June 2006

Latest Engineering Developments

XMLPropWorks

While sitting at work twiddling my thumbs, I decided to write a broad based data management tool for SolidWorks. It's patterned after an application called swCP3 written by Vinodh Kumar M and I've named it XMLPropWorks. I investigated swCP3 extensively, but it really didn't suit my needs. So with permission from Vinodh, I plagiarized his idea and wrote my own XML based data management tool for SolidWorks. It's implemented as an add-in DLL for SolidWorks and uses an XML data file to completely customize the data handling per the users requirements. It's a modal dialog system with unique interfaces for each of the three SolidWorks files types, and can read from XML or Access files for pull-down selection, and also allows the user to write summary data to an Access database for file management.

This is a typical interface:

The application is still in beta testing, but if you would like to try it, send me an email.

SolidWorks Material Parsing

One of the things that XMLPropWorks does is make usage of the standard SolidWorks material database. I had found an extensive list of materials on the web here . Problem was getting this into the XMLish format of the SolidWorks material files would have been, um, tedious. So I got creative and whipped up a parsing routine in LabVIEW. It reads the standard sldmat files and can edit them, as well as read comma delimited files and convert to the appropriate sldmat format. I tried to use some of the standard XML tools for parsing the file, but the sldmat files are rather poorly formed and it wound up being easier just search on the appropriate tokens in the file.

The interface looks like

It works fairly well. If you want a copy send me an email and I'll compile it and forward it to you. Be forewarned that LabVIEW executables require the LabVIEW runtime files (which I will include). It's a non-standard executable format which is basically a tokenized file which calls the appropriate LabVIEW routines. It's works, but it isn't the smoothest thing in town.

Back in the house!

The house renovation is nearing the end and we moved back in on May 27th after much angst and misery with the lovely contractor. At present, we need about a day of trim carpenter work to finish, but the main issue is the cultured marble tub surround and vanities for the bathrooms. We were told by our contractor on March 10th that delivery would be in 6 weeks. About a month ago we discovered that the vendor has our contractor on credit hold with the top supplier because of some long outstanding invoices, so no work was in progress. Consequently, we put a deposit down and got in line. We have been told for several weeks that we are scheduled for that week, but nothing has appeared as of yet. Currently, we are brushing our teeth in the kitchen sink. Not exactly convenient, but workable.

I spent the first two weeks of June getting all the stuff on our end taken care of in the house. When the walls were open, I had wired the house with CAT5, CAT3 and RG-6 for all the communication services. Each room has at least 1 (most have more) wall jack with all three services. All this was hooked up to a distribution system in the office closet. It all worked out pretty well except for the CAT5 run to the dining room. It must have gotten severed when the workers installed the sheetrock. Oh well, 1 out of 13 isn't bad! After that, I replaced all the switches and outlets in the house as the sheetrock finishers had textured over all of them. The contractor provided the supplies at least. We have a significant number of receptacles where the sheetrock edges are visible around the plates. This is something we will have to resolve with the contractor. We replaced the heat-light-vent (HLV) in the kids bathroom as the bezel had died many moons ago. Of course the new one was different size than the old one. It took some doing to get that done. One of the issues is when we had the new AC installed the installer put the condenser directly on top of the old HLV. So, I had to get out the reciprocating saw and hack out a part of the spacer he used. Made quite a mess while doing so!

Once all the inside stuff was done, we focused on the stuff in the garage. A POD was delivered last week, and we sorted through all the boxes on the shelves and suitably stored them in the pod or threw the contents away. Last week, I got all the furniture out of the garage and thoroughly cleaned and disinfected what had survived the flood. Most of the stuff I had built over the years did fine, as well as the really old stuff we had acquired. The furniture which really was hammered was the "modern" stuff. Most of it dissolved in the water, or swelled up like a balloon. Nothing like a good coat of polyurethane to protect your wood. The sprayed on finishes done by most modern furniture manufacturers just offers no protection whatsoever. I don't even think it looks good and it's certainly less straightforward to repair the inevitable bumps and scratches that furniture gets. After getting the furniture back in the house, I moved the old kitchen cabinets off the back porch and got them cleaned up and installed in the garage (they were custom made and survived pretty well). I threw some multi-ply plywood on for the tops and man, it's nice to have storage in the garage! At that point my "vacation" time was exhausted so I returned to work on Monday. I could use a couple of days more to get wrapped up, but it's close.

I want to publicly thank the Clay's of Mandeville for graciously allowing us to share their home for something on the order of 9 months while the house was being re-habilitated. Thank y'all from the bottom of our hearts. It would have been much more stressful without Nita's room to stay in.

Work is pretty much as before. I'm seriously underutilized and bored stiff. Anyone got anything interesting they need developed?

Meghan is currently in Italy on a European vacation (she has a knack for being out of town when we are in transition). She started out in Rome, took a cruise around the Mediterranean and is eventually headed to Barcelonnette, France for a couple of weeks in the French Alps. Lucky girl.

I had promised Meghan I would provide her with a digital SLR camera for her to take with her to Europe. My intentions were to buy her a Nikon D-50 which I was going to outfit with the 18-70 zoom which was on my D-70. So, I called Bennett's camera here in Metairie and got on the waiting list for the vaulted 18-200 VR zoom which Nikon had recently introduced. A couple of weeks later it was there so I went pick it up. I asked the salesman if he had any D-50 bodies and the response was there aren't any as Nikon has stopped distributing them. Oops. H'mm, well do you have any D-200 bodies I ask? We have 1 was the reply. Sooooo, Meghan got the D-70 with the 18-70 and I got a brand new D-200 with a 18-200 zoom. Cool. It's quite a camera and to be honest I haven't quite managed to conquer it yet. The D-70 was easier to take "casual" shots than the D-200. I need to do a major revamp of the photos section to include shots from the house pre and post Katrina and add some shots from the new cameras. Hopefully I'll include some shots from Meghan's European vacation!

The woodworking section needs to be virtually eliminated because all the projects that are discussed there no longer exist thanks to 15 inches of flood water in the garage. MDF does amazing things when immersed, even when painted. H'mmm. Now that Home Depot sells multi-ply birch plywood my days of using MDF for tools fixtures and such is just about gone.

Thats all for now.

Y'all take care!

Post Katrina rebuild

Well, most of previous posts are now obsolete thanks to Hurricane Katrina. The stand I built for the table saw and the ultimate tool bench all swelled up worse than a boxer's eye in the face of 15+ inches of flood water. I have started the layout of a new simple stand made out of dimensional lumber for the saw in SolidWorks. The key in designing it was to only use tools which are "functional", which means no ripping. So with the chopsaw, a router and a band saw I can build this pretty easily.

It looks like this at present:

It's a great deal lower than my saw was before. For some reason I had built the bench along the back wall of the garage 42" high (I don't remember why it's been 10 years) so I had built all the tools to be near that height, but it was just to high. Everything now is aimed at being 36" high (which is the height of most of the cabinets I just put in the grarage). It seems much more user friendly than before.