In an effort to serve everybody better, I will be moving hosts. This is the first time I’m doing this using WordPress, so please do bear with me while I try to figure this one out. The new datacenter will be located in the US, hopefully giving better access and service to my global readers. Stay tuned!
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Here’s a little something to help you kill some time if you’re bored at home. 
Top 10 Quirky Science Tricks For Christmas Parties.
The update went smoother than expected. Site is now back online! Welcome back! 
Working on updating the site. Connection might be spotty. Come back in a bit, yah?
Can somebody please tell me what this means?
Split feature has failed. The volume cannot be split for either of the following reasons:
- a hole in the reference part is not closed off by parting surface, or
- the gap between the reference part and the workpiece has not been closed off by a single parting surface quilt
The hole or gap is located somewhere along the highlighted curve with highlighted endpoints. The curve starts at one side of the parting surface, goes through the hole or gap, and ends at the other side of the parting surface.
Recommended actions:
Redefine parting surface and create geometry to either close the hole or bridge the gap. In cases where multiple parting surface quilts are used to bridge the gap, these parting surfaces must be merged into one quilt.
Ack! Been tearing my hair out. Ghaa!
PTC is now playing with SolidWorks, and with Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0, SolidWorks parts and assemblies can now be read into Pro/E. Though, it isn’t exactly a straightforward process to get it up and working. So, here’s what you need:
The license key will be provided to SolidWorks customers free of charge. Just send an e-mail to SolidWorks API support at apisupport@solidworks.com, asking for a license key for “swdocumentmgr.dll”.
Edit the Pro/E startup config.pro to include the following line:
swdocmgr_license_key <DLL license key strong>
Launch Pro/ENGINEER and you should be able to directly open SolidWorks files.
Mind you, all this I got from a technical mailer from PTC. I am unable to try this out as I do not possess an installation of SolidWorks. Why don’t one of you lucky fellows with access to Pro/E Wildfire 5.0 and SolidWorks give this a spin and share your experience in the comments below. I am interested in the “cleanliness” of the imported data as well as whether features are maintained and carried over into Pro/E.
PTC just released the M010 maintenance release of Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0. 2 things to note with this maintenance release. Firstly, it now comes with the Lite version of Expert Framework Extension (EFX) (more on this later) and secondly, Pro/ENGINEER is now officially supported on the Windows 7 platform! Officially supported are the 32 and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise! Can’t wait to take it for a spin in Windows 7. Oh wait, I have to have Windows 7 first. Dell, HP, Lenovo, any chance for a loaner?
Check out the platform support document here (opens in a new window).
Was just messing about with Wildfire 5.0 this sunny morning, trying to see what’s new in Tool Design Option (TDO) and I came across this interesting config.pro option that wasn’t available in releases of Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire prior to 5.0. I actually stumbled upon it. It’s shade_quality and you can set the value from the default 3 to the maximum of 10. Now all you lucky folks with kickass 1 GB FireGLs or Quadros can crank the graphics quality all the way up as a default, rather than changing it every time you launch Pro/ENGINEER.
While we are on the subject of new config.pro options in the Wildfire 5.0 release, check out the updated production Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 Configuration Options document available here (PTC.com account needed) or you can download it from Pro/ENGINEER Network here.
Have fun!
