Notes

Creating Parametric Wooden Frame in SolidEdge

I set out to build some raised garden beds today. Naturally, that meant a healthy detour into procrastination, yak-shaving, and just the right amount of over-engineering. Instead of grabbing a saw and some boards, I decided the first step was to create fully parametric CAD models in Solid Edge. Because why make it simple when you can make it fancy?

Step 1: Modeling the lumber

Before assembling anything, I needed to define the pieces of lumber. For this project, I’m using:

Force Display Captive Mac OS

Sometimes, after connecting to a WiFi network with a captive login Mac OS doesn’t show the login page. Depending on the captive configuration, it can be mitigated by opening a non-https page. The request will be captured and you will be redirected to the login page. However, it doesn’t always work. In this case you can force display the MacOS captive login screen with this command:

open /System/Library/CoreServices/Captive\ Network\ Assistant.app

Reusing an argument from the previous command

Quite often you need to call several commands with the same argument one after another. The most common example is creating a folder and then switching into it. This can be done with the help of !$ or $_.

The former is substituted with the last word of the previous command as recorded in history and the latter is a shell parameter that expands to the last argument of the previous command: