Today’s general session was even better than yesterday’s.  It started with Fielder Hiss, Director of Product Management for DS SolidWorks, who introduced Tom Salomone, Worldwide Segment Manager of Mechanical Design Automation for Hewlett Packard, and expressed their gratitude to HP for being one their biggest platinum sponsors for this event.

Right after that, Jeremy Luchini, Certification Program Manager for DS SolidWorks, stepped up to the plate to talk about the importance of getting certified as a SolidWorks Professional.  He then invited Yanick  Tremblay, Design Manager for MEGA Brands to come up and talk a bit about what they do with SolidWorks and how is the certification program working for them. 

Yanick explained that they have a team of twelve designers working full time on the same project, so PDM has been a key tool for them in order to accomplish this feat without losing their sanity in the process.  He also mentioned that they keep a strong relationship with their VAR for training and certification programs, that their goal is to get everyone certified, but that it’s not always easy to pull out a designer from the time for four whole hours in order to take a test, so the certification team from SolidWorks has come up with a solution that works for them and that may also be available to other companies, as well. It’s simple: they allow the designer to take the test one hour/section at a time, and they keep track of their progress too.

John Hirschtick, co-founder of SolidWorks and Group Executive, was speaking at this general session too. 

He came to share with us about the trends he’s observed and that, he believes, will pretty much shape the future of CAD in a few years, plus a couple of customers visits that he had made to New Balance and Sony Ericcson.

The first one of the trends observed by John Hirschtick, involved the touch and motion user interface technology that we are already seeing in mobile phones and video game systems like Wii. He mentioned the project that is currently being developed for SolidWorks with the help of Microsoft and Identity Mine. He’s talking about that table that I showed you in an earlier post, the one that allows the user to manipulate components by using gestures of your hands and fingers.

Online applications were also mentioned. Every day more and more people use the internet for things like shopping, online banking, Gmail, etc. So, why not online CAD?  There’s no need for licenses, installations, updates, backups, etc. Perhaps, someday this will be the future of CAD.

He’s also a great admirer of the technology available in video games. He mentioned that nowadays, video games have the best graphics, and that some of this technology has already been borrowed and included in SolidWorks, like in the case of ambient occlusion  and the PhysX by Ageia, which is currently used for animation.

The use of 3D printing and rapid prototyping technology is another trend that is changing the way we do design these days. 3D printing technology has improved dramatically during the last few years, to the point where now it’s possible to produce high quality 3D prints that are almost as good as the finished product.

This became even more evident with the examples of how design is made by New Balance and Sony Ericsson, because both companies use 3D printing to evaluate, and get a feel of how the product will work and look like, in the early stages of the design. Both companies begin with a concept from their industrial designers or creative team, which they then take into SolidWorks and model it, then they obtain a rapid prototype and it’s evaluated, corrected or modified again in SolidWorks, then rapid prototyped again, until the final design is achieved.  Both companies need to generate designs fast to keep up, and SolidWorks and rapid prototyping allows them to do just that.

Right after this there was a bit of comedy with Stephen Endersby, product manager for DS SolidWorks. The usefulness of SolidWorks Simulation to evaluate how sturdy and reliable are our designs was addressed in a hilarious way, when an enormous zumo fighter first rode on a tiny scooter and then slammed it on the floor, just to see if it would break.  So funny!