As some of you know, we had Thomas Allsup, a User group Leader from Texas attend our meeting. He sent me an e-mail containing a short message that he posted to his group about our meeting. I thought that I would post here as well.

Here is what he had to say:

SolidWorks M.O.K.A. Meeting - April 6,  2010
Joplin, MO

Brian Long, User Group Leader, who I met  at  SolidWorks 2010 invited me to attend any of their meetings when I was in  the  North Oklahoma area.  The meeting is held is in a community center in  east  Joplin and has members from Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas.   SolidWorks Forum Web site uses a coffee cup "mocha" logo.  The meeting  was a  couple users showing how they model sample parts.  The meeting was on a  Tuesday night from 4:45 to 7:45 with 9 people at the beginning and 14  people at  the end (there are 36 members on the e-mail list and 22 of them on the  forum  site).  Good thing I showed up, they needed splitter cable (HA HA).   The following notes come from that meeting:

•Starting in SolidWorks 2010,  macros.can now be  recorded in VB or C#.
•There is an issue with Windows 7, Internet 8,  and  SolidWorks 2010 that may not allow SolidWorks to load unless you change  the DEP  Settings.
•Sketches can be grouped together into blocks so they  travel  together (just like AutoCAD).
•For SolidWorks to load Inventor parts  with  parameters, you must have Inventor installed on the same machine  otherwise it  comes in as a dumb parasolid  (I'm not sure about this since I do have  Inventor and SolidWorks on the same machine).
•There's a new "twist"  along  path that will quickly make a helix.
•You can use a dumb parasolid as  a  template part to keep users from changing the original "make from" part.
•The   new Property Builder Tab is really cool.
•There is a reported bug  that if you  use an equation editor to create, it cannot be linked to a drawing  (actually it  links from you get the variable name and not the variable value).
•On  a  vacuum formed part, a hidden sketch with arrayed lines is added so that a  grid  pattern can be shown on the drawing.
•Using guide lines on a loft can  force a  lofted part's shape. There was an unusual challenge at the  end of the  meeting to model an apple.

Thomas Allsup

As indicated, there was a challenge by John Fitzpatrick to model an apple for our next meeting and see who has the best solution to the challenge. So, with the spirit of comradery, Thomas sent me his version which I will show at our July meeting.