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Archive for February 11th, 2009

Bruce Holway, Manager of Product Definition for DS SolidWorks showed up to let us know what the top ten enhancements for 2010 will be, as voted for by the community through Brainstorm. 

And these are the ten that made the list this year:

1. Increase program stability

2. Clear memory when a file is closed

3. SolidWorks backwards compatibility

4. Rename configurations that are in use.

5. Faster rebuild in complex models

6. On the fly equation editing

7. Dual Monitor Support

8. Add lock point for model rebuilds

9. Abort any running command by pressing ESC

10. Excel behavior in tables

These ten top enhancements weren’t really a mystery, though, since those users under subscription program were able to submit, vote and take a look at what people favored long in advance through Brainstorm.

Then, Richard Doyle announced the awards for SWUG and SWUG leader of the year, as well as the Lifetime Achievement award. 

The 2008 SWUG of the year award went to Tom Cote’s Central MA/ Northern CT Solidworks User Group. The award for User Group Leader of the Year went to Rob Jensen, leader of the Southern Minnesota SolidWorks User Group. And finally, the Lifetime Achievement award went to Gerald Davis, from the Colorado SolidWorks User Group, and to Dan Bertschi, from the Northeast Ohio SolidWorks User Group.

The winners of this year’s Model Mania contest were also announced by Mark Schneider, Product Manager for DS SolidWorks.

And if this wasn’t enough for one general session, Ian Hogg, Product Marketing Manager for DS SolidWorks showed up to give us a sneak peek of what’s new in SW2010.

For this purpose, he did something slightly different this year from what I understand was the done in previews years. This year he called a few customers up to the stage with him and showed to them how the new functionality in SW2010 will make their work easier.

These guys from Terrafugia are developing a foldable mini aircraft, called Transition, and using SolidWorks in very creative ways.

The vehicle is no bigger than a car in size and the wings fold, so it can be safely and legally driven around, like any other car.

For Terrafugia, the experts from SolidWorks recommended the new features View Mates and Mirror Components, which will be available in SW2010.

As well as the new functionality that will aid them in the optimization and simulation of their designs.

Multibodies in Sheet Metal design was also among the new functionality that will be available in SW2010. According to what I remember, it seems that each of the bodies in the sheet metal part will be able to flatten individually and a preview of the flat pattern will be available and visible while working on the part.

As an addition to all this, there will be new ways to create reference planes, like, for instance, selecting to circular faces, will create a plane tangent to both of them. Selecting two faces would create a new reference plane normal to  

Right after this, Jeremy Regnerus, and Neil Cook, Product Marketing Managers for DS SolidWorks, called Matthew Wilkins, from Maggen, to the stage.  

Maggen is working on an extremely innovative kind of wind turbines, and use SolidWorks in their process design, to go from the concept to simulation. SolidWorks also allows them to have a better communication between all the different members of their team.

To them, the folks from SolidWorks suggested the following functionality that will be available in SW2010: The Assembly Visibility tool, which will allow them to sort components in an assembly according to their properties and even output this information to Excel.

The property manager builder for configurations and a series of enhancements to annotations, tables, BOM and balloons that are likely to increase the productivity with drawings.

Direct editing tools were also announced among the new functionality. This is very smart direct editing, that can recognize features even in parts that have been imported and have no history available.

Project SAGE, in partnership with PE International is one more of the new things we’ll see in SW2010.This functionality will allow SolidWorks users to evaluate the environmental impact of manufacturing their design, and, hopefully, make changes to it to make it “greener”.

But we won’t have to wait until the release of SolidWorks 2010 or even the Beta, because SolidWorks Labs will be giving some previews of these new functionalities during the summer, so stay tuned.

Also during this last session Jeff Ray announced a plan for what Solid Works calls “Engineering Stimulus Package”, by providing a free seat of the software, plus training through a VAR and help to obtain CSWA certification (at least) to those engineers that have lost their job by no fault of their own, so they can get a better job and back on their feet.

 

The relevance of Solid Works in colleges around the world was emphasized during this session. Here in this picture you have the mini-Baja racer built by the students from the University of Florida.

Today was the final day of SolidWorks World 2009. I guess the fun can’t last forever! I had a wonderful time, met a lot of interesting people, saw amazing technologies that I hadn’t even dreamt of, and learned a lot. I know I will never forget it and I’m really grateful to all the wonderful friends from SolidWorks for allowing me to be here in the first place.

The day started early as usual, with the General Session.  Fielder Hiss, Director of Product Management for DS SolidWorks, greeted everyone and announced Don Richardson, Director of Global Innovation and PLM Industry Strategy for Microsoft. Microsoft is another one of the biggest platinum sponsors of this and other events, and a very important partner and supporter.

Right after this, Fielder Hiss introduced the next guest as one of SolidWorks clients from San Francisco, and imagine our surprise when we saw Mike North and Joe Grant, co-hosts of Prototype This!  One of them came pulling the other in one of their crazy contraptions. 

They talked to us a bit about what they do in the show and how they use SolidWorks in the design of their prototypes. They showed us a few examples of their favorite prototypes. This one here, I believe, is the first one they made for the show, but it never saw the light of day. It was supposed to be something like a robot that scans around for dog… errr… deposits, to pick them up. Like a pooper-scooper… Hey, I need one of those!  I think they called it the Scoop Bot.

Another one of their prototypes was this massive thing you see here. It was supposed to be a backyard waterslide simulator, that would provide with the experience of the water park, but without the size, but due to the size of the materials available to build it, the design grew bigger than expected, and they ended up having to build it inside a huge warehouse instead of a backyard and needed a whole team of extra welders to finish it.

This one is their six by six car.

Inspired on this little buglet thing that you see here.

This one in particular was a real challenge for them and it didn’t quite do what their producers were expecting it to do, so it was considered a failure by the producers. However, as Mike and Joe pointed out, it is all part of the design and engineering process. Prototypes aren’t supposed to be perfect and work the first time, all the time. This is also a learning experience.

By the way, have you noticed that one of them has a broken arm? Well, this is how he broke it.

But wait, there’s more! Keep reading and I’ll tell you all about it in the second part of this saga…