The Wednesday General Session is usually bittersweet for me, because while it is the day we get a sneak peek at the upcoming version of SolidWorks, it is also the last day of the conference.  This year is no different; things start winding down and we say goodbye to friends and colleagues, many of whom we won’t see until next World.
DUDE, WE’RE SPONSORED BY DELL!
Fielder Hiss opened the General Session and introduced Kirsten Billhardt from Dell.
MODEL MANIA
SolidWorks Product Marketing Specialist Mark Schneider took the stage to announce the winners of …

Tuesday’s General Session opened with Fielder Hiss, VP of Product Management taking the stage.  Hiss talked about how SolidWorks had been working with Intel on creating better experiences for users.  Frank Soqui, Workstation General Manager from Intel was then brought up on stage to give a short talk.
BETA AWARDS
Time to talk Beta – there were 4000 activations for the SolidWorks 2013 Beta program.  Hiss then announced the winners of the SolidWorks Beta 2013 Awards.
Reseller awards were announced first.  Here are the results:

Customer awards were announced next.  This year was a …

SolidWorks World 2013 kicked off today with CEO Bertrand Sicot taking the stage.  He seemed a little more comfortable this year than last.
Sicot announced that there were over 4500 attendees at the conference this year.  Four years ago, Jeff Ray announced that SolidWorks sold their 1 millionth license; Sicot said that they had hit the 2 million mark this past December.  Sicot also said that SolidWorks was in 25,000 schools worldwide, with 2.5 million students having access to the software.

NEW PORTAL
Sicot then talked about my.solidworks.com, a new portal into the …

Registration for SolidWorks World 2013 in Orlando, FL is now open!  I just received this in my inbox:

The Monday General Session of SolidWorks World 2012 opened with Bertrand Sicot, SolidWorks CEO, taking the stage.  He gave some numbers regarding attendees and SolidWorks users:
There were 4300 attendees in 2008. This year there are 5650 people attending from 33 countries. There are now 1.7 million users in the SolidWorks community. He said that if they were to create a city of all the SolidWorks users, it would be the fourth largest city in America.
Sicot then mentioned Daniel Hertzberg, who was the previous SolidWorks intern and is now an …

Wednesday is the last day of SolidWorks World, and they do save the best for last…Wednesday is the day they preview the next version of SolidWorks!
Fielder Hiss, Vice President of Product Management at DS SolidWorks Corp, took the stage once again.  He mentioned that Center Rock, Inc. (CRI) was mentioned Tuesday night in President Obama’s State of the Union address, in talking of people coming together to aid in the Chilean miner rescue.
Fielder then recognized Dell for their platinum sponsorship.  Patrick Hannan, Senior Manager of Strategic Market Development at Dell, …

There are several new enhancements coming in SolidWorks 2012.  Below is a quick run-down of the highlights they showed.  Unfortunately, they ran through it so fast, that I was not able to capture all the details.  I will add more to this list when I make my post on the General Session.

You are now able to pin documents to the recently used document fly out.
You can now switch document units on the fly with the unit switcher located in the bottom right corner of the status bar.
You can now …

Today’s General Session started off with Fielder Hiss, Vice President of Product Management at DS SolidWorks Corporation, taking the stage.  He recapped yesterday’s session with Gene Kranz and Captain Jim Lovell.
Fielder then recognized HP, one of the conference’s Platinum sponsors.  Tom Salomone, HP’s Worldwide Marketing Manager for MCAD, took the stage for a few words.
SWGUN AWARDS
First up was Richard Doyle, User Community Manager for DS SolidWorks Corp.  Richard talked about the SolidWorks User Group Network (SWUGN), which is the global community of SolidWorks users.  There are currently 195 …

SolidWorks World 2011 kicked off this year in San Antonio, TX, with Jeff Ray, the former CEO of Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corporation and the new Executive Vice President, Geographic Operations, Dassault Systèmes, taking the stage.
Year In Review
Jeff started off talking about the trapped Chilean miners, and how people from around the world rushed to offer help.  He mentioned Schramm, who drilled the first tunnel that found the miners, and they also drilled the “Plan B” tunnel.
He also mentioned Center Rock, Inc. (CRI), who manufactured the drill bit used.  …

In addition to the stability, performance, and memory management improvements in SolidWorks 2011, there have also been several improvements in the installation process.  A number of enhancements will allow for faster downloading of service packs and ease of use of the SolidNetWork License (SNL) Manager.
 First, in the base SolidWorks product, language localizations are able to be removed, thereby reducing the download size by over 1 GB.  I know that this will be met by much rejoicing! 
Next, the SNL Manager can finally be upgraded, instead of having to perform an …

I got a notification this morning from the SolidWorks Background Downloader…SolidWorks 2011 SP0.0 is now live!

We’re preparing to upgrade as I type.  How about you?  Will you roll now, or wait for a service pack or two?

One new SolidWorks tool that I am really excited about is the new Defeature tool.  Previewed at SolidWorks World 2010, this new tool helps you simplify an assembly by removing details that you wish to keep to yourself when sending files out to customers and replacing the details with dumb solids with no feature history.  It essentially creates an envelope assembly consisting of virtual parts that others can use in their designs.  Using virtual parts allows you to just have one file to deal with and lessens file management hassles.
But …