i once watched a demo of a software where they showed motion of piston and crank in 2d interface. it is, i am sure, a well known software. can anyone please help me with the solution? or any good software which gives you kinematics in 2d interface

Interestingly, PTC is now offering a free download of CoCreate personal version. As you recall, not long ago, PTC -- well known for inventing history-based modeling -- purchased CoCreate, an explicit or non-history-based modeler. PTC says the download provides the world's first free explicit 3D CAD software. Users work directly on geometry they ...

Attending the COFES 2008 (Congress on the Future of Engineering Software) conference has been a nice surprise. For one thing, the event is being held at the beautiful Scottsdale Plaza Resort near Phoenix, Arizona. Think bright blue skies, hot sunny days, and unusual fauna such as the bottle brush tree, which has what looks like thousand of red, ...

My company is looking moving into the world of model based machining (at least that's what we call it).  I've been charged with coming up with the process for generating the solid models we would send to our machine shops.  I'm struggling with how to determine what qualifies as a ''good'' model.  Any feedback would be ...

Day one brought announcements about new capabilities in Autodesk's 2009 releases. But all that later. CEO Carl Bass spoke on trends on CAD. An interesting example, he says, is the bar for engineering and design has been raised by the gorgeous graphics of entertainment industries. Another trend has an increasingly global ...

A few other things gleaned from SolidWorks 2008: -- One conference theme was that of teaching kids engineering through robotics. Robotic contests mentioned included ROBOCON, FIRST, and ROBO Cup. Kids can use 3D ContentCentral, a free service on the SolidWorks Web site for locating, configuring, downloading, and requesting 3D parts and assemblies, ...

Day Four, Live from SolidWorks World 2008Don Norman spoke today on how to tie engineering and emotional design. He showed us an images of salt and pepper shakers as an example of bad design. They were burnished stainless steel. One shaker had a hole in the top, and the other shaker had five holes in the top. Norman asked the audience, ''Which ...

Day Three, live from SolidWorks World 2008:Announced today at the opening session of the SolidWorks 2008 show was a new program called 3Dvia Composer -- formerly Seemage -- that Dassault recently purchased. It is a Web-based product that works with SolidWorks to deliver 3D content for non-engineering personnel such as marketing and sales.A few ...

Day Two: Jeff Ray, CEO of SolidWorks, says the show has so far drawn 4,400 attendees. In the future, he wants to see more sharing between DS technologies and SolidWorks. He says software developers cannot afford to ''fall in love with their own technologies.'' Companies should never think that they own customers. Nobody does. Customers can pick ...

Day 1: Saturday Jan 19 This year's event is being held in San Diego, Calif., a city I have not visited before. I've heard many stories about its beauty, especially the colored neon lights lining the top edges of highrise buildings. An 11 pm taxi ride from the airport to the hotel showed off the cityscape at night, and the view is ...