Alnis (and Onshape) vs The World

richard_doyle

Hi Everyone,
@alnis_smidchens will be participating in a "speed modeling" tournament Monday at 7:00pm EST.  He will go up against 7 others, and will be the only participant using Onshape.  I've seen his speed modeling demonstrations, and while the field is tough, I have confidence that he will be crowned champion.

Let's all give Alnis some encouragement!

More info here - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alnis-smidchens_trailer-for-winter-2020-3dcad-tourney-activity-6743082162041487360-YXdk

Richard

matthew_stacy

@alnis_smidchens give'em hell!

Prachi

Go get em Alnis

alnis

Thank you all so much for the encouragement! I can't wait for Monday!

bruce_williams

Here's your t-shirt; 
go get em Alnis!!

john_mcclary

I set a reminder to watch. I'll be rooting for ya

tony_459

No luck needed. You'll win.

But, if you don't, it's now cool to deny and contest until you do :-D

Have the lesser players sign amicus briefs on your behalf. These will lend credence to your charges. No one wants it made public they were the lesser players. They'll sign.

And BTW, SW is so last century. Only way they could win is if they steal this competition.

Make that your intro if you do intros. It helps to plant the seed and suggest wolf before you say wolf. The show was rigged from the start and you knew it with your lead-penetrating mind :-D

Did I miss any competition best practices? I'm learning as I go, please don't shoot

alnis

Thank you all so much for the support and confidence building! It means the world to me. Now I'm starting to get nervous, but I won't let it get to me. In any case, I know it will be close, and I know I'll give it my all, so it should be lots of fun! @tony_459 here's hoping there will be no need to contest or deny any results 

john_mcclary

Good job in the competition Alnis, You'll get 'em next time

alnis

Well, it was very close! I just know that I have my work cut out for me. Lots of practice ahead, and I could have approached things a lot more efficiently. Thanks for watching and for all of the encouragement!

It would be exciting to see more Onshape users in the Model Monday streams. I already have some Inventor users convinced!

john_mcclary

Do they just meet up on youtube or what

bryan_lagrange

I think you opened some eyes using Onshape tonight. 

tony_459

Not to worry.

Results aren't final until the judges ratify them.

But you'll have to create reasonable doubt about due process.

Were all the contestants given adequate instruction before the competition began?

Were there biases that could have swayed the competition in favor of SW users?

Were there judges behind the judges, secretly watching and picking favorites, then instructing the official judges who the winner ought to be?

Were there Onshape representatives present in the competition court, and were they within reasonable viewing distance to monitor the other contestants and later the judges as they cast their votes?

No, yes, yes, no, and no.

Therefore, not to worry. Voice your discontent, rally the crowd to chant with you, and soon everyone will see... that the win had been yours all along.

Yes? No? I'm shooting in the dark here

alnis

@john_mcclary Yup, they meet on Monday nights to do this sort of thing. The bracket is only once every multiple months, otherwise there is a leaderboard where the first to get a correct mass in gets a point. It's a lot of fun!

@bryan_lagrange If only I would have made it past the first round XD

@tony_459 I know what my mistakes were, and I'm going to practice hard to come back next time. The competition was very fair since all you need is a final mass which is either right or wrong. It was a lot of fun, and I think everything went very fairly, at least for me! On the other hand, the poor SolidWorks users in the finals both had computer crashes which kicked them out, so they had to re-join. Not only that but they both also accidentally modeled their parts in millimeters instead of inches. It was a very dramatic and engaging end to the tournament!

tony_459

Glad to hear! You're getting something out of it if you're learning from it. My posts are all satire, BTW, not to be mistaken for actual, thoughtful, reasonable opinions

john_mcclary

Do you have to start by cad.new ?

couldn't you just create a new part studio in the current document? you waste a lot of time waiting on creating a new document.

Or at least just delete your features in the current PS

steve_shubin

@alnis_smidchens

I just saw the video replay

First off I wanna say great job Alnis.

I got a little tense on that first model where it looked like a constraint hung up for a split second on the sketch for the pocket until you cleared it. I’m watching this on my iPhone so it’s a little hard to see but that’s what looked like what happened 

On that second model, Clark had his material already set up in a template before even starting on the model, and if that would’ve been your case, I believe you would’ve won that one also, and been the winner of the overall bout.

But we don’t have any way to set the material before even creating the part so we’re at a disadvantage in this sense

One of the announcers said that Clark already had his material set up which probably saved him a half a second.

On that last model, I’ll just say that was a toughy

But again, great job.

I’m kind of wondering the same thing that @john_mcclary said above - about starting with a blank document already open ?

alnis

@tony_459 ah, my sarcasm meter hasn't been doing so well lately! I should really sleep more (please ignore the time at which I'm posting this)

@john_mcclary it honestly would have been better to start by making a new part studio. I probably should have had some more efficient workflow in place, seeing as I was doing the Onshape equivalent of starting SolidWorks up each time! Live and learn I guess. I'll do that in the future.

@steve_shubin Thanks for the kind words! I flubbed quite a lot of stuff, I'm a bit disappointed in myself for not being on top of my game. That constraint really threw me for a loop! I accidentally snapped the rectangle and added a constraint when I thought I didn't. Unfortunately, my laptop was running quite slowly since a zoom screen share combined with dual monitors was already consuming 70%+ GPU power, so the framerate in Onshape was somewhat limited. This pushed me to try to get an old server with a GTX 690 up and running again for future competitions, and lo and behold, I got it working and I'm typing my response from it!

That second round was so close that it looked to me like I got my answer in first in my YouTube chat, but I think it just came down to ping times. I accidentally assigned the wrong material and it took me a hot second to figure out what I did wrong. Ah well, I'll be faster next time. I really just need more practice.

I'll definitely ask about starting with an existing document next time!

Thanks, everyone for all of your support and kind words! It was really an amazing experience. Here's hoping next time will go better with some more practice and work!

john_mcclary

Yea, you only lost to him by a fraction of a second...
I'm sure that's why you saw yourself ahead.

But it's hard in the hot seat. You did good