutritious and high energy foods can replace caffeine and provide consistent, longer lasting energy. Start your day off right. Lay off the caffeine as it only gives you temporary energy and if it’s loaded with sugar, it is likely to make you hyper and ultimately crash. Instead, have a well balanced breakfast and bring these high energy foods to snack on. Good snacks to bring are: oatmeal, almonds, yogurt, popcorn and fruit.  Getting your fibre, protein and vitamins is a great way to boost your energy and maintain long term health.

• # 3 Get up. Leaving your desk can better your mood and increase energy. Eating lunch at your desk can be messy and hinder productivity.  You may think you accomplish a lot while eating spaghetti at your desk, but numerous studies show that you have more to gain by walking or talking during lunch. Human beings are naturally social creatures (hence the 5 social media tabs you currently have open), eating lunch while having a light hearted conversation can relieve stress. Exercise boosts your mood and as we’ve seen in the previous point, a better mood = increased productivity.

     The Myth: Multitasking Exists

The brain naturally focuses on concepts sequentially, one at a time. We are biologically incapable of processing attention-rich inputs simultaneously.

(John Medina, Brain Rules)

• Basically, humans are not made to multi-task. If we try and do so, the quality of our output will greatly suffer.  Trying to do things at once to save time will ultimately cost you more time. Instead, prioritize! According to Tucker Cummings, we should ‘bite the bullet’ and handle the big stuff first. It may be tempting to get the little ‘5 minute tasks’ out of the way but after all the little things are accomplished we rarely have the energy and drive to tackle a big project. Just get it over with!

• Please comment below and share some productivity wisdom! 

When you are walking, walk. When you are sitting, sit.

(Buddha)

My name is Martyna and I’m the new marketing intern at Javelin. I’ll be blogging every other week – keeping you lovely people updated about what’s going on at Javelin!

The bill of materials is such an important report yet it is surprising the number of users that do not have a formal strategy in place with how the bill of materials is created, edited and approved.  I’ve seen clients who don’t even use the SolidWorks bill of materials functionality and continue to use old techniques such as manually counting and entering lines in excel.  A number of years ago, there were good excuses why this still might be necissary but it is definitely not the case any more.

To understand a little more about the bill of materials frunctionality within SolidWorks and Enterprise PDM, I wrote down a few different versions of the bom you should be aware of:

1. SolidWorks BOM in an Assembly
2. SolidWorks BOM on a Drawing
3. EPDM SolidWorks BOM
4. EPDM Computed BOM
5. EPDM Saved BOM

When planning your bill of materials process, it would be advantageous to have a good understanding of what you can and can’t do with these BOM’s and the roles that they play.  Here are a few thoughts on the matter related to recommended process.

If there is a lot of rearrangement of the bill of materials, removed components, embedded cutlists, etc. then I would recommend the SolidWorks BOM in an Assembly be the best starting point.  It provides the most amount of control and manipulation with how the SolidWorks design is constructed.  This BOM can be placed directly on a drawing avoiding the need to recompute and rearrange the BOM on the drawing.   If the majority of your rearrangement of the BOM is due to what is on the drawing, you may consider starting on the drawing and avoiding the need for the assembly BOM all together.

If control over the bill of materials is required, EPDM can help there.  The starting point for the BOM in EPDM is either the “EPDM SolidWorks BOM” which is identical to the SolidWorks Assembly or Drawing BOM or the “EPDM Computed BOM” which is computed by EPDM on the fly based on file reference counts.  If there is no modification to the BOM in SolidWorks, these are likely going to be the same.  Both of these under revision control with the assembly or drawing which they come from.

To provide an increased amount of control, either one of these BOM’s can be saved to create an “EPDM Saved BOM”.  This treats the BOM as it’s own entity and provides the flexibility of changing pretty much what ever you want.

Regardless of the BOM’s you are using in EPDM, you always have the ability to compare and export which can help a tremendous amount to communicate with other departments.

To see a little of the EPDM BOM in action, I would recommend watching this video:

So your company has just made a great investment in one of the premier CAD design tools in the industry, SolidWorks. What is the next step?
In many cases, giving a designer a new design tool is just not enough to increase their productivity. We find that engineering departments need help transitioning from their current CAD package to SolidWorks; whether it be installation and setup of the software, creating proper CAD standards, or integrating with existing business processes.

Can your company’s existing hardware even run SolidWorks?

It’s important to have proper hardware in place, to ensure great productivity from your design team. If they do not have the tools necessary to do their job effectively, they cannot be productive. A highly computer intensive application like SolidWorks, requires plenty of computing power. 3D CAD applications are of the most powerful pieces of software that can be run on a PC. The software cannot spread its wings effectively running on old, out of date hardware. We have created a FAQ dedicated to answering these questions; check it out at the link below:

http://www.javelin-tech.com/main/support/solidworks_2011_hardware_faq.htm

This is something Javelin assists our customers with all the time. Did you know we provide services to visit your site and do an on-site audit of all your existing hardware, to make sure you are set to go for your transition from SolidWorks? Read on…

It’s all about standards…

Creating new templates for use in SolidWorks, as well as title blocks that match standards in what was used in the old design package, is critical for capturing product information. It’s this information that must be correctly communicated to Engineering, Purchasing, and Manufacturing to ensure business success in the design of your product. SolidWorks, as well as Javelin, have created processes and tools to help companies achieve proper standards management, right out of the gate with your new software.

What do I do with all these existing parts libraries? Help!

One of the most challenging and time consuming processes that can happen when switching to a new CAD software, is getting all the existing part libraries from the old system into the new system, as well as utilizing SolidWorks to read and manage those custom libraries. The sheer volume of the library, the designer’s experience with the product and their available time make it a challenge to move forward.

There are options available through Javelin and our partners to help make this transition much less painful. Our professional services folks and Javelin can help setup shared folders, organize shared libraries, and set up SolidWorks specific libraries such as Toolbox (nuts, bolts, fasteners, etc.),bend standards, and weldment stock material libraries. We also have certified partners that can take your existing CAD drawings, etc. and convert them to a SolidWorks standards part library. I think we all understand that there is nothing more important than an engineer’s time. Their time is best spent on product development and design, not worrying about libraries.

We had a BOM…it was the bomb…we want to keep it!

Using SolidWorks to collect custom property (metadata) information such as vendor information, part information, manufacturer information, etc. and capturing in a properly formatting engineering BOM is critical in transferring data between different software packages in your company, such as document management systems (ex. SolidWorks Entperirse PDM) and existing/future ERP or CRM systems.

Our team can help setup SolidWorks BOM’s taking into account the way the company used to do things, and what they need to do moving forward to utilize the data being collected. There are many tools built into SolidWorks to help manage BOM’s, and standardize them across your engineering team.

The bigger picture…

Many people do not realize that SolidWorks can create a very nice bridge between existing business systems, and help to streamline not just the engineering design process, but overall business process as well. Metadata information collected in SolidWorks, can be obtained from existing ERP systems with the help of Javelin tools such as Property Links, and populated directly into the SolidWorks model. This ensures the right information is being gathered, standards are being met, and time spent entering information is decreased. With a SolidWorks Enterprise PDM document management system, this metadata (in BOM format) can be transferred into a company’s ERP, CRM or other business system once an approval from Engineering is made.

Imagine a world where sales, purchasing, manufacturing, etc. don’t have to constantly ask engineering for information, only for them to get a paper copy they need to re-enter into the business system. This can lead to mistakes and missteps. Javelin’s goal? Use an original source for the information, design with that information, and transfer that information back to the business system. Again, it’s all about standards.

I love what I am reading, how do I contact you?!

As always, you can contact me directly at dan.gamsby@javelin-tech.com, or by phone at 1-877-219-6757 x258. I would be happy to discuss in more detail how our team can help you achieve a higher level of productivity for your company.

Project Managers are constantly being pushed to the limits to keep their projects on time and within budget while maintaining a high degree of quality.  As time-lines are being shortened and margins are being squeezed, project managers face some real challenges with ensuring their goals are met.   To help all of the project managers out there, we have outlined 5 ways which project managers can lighten the stress and achieve greatness:

1)      Get a Head Start by Leveraging Previous Projects

It goes without saying that copying work is much easier than starting it from scratch, isn’t that the schoolyard lesion we all learned as children? The same principle applies to project management, using Enterprise PDM you can actually copy previous projects, reassign automatic serial numbers, create new folders and data structures, to be given an extra jump start when you begin a new project – all the original data is kept safe, and you are given a fresh copy to start from – so you won’t have to worry about data integrity being an issue.

This “start from a copy” approach will help you to hit your targets easier, as well as help you build your own intellectual property library of which you can start all kinds of new, or copied, projects from in the future – saving you time, and getting you off to the races quicker than your competitors.

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Over the years, many customers have asked us to help them manage change.  This means a lot of different things depending on who you talk to about it.  To keep it simple, I break change into two distinct areas which are important to focus on: 1) Managing the history of a file 2) Documenting and approving why things change

Managing the history of a file

Luckily, managing the history of a file is the bread and butter of what SolidWorks Enterprise PDM does.  It will automatically do the following things as the files evolve:

1. Coordinate who’s working and updating a file
2. Create new versions of a file
3. Keep a recorded history with comments, names and dates
4. Control access permissions
5. Update properties and titleblocks appropriately
6. Stamp released revision information
7. Allow controlled access and comparison to previous versions

Documenting and approving why things change

Properly documenting why changes were made with appropriate sign off tends to be slightly more challenging.  This requires carefully implemented processes and company standards.  To assist with this, Javelin has taken common requirements from numerous companies and has done the administration work to implement a great engineering change request that is fully integrated into SolidWorks Enterprise PDM.  Below is a screen shot of some of the highlights but here is a quick lists of what it accomplishes:

1. Generate a standard ECR from a standardized form
2. Automate project, date and login information into the document
3. Get approvals for change
4. Track progress on outstanding ECR’s for engineering and monitor bottlenecks through reporting
5. Notify team of new change requests automatically
6. Link change requests to files for the purpose of linking them to specific revisions
7. Track billable ECR’s to ensure invoicing occurs when they are implemented
8. Categorize by urgency to deal with high priority items first

For more information, please contact me: eric.vanessen@javelin-tech.com

I came across this blog that Jeff Sweeney wrote and I couldn’t agree more.  I have been waiting for this feature for a long time and I am very excited that it is here.   I see this functionality being a key contributor to making the migration of files into Enterprise PDM even easier.

Have a look at Jeff’s posting on updating references automatically in EPDM 2011.

http://www.3dvision.com/wordpress/index.php/2010/11/05/update-references-in-epdm-2011/

As many of you may know, in my past life I worked for an Autodesk reseller. During this time, I became an Autodesk systems specialist in many of the product offerings that the company had.  Needless to say, I am very picky on my 2D design tool of choice.  If you are going to find something to replace AutoCAD, it had better be good, and something I can be comfortable with and productive with immediately. Recently, Dessault released a fantastic FREE product called DraftSight, to help companies deal with DWG files they may have, that they require opening, but can either not open them because they are too old, or because they no longer have AutoCAD to open the files.

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Quick View can substantially increase performance by only loading the components that you require for your current session or a specific operation. Quick View only opens and loads into the memory selected component. Components that are not selected are NOT loaded into memory. The selected components are then loaded Lightweight.

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