Repressed Grief, and Continuing

We who are left behind keep putting one foot in front of the other. This existence does continue, with or without us.

I received my book, the used SolidWorks book, in the mail awhile back. I hadn't had much heart for working on it these past days, but I found a couple days to do so anyway.

Also I had a distraction this weekend as my 82-year-old father was admitted into the hospital Friday afternoon for complications related to a mysterious swollen hand: after being treated with Bactrin shots in the wee hours Wednesday morning, the following days he had dangerously dropping blood pressure and weakness to the point of being incapable of standing or walking unassisted. So my sisters and I spent a great deal of time with Mom and Dad at the hospital till yesterday when he was finally released.

That definitely refocused me.

So today I made it almost all the way through the first section of the textbook. This book is divided into six sections. They appropriately call these divisions "projects" instead of chapters. Each project addresses one fundamental function, or set of functions, of SolidWorks.

Project 1 covers the basics of sketches and extrusions. While I have already learned a great deal of the functions utilized here, I have come across at least one new trick: Convert Entities. I had a chamfered end of a rod on which I needed to sketch while including both inner and outer circles of the chamfer in the front plane geometry. Convert Entities brought a ghost outline of the recessed edge forward, thereby including it in the sketch plane for reference.

This tool will solve a problem I was having with one of our in-house parts I was trying to sketch up (yay).

And then as if I was emanating a wavelength of drafting vibes, my VAR consultant dude dropped by the office. That turned out to be fortuitous as he answered my question about imported solids and trying to puzzle out the dimensions for a quote request we received.

So tomorrow I will be focusing on drawing up the dimensioned parts so we can actually come up with a price on these puppies.

Yes, life does go on, even if our hearts are heavy and our minds are full of questions, questions we repress with pained sadness, burdened with the reality that we will never receive an answer.