Marvelous Margaret: How I Became a Potato Head

It is never easy to leave when you've really built a family of close friends at your work. And when they decided to make you into a potato head it is even harder to say goodbye!

Marvelous Margaret Potato Head
She demolishes poor workflow!

Why a potato head? You may be wondering...

Well, it started out with this little toy collection I started on my desk...

Miss Marvelous joins the Super Hero/Star Wars/Marvel Pop Taters, PacMan, Back to the Future, and Ghostbusters

And my colleagues thought, the only appropriate send off would be to make a super hero potato head of yours truly. Complete with frequently seen accessories like my fingerless gloves and my purple hair streak.

They started with a concept sketch, and then the team set to work.

Vinny drew an illustrator version of Miss Marvelous. She's carrying the DS "Compass" as a shield. After all, she's a super hero, she needs some kind of weaponry. Ben 3D modeled the shield and had it 3D printed.

The team purchased some potato parts and combined parts of Mr. and Mrs. Potato Heads to get the right elements in place. Mrs. Potato Head had blond hair and eyelashes, so Vinny painted them black. Additionally he painted the purple streak in too.

Alex custom made the box, including the feet cutout so Miss Marvelous didn't rock around inside.

And of course, have to pitch the fact that it is extremely tasty with cheese (it is a potato after all) and of course it has to be in French as well (the parent company - DS - is French)

Chinloo created the fingerless gloves by creating a fingerless glove! She took a normal sized magic glove, cut off the finger tips which is about the size of Miss Marvelous's hand, and then cut the tip off and a small side hole to fit the potato hand. She then used sparkly glue to keep it from fraying at the edges.

But wait, there's more!

Miss Marvelous is carrying a Batdz Maru backpack, complete with purple backpack straps made from purple electrical tape!

So of course, the only reasonable thing for me to do is dress as my potato head the next day. Complete with the purple shoes and red hoodie.

Badtz Maru is not amused... but then, he never is. =D

And there you have it - how I became a potato head. :)

What's New in SolidWorks Enterprise PDM 2015 - Copy Tree

Yours truly revamped the UI for an existing feature of SolidWorks Enterprise PDM - Copy Tree. In SolidWorks ePDM 2015, the UI was revamped, cleaned up, and given a brand new filter capability that allows users to locate the file they want in the fastest time possible. 

A more in depth post will appear at some point, for now, a repost of the original blog on SolidWorks by Mike Fearon follows below. 

http://blogs.solidworks.com/solidworksblog/2014/09/solidworks-2015-manager-showcase-whats-new-in-epdm.html

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The SOLIDWORKS annual release starts with feedback provided by you, our community, and finds its way to the people responsible for including your request in our annual release. For SOLIDWORKS 2015, we wanted to introduce you to some of the people responsible for the new features and let them describe their favorite tools included in the 2015 release. Today’s SOLIDWORKS Expert is Kurt Lundstedt, Product Manager, EPDM

Kurt on what’s new: Copy Tree has been available in SOLIDWORKS Enterprise PDM (EPDM) for many years, but in 2015 the user interface has been completely redesigned making it much easier to create new product structures.  As we all know, many companies reuse existing designs to make new ones.  These new designs often share many of the same sub-assemblies and components with the prior version as well as incorporating new designs.  That’s where Copy Tree comes in handy and in 2015 there are many new features that make it much easier to find and select the files to be reused or copied.  Some of the new features include:

• Selection filters based on file type and/or any text string in the file name or file property can make a large product structure easy to work with.
• Thumbnail previews for SOLIDWORKS files give the user an instant visual clue of the file they are looking at.
• Excluded folders so users don’t mistakenly make copies of standard library components
• Easy folder and file editing dialogs including searching for destination folders

The driving force behind this feature was customers telling us, both via direct interviews and submitted enhancement requests, that the interface was cumbersome to work with when working with large assembly structures. Another thing we discovered is that it was difficult for users to know what file they were looking at because most companies name their part and assembly files with a part number. Adding thumbnail previews provides users with quick visual feedback so they can make more accurate decisions.