Cadalyst - August 2008 - (Page 12)

cadcentral Rugged Survivor Returns to Duty Have you ever wondered what would happen to a computer mounted on the dashboard of a car that’s involved in a crash? Officer Cari Lurdrosky from Cleveland Police Department’s Mobile Support Unit could tell you. Recently, one of her unit’s vehicles equipped with a rugged PC from Xplore Technologies (www.xploretech. Xplore Technologies’ iX104C3 is housed in a chassis com) was in a head-on engineered to meet military standards. collision. All the parties involved survived, but “the entire dashboard was actually ers. Its product lines — iX104CPLUS, ripped out of the car, and there was IX104C3, and IX104C2 — are literally no section of the car that was equipped with Intel Pentium M chips, undamaged,” according to Xplore. 512-MB DDR RAM, 40-GB hard disks, When Lurdrosky recovered the mobile and 10.4” XGA transmissive LCD data computer (with a piece of the screens. And they are RoHS compliant. dashboard still attached), she fired it Housed in magnesium chassis, interup. Surprisingly, it was still operating. nal frames, and a patented mechaShe pressed the machine back into nism, they’re designed to withstand service the next day. Cleveland PD ver- drops, shock, dust, rain, and extreme ifies that the same computer is still in temperatures typical in outdoor mobile operation today. environments. They’ve been tested to Xplore Technologies specializes meet U.S. military standards, accordin providing rugged mobile computing to the product brochure. Autodesk Student Community Grows In late 2006, Autodesk launched a global student community portal in India, Asia’s outsourcing Nirvana. Soon, more than 1,100 universities across 54 countries became part of the online community. This month, Autodesk notified the press that the portal has attracted 300,000 students and faculty members from around the world. At the same time, the number of copies of Autodesk design and engineering software downloaded from this portal reached 550,000. According to Autodesk’s statistics, “Autodesk Inventor software is the most frequently downloaded software program by students, followed closely by Autodesk Civil 3D and Revit Architecture.” Furthermore, the company revealed, “About 90% of the registrants are from the Americas, Europe, Middle East and India, and Africa. Less than 10% are from Asia Pacific (APAC), but with the launch of the Chinese student community, we expect the number of registrations in APAC to increase significantly over the next six months.” Paul Mailhot, Autodesk’s senior director of worldwide education programs, explained, “The products are offered as 13-month education licenses. When they expire, you need to revisit the community to get a new serial number.” He verified that the download section received the greatest number visits, followed by the job postings and internships and then the discussion forums. Kenneth Wong is Cadalyst’s executive editor. Robotics Enthusiasts Wanted In June, SolidWorks launched the SolidWorks Robotic University (SRU, www.solidworksroboticsuniversity.com), a free, online robotics academy for prospective, beginning, and experienced robotics enthusiasts. Middle school, high school, and college students who regularly participated in BattleBots, FIRST, RoboCup, and other robotic challenges flocked to the site. A peek inside the community reveals blog posts, forum discussions, photos of teams and robots from previous events, lists of upcoming events, and tutorial videos. Teams, such as the Mukwonago BEARS and Team 1717 of the Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy from previous FIRST competitions, already have staked out spaces for their home pages. Adam, a student from Northeastern University, posted the following discussion forum item: “I downloaded the Vex Advance Gear Pack files for SolidWorks from the Vex Web site. Unfortunately, the bevel gear has errors. . . . I fixed the part using the repair faces feature. I still would like to know what was wrong with the part.” Marie Planchard, SolidWorks’ director of worldwide education markets, came to the rescue. “Right-click Import Diagonistics on one of the features named Import 6 (this is the one with a warning flag) in the Feature Manager. In the Import Diagonistics box, scroll down and select the button Attempt to Heal All,” she wrote. She also attached a new file with healed geometry. Currently, SRU is home to 437 members from 11 countries. More News Find breaking and current news at www.cadalyst.com/news. 12 www.cadalyst.com cadalyst August 2008 http://www.xploretech.com http://www.xploretech.com http://www.solidworksroboticsuniversity.com http://www.cadalyst.com/news http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - August 2008

Cadalyst - August 2008 Contents Editor's Window CAD Central Tech Trends: Rotor Bug Strikes Again Cadalyst Labs Reviews: Digital Dreams — Visualization Software: Make Your Design Visions a Reality Maple 12 — Math Software AutoLINE 2009 — Linetype Management Add-On Deep Access — Digital-Media Asset Management Software View Point: Examining the Autodesk–Bentley Agreement CAD Manager: Managing Multioffice Mayhem MCAD Modeling: Do You Need Modeling Standards? AEC Insight: Modeling Technology for Building Engineers CAD Cartoon Issue Indexes Hot Tip Harry: Better Living with Objects and Smart Entities

Cadalyst - August 2008

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