Machine Design Blogs

One of the main themes of SolidWorks World 2010 is that of “cloud computing.” Parent company Dassault Systems is betting millions of dollars on providing a way to stay ahead of what it calls an “inflexion point” soon to happen in the way business is done. An example of such a point happened around 1994 when CAD went from Unix to Windows. According to Jeff Ray and other company personnel, this paradigm shift to cloud computing in the design engineering world (and even the consumer world) will not be a forced migration imposed from “above” with the need to update old versions of software. Instead, as the economic advantages of the model become more obvious, companies will voluntarily want to move to the new technology. Ray also says there is still a lot up in the air about how this will work. But later this year, the company is shipping its first Enovia 6-based cloud app for product data sharing (it does not have a name yet).

The idea: software such as SolidWorks will be available as an app in a store similar to the iPhone App store. Users will have a “passport” that lets them just go and get the service they want. The business model will be an online licensing model. One spokesperson says Panosonic has already done this with Lotus Notes, now available as a service on the Web. Basically, cloud computing provides a network of communities tied together with the same interface. In this scenario, Dassault will own the server farm.

Flew in yesterday from a snowy and cold Cleveland, Ohio to a warm and palm-laden Anaheim, Calif., for SolidWorks World 2010. Every year, the company features products on the show floor that were designed in the software. One that looks really cool is a tiny two-seater airplane. I am going to check it out more closely later (maybe try to wrangle a test flight!). Also interesting: a huge industrial fan about four or five-feet in diamenter intended to cool large areas. Right now, I’m waiting for the first keynote speech. One speaker is James Cameron, recently well known for the film Avatar. Another is James McLurkin, recently recognized by Time magazine as one of the five leading robotic engineers.

Stay tuned…more to come!

…[later]

“Cloud computing” was a big theme of the first keynote speech. SolidWorks CEO Jeff Ray says later this year, the company will start selling its until now top-secret cloud-based applications. The advantages? There is no need to open or store files in the old way — the clould is the one source file. This gives a seamless collaboration environment. Ray gave “sneak preview” of some of clould technologies in the works that reportedly will make the job of everyday design engineers easier:

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) invites university teams to participate in the 2010 Virtual Manufacturing Automation Competition to simulate an industrial robot stacking boxes on a shipping pallet. NIST, IEEE, and Georgia Tech are co-sponsoring the competition. The winning team will run part of its simulated task on a robot at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2010 in Anchorage, Alaska, in May.

To participate, teams need a computer-gaming engine available for about $10. From this they can use existing computer code or create their own to develop a simulation of a robot picking up odd-lot boxes from a conveyor belt and arranging them on a pallet for shipping. NIST will define the metrics for determining what makes a “good” mixed pallet. The competition should help students engage in real-word research for learning robotic architectures, motion planning systems, and multi-robot control, according to NIST.

The deadline for entering is Feb. 15 and the competition takes place May 2 to 3. Get more information, including a simple example of a robot simulation. Questions? Contact NIST researchers.

For a really good article on how to do business in China, check out an artefact blog item by Gabriel Biller.

The holy grail of getting energy from fusion reactions could eventually come out of a new MIT experiment involving what’s called levitated dipoles. The apparatus, according to the account in Physorg.com, includes

….a half-ton donut-shaped magnet about the size and shape of a large truck tire, made of superconducting wire coiled inside a stainless steel vessel. This magnet is suspended by a powerful electromagnetic field, and is used to control the motion of the 10-million-degree-hot electrically charged gas, or plasma, contained within its 16-foot-diameter outer chamber.

Not exactly something you could throw together in your garage. The observed result is supposed to be counter-intuitive, at least for physicists, because random turbulence makes the plasma more densely concentrated. It is a completely different approach than the tokamaks normally used to try and induce fusion reactions.

Physorg.com’s account of this thing is here:

http://www.physorg.com/news183544566.html

We recently discussed the problem of unqualified math teachers who are unleashed on high school students (http://machinedesign.com/article/why-johnny-cant-do-algebra-0925). Philosopher of biology Michael Ruse recently mused about the subject far more cogently than we did: http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Science-for-Science-Teachers/20510/

One interesting quote from his piece:

“In 2007 (the last year for which there are available figures) within the State of Florida 1,295 people were hired to teach mathematics. Of those, only 394 had qualifications in teaching mathematics. Within the state, 1,154 people were hired to teach science. Of these, 282 had science qualifications. In other words, and I can attest anecdotally to this at my kids’ high school, most of the people being hired in Florida to teach mathematics and science aren’t qualified.”

You’ll also find a great joke at the end:

Q: What is the first name of every economics teacher in Indiana?

A: Coach

The World Health Organization (WHO) has released its mortality statistics for 2009. What caused more deaths in 2009 than fires, drunk driving, and carbon monoxide? The surprising answer: radon gas. Exposure to it kills over 20,000 people annually in the U.S. Radon is a radioactive gas that escapes from rock and soil and tends to concentrate in enclosed spaces such as houses and underground mines. A major contributor to the exposure of ionizing radiation doses to the general population, radon causes death by lung cancer. For more information

A few years ago we published an editorial questioning whether curbside recycling made economic sense:

http://machinedesign.com/article/save-energy-dont-recycle-0713

Now comes a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education by a professor of philosophy who posits that many of those who are ardent recyclers are essentially substituting the “green” movement for religion. In one passage, he points out

….Instead of religious sins plaguing our conscience, we now have the transgressions of leaving the water running, leaving the lights on, failing to recycle, and using plastic grocery bags instead of paper. In addition, the righteous pleasures of being more orthodox than your neighbor (in this case being more green) can still be had—the new heresies include failure to compost, or refusal to go organic. Vitriol that used to be reserved for Satan can now be discharged against evil corporate chief executives and drivers of gas-guzzling vehicles. Apocalyptic fear-mongering previously took the shape of repent or burn in hell, but now it is recycle or burn in the ozone hole. In fact, it is interesting the way environmentalism takes on the apocalyptic aspects of the traditional religious narrative…..

The whole thing makes interesting reading and is quite thoughtful. So, too, are the comments posted at the end of the piece. There are quite a few of them……

http://chronicle.com/article/Green-Guilt/63447/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

I can understand media such as the Wall Street Journal or Cosmo magazine, which target mass markets, jumping onto the Web bandwagon. They want to quantify the value of advertizing dollars spent in their pubs with click-through rates that seem to prove a larger audience. But is larger always better? Many people are overdosed on advertizing and no longer pay any attention to it. What’s worse is many of these so-called leads are non-qualified. We have all heard the horrible but true stories about a subscription getting sent to someone’s dog or dead husband.

Why are trade journals, especially, scurrying to join the fray? By definition, these publications cater to more specialized audiences, whether engineers, welders, hog farmers, or what-have-you. What does it matter if six billion Joe Schmoes happen to stumble on an online article about, say, computational fluid dynamics?

Instead of entering the fight to climb the Google rankings, wouldn’t it make more sense for these kinds of publications to target what is known as the “Deep Web”? Made up mostly of information in databases and file networks, the Deep Web hosts trillions of bits of information more than the everyday “surface” Web, which contains links of text and html that spiders and crawlers providing search engine results can easily find.

Beyond Joe Schmoe searches, the Deep Web could potentially let businesses use data in new ways. For example, a design engineering site could cross-reference data from, say, college libraries with the latest findings on new materials. Or an energy efficiency site could extend its coverage by letting users tap into public records stored in government databases

Everyone knows that additive manufacturing processes can make intricate, seemingly impossible mathematical shapes. Here is a sample STL file of one of these extraordinary shapes.