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.