Engineering in Second Life
In my last blog, I gave an introduction to virtual worlds. If you are interested in Virtual Worlds for engineering, I thought I’d share some information on an upcoming event and some links to interesting places.
First of all, I will be doing a Second Life presentation Tuesday, July 22 at 9:30 SLT (12:30 EST). It will be an introduction to FEA but is also some continued experimentation with virtual worlds. I’ll make use of Femap Express toward the end. Even if you are not a Femap Express user, it is very similar to the Strengh Wizard in NX and Cosmos Express in SolidWorks so it should be useful to anyone wanting to know more about FEA.
Everyone is welcome to attend even if you just want to see what these virtual worlds and Second Life are like. We haven’t done a lot of advertising about this as it is a learning experience too. Of course, people reading my blog get special treatment with this notice 
If you haven’t used SL before, its a good to get a login, practice flying, teleporting and set up your speaker to hear what is being said. You can get the login here:
https://join.secondlife.com/
Once SL is installed, you can use SLURLS (Second Life URLs) to teleport to SL locations form web sites and blogs. I’ll add a few engineering related SLURLs at the end.
If you are interested in knowing what is happening with engineering in SL, one web site to visit is “Grid Works”. CivilE Writer (Pam Renoir in real life) is a professional engineer who runs this site and an online magazine. She has also set up an engineering group within Second Life.
As engineers, there are a number of interesting places to visit in Second Life. If you are just interested in CAD, you can visit our own island or those of a number of other CAD companies:
Siemens Innovation Connection http://slurl.com/secondlife/Siemens%20Innovation%20Connection/128/128/22
SolidWorks http://slurl.com/secondlife/SolidWorks/128/128/17
AutoDesk http://slurl.com/secondlife/Autodesk/118/119/24
(why am I linking to the competition? According to social media guru Jeremiah Owyang, “if I put your interests first, you will come back to me” ).
If you are interested in engineering technology, or how others are making use of Second Life, some good locations are:
NASA and the Space Flight Museum http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spaceport%20Alpha/116/144/23
Public works Island http://slurl.com/secondlife/Public%20Works/43/54/31
TED Conference http://slurl.com/secondlife/Allston/169/81/25
EOLUS One http://slurl.com/secondlife/EOLUS/56/140/30
There are others and the list is growing. If you know a good one, post a comment!
