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, accepted the honor and said a few words.

SOLIDWORKS CERTIFICATION PROGRAM

Next up was Mike Puckett, Certification Specialist, and Avelino Rochino, Certification Program Specialist, to talk about the SolidWorks Certification program.  They showed a video focusing on several different Certified SolidWorks Professionals and the products they have designed.  There were also quotes from the CSWP’s about what certification means to them and how it has helped their business.

They brought up a CSWP, Matt Perez, Mechanical Operations Technician at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute.  Matt has created a site, SolidWorks Lessons, to help others increase their knowledge of the software.

Jeremy Luchini, host of Let’s Go Design and head of Certification, joined Mike and Avelino onstage, and presented Matt with a paintball gun and one of the SC-10 radio-controlled trucks from last year’s CSWP event.

SPECIAL GUEST

Then Jeremy said that corporate wanted him to inject a little game into the session, so he started out trying to play Six Degrees to tie everything together.  He got a few words out when someone says, “Wait, Jeremy! That’s not how you play it!”

The crowd started cheering as Kevin Bacon joined Jeremy on stage and talked some about what it was like preparing for his role in Apollo 13.  He also mentioned his charitable organization, SixDegrees.org.  It turns out Bacon’s band, The Bacon Brothers, were scheduled to play at the VAR event Wednesday night.

I was hoping that I would get a chance to meet him at the press conference, but he did not attend.  There went my chance at being able to say that I’m only one degree from Kevin Bacon; I guess I will just have to settle for two degrees of separation…

This isn’t the first time that they’ve had a special guest on Wednesday, and it’s always a nice, unexpected surprise.

MODEL MANIA 2011

Mark Schneider, Field Marketing Manager for DS SolidWorks Corp, took the stage the show everyone how to build the this year’s Model Mania model and to announce the winners.

In the Customer Division, the results were:

1. Bengt Dahlborg, Edaco AB, Sweden (11:21)
2. Satakal Khalsa, TriAxial Design and Analysis
3. Brian Lindahl, CAD_Speed-Up

In the Reseller Division, the results were:

1. Josh Altergott, Computer Aided Technology (10:52)
2. Uwe Thieme, daveg gmbh
3. Michael Burks, MLC CAD Systems

Prizes for this year’s Model Mania Challenge were NVIDIA Quadro 6000, 5000, and 4000 graphics boards, respectively.

THE BUILDINGS ARE ALIVE!

Fielder Hiss once again took the stage and started talking about how some SolidWorks customers are using the software to design buildings.  I personally have used it myself to do some building layouts a few times, and I know of others who have also.  There has been some talk in the last couple of years about SolidWorks getting into the AEC industry, and Fielder took this time to announce a new offering geared towards builders and planners in the construction industry: SolidWorks Live Buildings.

SolidWorks Live Buildings is a new app built for online.  It allows overlay of 2D data into the 3D model (they had a 2D layout from DraftSight inserted) and features smart components (such as doors, windows, and stairways) that can be placed with simple drag and drop.  There is also a tool, Solar Study, that will allow designers to simulate and test environmental studies.  Global positioning and time of year can be accounted for.

DATA SHARING

They then showed n!Fuze, the new product data sharing (PDS) tool that Jeff Ray mentioned at last year’s SolidWorks World.  n!Fuze is a CAD-aware online collaboration tool that allows designers to share their designs with other designers, reviewers, vendors, etc.  Users have full control over what others have access to.

It was announced that there will be an iPad app available, and there will be a Beta program for n!Fuze later this quarter.

It was also announced that DraftSight mobile will be available later this year.

WHAT’S NEW IN SOLIDWORKS 2012

Next up was what we were waiting for, a sneak peek at the next release, SolidWorks 2010!  The skit this year was a parody of the show, COPS, called CAD COPS.

I have already mentioned most of the announcements in my earlier post, and Ricky Jordan also had coverage, so I won’t belabor the subject here.

NEW ENHANCEMENTS IN 2012

Bruce Holway, Director of Product Definition, took the stage to talk about some of the new enhancements in SolidWorks 2012.  First up was “Feature Freeze”, one of the most-cheered features that they showed at last year’s SolidWorks World 2010.  Unfortunately, the feature didn’t make the cut into the released version of SolidWorks 2011.  I heard that there were some issues with the way it worked, so they held it back.

Next mentioned was “Complete Uninstall”, the ability to perform a total, or “clean”, uninstall of the SolidWorks software, including the registry settings.  I for one welcome this, as I always perform a manual “clean” uninstall prior to moving to a new version.

“Clear Memory When a File Is Closed” was next.  The way it should be, no memory leaks!

And lastly was “Dual Monitor Support (Span Two Displays).  It looked to stretch the main SolidWorks window across two displays, but can display individual document windows maximized to one display.  The images here will make more sense (click to embiggen):

TOP TEN ENHANCEMENT IDEAS

Next, Bruce announced the top ten wish list, as voted on by conference attendees:

1. Pressing Escape key should immediately return control of the interface
2. File compatibility between versions
3. Make the “Ideas” section (in the forum) available all the time, not just for SWW
4. Convert a Solid body into a Surface body without having to delete, offset, or knit faces
5. Enhanced Equations Input and Editing and Linking
6. Freeze Features
7. SolidWorks should cleanly uninstall itself
8. Option to dangle children instead of deleting
9. Better utilize processor cores
10. Angle mates that don’t flip at random

SOLIDWORKS IN EDUCATION

Bertrand Sicot, CEO of DS SolidWorks Corp, took the stage to talk about SolidWorks’ education initiatives.  He said that the 1 Millionth EDU license was shipped on Thanksgiving of last year.

Bertrand then brought Jeff Ray, Executive Vice President, Geographic Operations, Dassault Systèmes, out to talk about an AMAZING 13-year-old student, Riley Lewis.  Among other things, he is an expert lock-picker, and he has already used SolidWorks to design a new “unpickable” lock.  You can read more about this child prodigy in Deelip Menezes’ interview.

Bertrand talked about a student-designed plane from Brazil that has broken several records.  Bertrand then tried the DTV Shredder from BPG Werks.  The DTV stands for “dual tracked vehicle” – the Shredder is basically a skateboard on tracks.

SOLIDWORKS WORLD 2012

For SolidWorks World 2012, they will be returning to the San Diego Convention Center on February 12-15, 2012.

SUMMARY

This was a great conference and it was an awesome venue.  I’m excited about some of the features that they showed for SolidWorks 2012.  And it will be interesting to see what happens with their foray into the BIM market.

And, I made the highlight reel!

The Bacon Brothers band image courtesy of ModernTech Mechanical.

The DTV Shredder image courtesy of BPG Werks.

DISCLOSURE: DS SolidWorks Corp paid for my conference fee, lodging, and some meals.

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 choose faces to ignore in sheet metal flat patterns.
• Swept flanges can now be created in sheet metal and flattened.
• You can now start typing a command in the search palette, and it will start narrowing down the possibilities (ala the Windows 7 Start button).
• New equation dialogue; you can change solve order and categorize (and sort) equations
• Exploded views are now shown on the drawing palette, and there is now a right-click option to explode an existing view.
• BOM’s can now be created without preselecting a view.
• Balloons can now be ordered numerically around a view.
• Magnet lines are now available to snap balloons too, like in 3DVIA Composer!
• Unused view labels (such as those from deleted views) are now automatically reused.
• Rendering
• Custom Compass
• BOM Hotspot
• Taking a cue from 3DVIA, selecting a component and hitting Tab will hide the component.
• Manufactured part costing will allow users to account for part costs based on material, machining, and set up.
• Motion Optimization
• Large Design Review – enables users to work with massively large assemblies.

DISCLOSURE: DS SolidWorks Corp paid for my conference fee, lodging, and some meals.

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 user group chapters in 27 countries!  If you aren’t already a member of a local SolidWorks user group, you are missing out!  If there is not one near you, why not get one started?  A user group is one of the best sources of support for SolidWorks users.

Next, Richard presented the SWUGN Awards.  The award for User Group of the Year was presented to the Chicago SolidWorks User Group, Denny Bahl, Group Leader.

The award for User Group Leader of the Year was presented to Ed Gebo from the Connecticut SolidWorks User Group.

SWUGN TRIBUTE

Phil Sluder, owner of Triaxial Design and Analysis, then took the stage to say a few words about Michelle Pillars.  Michelle was one of the founding members of SWUGN (originally called SNUG) and was taken from this life too soon by cancer.

Phil talked of his relationship with Michelle, and how much she did for the SolidWorks User Community.   I never personally met her, but she seemed like a great mentor, and an awesome person to have known.

A new yearly award was announced, the Michelle Pillars SWUGN Community Award.  Wayne Tiffany received the award this year.

CUSTOMER FOCUS

Then Jon Hirschtick, Founder & Group Executive of DS SolidWorks Corp, took the stage.  He brought up three different companies up on stage to talk about their companies, their products, and why they do what they do.

Barrett Technology, Inc.

First up was Bill Townsend, Founder, President & CEO of Barrett Technology, Inc.  Barrett Technology designs and builds robotics for the research, medical, and manufacturing industries.   Mr. Townsend also bought the very first seat of SolidWorks!

Robots had been around for years, but they were dangerous, and Mr. Townsend wanted to build robots that could work around people and complement what they do.

The have created several new technologies for robotics, including gearless drives (they use aircraft cables to ensure smooth operation), and they have recently been awarded a patent for the Puck Motor-Drive-Electronics Module, which reduced a small refrigerator-sized electronics box to a device about the diameter of a coin.

The Puck contains all the electronics and reduced the electronics count from 100 wires and 7 motors down to four wires.  They can now run their WAM Arm on five 9V batteries for 20 minutes!

MAKO Surgical Corp.

The second company profiled on stage was MAKO Surgical Corp.  Rony Abovitz, Founder and Chief Visionary Officer, said that their focus is on using robotics to assist surgeons with knee and hip replacement and to help people get back up after surgery.  Mr. Abovitz talked of how he worked with a company building parts for knee and hip replacements, and one of his first duties was to attend a surgery.

The doctor made the incision, and then asked Abovitz what to do next.  After determining that the doctor was not joking, he ran down to his car and retrieved the manual from his car (unfortunately, it was in French) and one of his college textbooks.

As the doctor was cutting the femural head off to perform the hip replacement, it flew off and hit Abovitz in the head!  The operation was a success, but he knew that there had to be a better way.

Abovitz said that there have been almost 6000 procedures performed using his robots.

They then brought a patient up , Samuel Brooks, who had had a MAKOplasty knee surgery, and you could not tell from him walking which knee it was.  He had bone-on-bone arthritis, and was very sedentary.  He said that two hours after the surgery, he was up moving around the room, and three days after, he was playing golf!

Talk about an emotional paycheck!

Local Motors

The final company profiled was Local Motors, a site where open-source design is used to design new cars that can then be ordered and built.  Mike Pisani, Senior Vehicle Engineer & Head Builder Trainer, took the stage to talk about their concept and processes.

Basically, they will set up a micro-factory, and you can order and build your own car over three 2-day weekends!  The video shown onstage was very interesting, and I highly recommend checking the site out!

BIONIC BUILDERS

Darren Henry, Director of Marketing for DS SolidWorks Corp, took the stage next to introduce the special guests for today, Casey Pieretti and Bill Spracher, hosts of the new Discovery Channel series, Bionic Builders.  The show is focused on building prosthetics for handicapped people that will enable them to live a normal full life.

Casey works as a stuntman, and Bill is an engineer.  They come with new prosthetics for Casey and others to enable them to do the activities that they wish to do, such as diving and rock climbing.

Fittingly, their motto is, “Who Do You Want To Be Today?”

DISCLOSURE:  DS SolidWorks Corp paid for my conference fee, lodging, and some meals.

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.  When the bit broke down due to the hardness of the rock, CRI designed a new bit onsite in SolidWorks.  The design was sent back to their facility in Pennsylvania and turned around in a few days (a process that normally takes around 4 weeks).

People Helping People

He also mentioned Design That Matters (DtM), a group showcased two years ago at SolidWorks World 2009.  Their NeoNuture incubator was shown then, and it was listed as one of the top 50 inventions of 2010 by Time Magazine.  This year, they had their Project Firefly onstage, a device to help combat infant jaundice.

Jeff then acknowledged several different groups of people, including the 100 folks who passed the CSWP exam yesterday.

The Drive To Design

He then showed the moving video, Drive To Design. This short work chronicles the life of a fictional engineer, from childhood to adulthood, and shows some of the steps that lead him to his vocation.  It shows the impact that you as an engineer or designer can have on others, oftentimes unbeknownst to you.

A New Sheriff In Town…

Jeff then handed the reins over to DS SolidWorks Corp’s new CEO, Bertrand Sicot.  Bertrand said that when SolidWorks 2011 was released, they thought that the most favorite feature would be the new memory management, but that customers had told them that their favorite feature was Defeature.

DraftSight was mentioned and some numbers were given:  300,000 downloads and over 60,000 activations.

Clarifying “The Cloud” (or, Setting The Record Straight)

He then spoke of last year’s “cloud” announcement, and reiterated that they would support desktop, online, and mobile platforms.  In order to dispel some of the rumors that have been circulating online over the past year, he said, “We will always have locally-installed desktop CAD.”

He then talked about the new n!Fuze tool they announced last week.  n!Fuze is a new data management tool geared towards small companies and independent users.

Second Life for CAD?

Bernard Charlès, President and CEO of Dassault Systèmes, then took the stage, along with Jeremy Luchini, host of Let’s Go Design. They showed another new tool, Post3D.   Post3D is kind of like Second Life for CAD; you are able to upload your design and then do a contextual design review by performing a walk-through online, operating the system as you would in real life.  This is great for design reviews, or marketing your product online to potential customers!

Here is a video of Post3D in action:

“Houston, We Have A Problem…”

Then the guest speakers took the stage.  First up was Gene Kranz, Mission Control Director at NASA during the Apollo 13 mission.  He talked of how NASA rose to the challenge put forth by John F. Kennedy to put a man on the moon.  He talked of the early days, and went through the Mercury and Gemini projects, and into the Apollo era.  He said, “Chemistry is a force amplifier,” speaking of how critical it is to get to know and trust the other members of your team.

He went through the Apollo 13 mission until he got to the famous transmission uttered by Apollo 13 Captain Jim Lovell: “Houston, we have a problem…”  Then Captain Lovell joined Kranz onstage and continued the story from his point of view.  He made reference to Gene Kranz’s motto, “Failure is not an option,” and said that in their mind, “Success was the only option!”

Captain Lovell wrapped up by stating that there are three types of people:

1. Those who make things happen,
2. Those who watch things happen, and
3. Those who wonder what happened.

It was amazing to hear these two speak of their experiences!

SolidWorks’ Keynote Video

Here is a video of the General Session SolidWorks’ keynote:

DISCLOSURE: DS SolidWorks Corp paid for my conference fee, lodging, and some meals.

Image courtesy of Design That Matters (DtM).

Wednesday’s General Session opened with Fielder Hiss, VP of Product Management, taking the stage once again.  Fielder announced the launch of an online SolidWorks store, where one can purchase swag, such as shirts and caps, along with a few books.  The pickings are a little sparse right now, but hopefully more resources will be added soon.

TOP TEN ENHANCEMENT IDEAS

Bruce Holway, Director of Product Definition, was up next to announce this year’s top ten enhancement ideas.  Some recent examples of enhancement ideas that have been added recently are:

• Recreate all mates when mirroring components
• Ability to rename configurations while referenced
• Provide more options to create reference planes
• Faster rebuilds on complex models
• Excel behavior in tables
• Reference zero in parent view (when baseline dimensioning a detail view, for instance)

Ten members of the product definition team were brought up onto stage to name the enhancements.  The top ten enhancements are as follows:

10. Simplify Video Card Requirements
9. Exploded Views For Weldments
8. Option To Dangle Children Instead Of Deleting
7. Graphical Map Of References
6. Allow More Types Of Assembly Features
5. Better Utilize All Processor Cores
4. On The Fly Equations In Dialogue Boxes
3. File Compatibility Between Versions
2. Increase Stability

And the number one enhancement idea is:

1. SolidWorks Should Cleanly Uninstall Itself

MODEL MANIA 2010

Next up was Mark Schneider, Product Manager, to talk about the Model Mania 2010 contest.  Mark showed the drawings from the contest (sheet 1, sheet 2) and then a high-speed video showing the building of the model.  Mark mentioned several times about using Contour Selection to Boss/Cut Extrude.  This is something that I don’t do much of, but it really made a difference in the ease and speed with which the model was constructed.

He then announced the winners of the Model Mania 2010 contest.  The prizes were PNY NVIDIA Quadro FX graphics boards (a 4800 for 1st, a 3800 for 2nd, and an 1800 for 3rd)

On the customer side, the winners were:

1. Nick Vande Waerdt – Kooima Company (18:29)
2. Todd Newhouse – Cyan Optics
3. Michael Hess – mhda

On the reseller side, the winners were:

1. Jeremiah Davis – ModernTech Mechanical (18:03)
2. Jason Pancoast – CAPINC
3. Neil Custard – GoEngineer

SWUGN AWARDS

Richard Doyle took the stage next to talk user groups and to announce the SolidWorks User Group Network (SWUGN) Awards.  There are now 175 local SolidWorks User Group chapters in 23 countries.  More than 10,000 people attend SolidWorks user groups annually.  Richard announced that this year was the 10th anniversary of the SWUGN Committee, and then introduced the 2010/2011 SWUGN Committee.

Then Mark Peters, VP of Business Development at IMPACT Engineering Solutions (and one of the four original members of the first SWUGN Committee), joined Richard on stage to present the SWUGN awards:

• 2009 User Group of the Year – Cindy Berend of the New Hampshire SolidWorks User Group
• 2009 User Group Leader of the Year – Anne Yust of the Twin Cities Simulation User Group

The SWUGN Lifetime Achievement Award was awarded to Rodney Hall of the Catawba Valley SolidWorks User Group (right).

WHAT’S NEW IN 2011

Now we come to everyone’s favorite part, the sneak preview of the upcoming SolidWorks release!  This year, SolidWorks returned to their funny skits to show off some of the new features coming in SolidWorks 2011.  This year’s theme was “SUPER CAD SMACK DOWN”, a contest in which two opponents vied to be the best and fastest CAD jock.

Jeremy “Big Rig” Regenerus and Ian “The Sledge Hammer” Hogg faced off with Darren Henry and Neil Cooke calling the plays and Mark Schneider refereeing:

They said that the performance of SolidWorks has been improved, resulting in increased reliability and lower memory usage.  They showed an image of a machine with a 460MB savings in memory utilization in SolidWorks 2011 versus 2010.

The new features of SolidWorks 2011 that they highlighted were:

• Revolve Up To Surface – Allows selection of a surface to terminate a revolve feature.
• Defeature – Allows conversion of an assembly to a dumb (i.e., featureless) part file consisting of only the outside surfaces.  This will be very useful when sending files outside your company or sharing online.  It is a feature in the tree, which means that it is an editable item.  Also shown was an option to upload the resulting model to 3D ContentCentral.
• Custom RealView – More appearance options and settings are available, similar to what is currently offered in PhotoWorks.
• PhotoView 360 Integration – As you may have heard, PhotoWorks will cease to exist in SolidWorks 2011.  Taking it’s place is PhotoView 360, and there have been some big  improvements since it was introduced.  You can now open a PhotoView 360 preview window in SolidWorks, and it will give you a real-time rendering as you work in SolidWorks.  It is more integrated with SolidWorks, and you can also render motion.
• Planar Simulation – You can run a simulation on a 2D section of a model.  If the part is symmetric or round, for instance, you can then project the results onto the 3D model.
• Dimension Layout Improvements – There is now more intelligence when dimensions are inserted into a drawing from the model and when moving existing drawing dimensions.
• Dual Dimension Hole Tables – Hole tables in drawings now support dual dimensions.
• Enterprise PDM Design Checker Task – The SolidWorks Design Checker is now integrated into Enterprise PDM and can be called in a workflow transition.
• Lightweight Welds – Welds in an assembly can now be “virtual” parts residing in the assembly file.
• Weld Tables – A table of all the welds in a weldment can now be shown in drawings.
• Piping Enhancements – Piping Routing now features weld gaps that will automatically adjust pipe route lengths to account for welds.
• Walk Through – Allows you to do a walk or fly through, as well as add an image, such as a person or vehicle, to the screen.

The contest ended in a tie, so there was a tie-breaker held.  Jeremy nailed the win with the final new feature shown:

• Feature Lock – Allows all features preceding this command to be locked and not rebuilt.  Very nice to have on large, complicated parts!

CLOSING REMARKS

SolidWorks CEO Jeff Ray took the stage for the closing remarks.  He said that they will link SolidWorks to Enovia V6 in the cloud (I heard the term “SolidWorks V6” used several times).  They showed a demo of an online tool called “3DswYmer” that is the cloud interface to Enovia V6.

Jeff also announced two new products, SolidWorks PDM and SolidWorks Product Data Sharing.  The Enovia V6 backbone interface and SolidWorks Product Data Sharing will be shipping later this year.

Jeff said that SolidWorks will deliver more technology in the next 2-1/2 years than they have in the last 15!

SOLIDWORKS WORLD 2011

Next year, SolidWorks World 2011 will be held at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio, TX, on January 23-26, 2011.

SUMMARY

The closing slide of the General Session was a quote from Lauren Bacall:  “Standing still is the fastest way of moving backwards in a rapidly changing world.”  It is obvious that SolidWorks is not standing still, and is continuing to push the envelope.

So there you have it!  SolidWorks World 2010 has come to an end…  Be sure and check out my Flickr photostream for all the pictures I took from the conference.  I have pretty complete coverage of the Product Design Showcase from the Partner Pavilion, with pictures of just about every product that was on display and it’s information card.  I hope that in some little way I helped give those that were not able to make it to Anaheim some feeling for the excitement and energy that was SolidWorks World 2010!

(OK, so wow, I’m late!  Sorry for the delay in posting my Wednesday General Session wrap-up; I had computer issues while on the trip, and needed to wait to get some data off; also, it was hard to find time due to workload after getting back and family priorities.)

DISCLOSURE:  DS SolidWorks Corp paid for my conference fee, lodging, and some meals.

The yo-yo belongs to Joshua Updyke, an Associate Engineer for Xpresso.  (Ricky Jordan also had a try, and it turns out that he is quite adept with a yo-yo, too!)

DISCLOSURE:  DS SolidWorks Corp paid for my conference fee, lodging, and some meals.

They announced that with the certifications added on Sunday, that there were now over 25,000 users with Certified SolidWorks Associate (CSWA) or Certified SolidWorks Professional (CSWP) certifications.  They then called SolidWorks CEO Jeff Ray to the stage to participate in a “Certification Hole in One” putting contest in which an attendee (in this case, a Smith & Wesson employee) could win one of the TEAM Associated Short Course (SC)-10 RC trucks that were featured at Monday night’s CSWP event.

Mike and Avelino then announced a new certification, the Certified SolidWorks Expert (CSWE) exam, available as of that morning.  Among the topics covered in the exam were multi-bodies, sweeps, lofts, belts/chains, curves, in-context assemblies, and springs.  In order to take the exam, a user must meet the two prerequisites of successfully passing the CSWP exam and three advanced topic exams.  There is no example exam, and if you do not pass it, you must wait at least 90 days before attempting it again.

Fielder then took the stage again and talked of 2 customers and how they were using SolidWorks to develop their designs: Edd China’s Cummfy Banana, designer of street-legal furniture; and Alan Metni’s SkyVenture, an indoor skydiving wind tunnel design company based in Austin, TX.

Fielder then demoed a virtual-reality product from Canon that allows one to interact with a CAD model and view it as situated in the real world.  He also mentioned another product that was shown in the Partner Pavilion, the Infinite Z 3D system.

Next up was Tuesday’s special guest, writer, producer, and director James Cameron.  Instead of a keynote speech, SolidWorks co-founder Jon Hirschtick did an interview with him onstage.

James Cameron is best known for his work in blockbusters such as Aliens; the Terminator franchise; Titanic; and most recently, Avatar.  However, he has produced several documentaries and spoke fondly of those experiences.

Cameron said that his documentaries have never made much money, but that the real reward was working with others toward a common goal, and being able to realize the worth of the contributions of each individual.  As a designer and engineer, I totally get where he is coming from.

Cameron mentioned his next big documentary project is a dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest known part of the Earth’s oceans.  The pressure at the bottom of the trench approaches 16,000 psi, so they need to design their submersible to meet this crushing requirement.

The submersible they are designing is a one-man vehicle, and is as close to a sphere as it can be with viewports and such.  He said that they had ran finite element analysis (FEA) on it and it passed, but they wanted to confirm this, since this will be a manned mission.  They built a prototype and tested it at 16 ksi with strain gauges attached, and he said that the results matched up almost exactly with the analysis results.

Cameron himself and two other people are pilots for the submersible.

He mentioned a sort of ritual he does when starting a new project: he posts a list of three maxims for his crew to see that I think everyone should consider when setting out to do something new:

1. Hope is not a strategy.
2. Luck is not a factor.
3. Fear is not an option.

The thing that got the biggest response from the crowd was when he said that he was a precision tool and die machinist while he was in college.  I think that statement really earned him some street cred with the attendees!

I will have the video of the press conference that immediately followed the General Session available shortly.

DISCLOSURE:  DS SolidWorks Corp paid for my conference fee, lodging, and some meals.

Last edited Friday, August 27, 2010.

The first General Session of SolidWorks World 2010 began in Anaheim, CA, with SolidWorks CEO Jeff Ray taking the stage.  Jeff mentioned that in the current state of the economy, most companies were scaling back events, but that there were over 5000 people registered for this year’s conference.

MEET THE PARENTS

Jeff mentioned the fact that over the last couple of years, signs of SolidWorks’ parent company, Dassault Systémes (DSS), had become more apparent.  He wanted to talk more about the relationship of SolidWorks with DSS.  He introduced Bernard Charlés, CEO Dassault Systémes, who took the stage.

Charlés gave a brief overview of DSS’ 6 product offerings, or as he called them, “lovemarks”:

• SolidWorks
• Catia
• Simulia
• Delmia
• Enovia
• 3DVIA

Charlés said that there were over 2 million users of DSS software, with 5 of their offerings holding the #1 position in their sector worldwide.

The main theme of his talk was “use a 3D virtual universe to design anything in the world” and “use 3D everywhere”.  DSS’ vision is to connect the research, engineering, consumer, and education communities.

Here is a video of Matt talking to Bernard Charlés about SolidWorks, cloud computing, and the future of 3D:

DO CAD USERS DREAM OF ELECTRIC CARS?

Jeff took the stage again and talked about “green design”.  He asked the question, “What do you think about when you think of a green car?”

He then said that he wanted to see what some car design enthusiasts could come up with, so he brought up Jeremy Luchini, who heads up the Certification team at SolidWorks (and is a vehicle enthusiast), and Dr. Mike North, from the Discovery show, Prototype This.  Jeremy was in charge of the chassis and design and Dr. North was in charge of the powertrain.  The product of this experiment is the SolidWorks 100% Electric ‘33 Hot Rod:

 
The first time they tested it, they got 0-60 in 3.8 seconds!  And that was on one battery pack (the car has three).  Dr. North said that they could get it down to around 3.0 seconds if they had hooked up the other battery packs.  The chassis is from Factory Five Racing; the electric engine was robbed from a bus, and delivers 660 ft-lb of torque; and the batteries are from A123 Systems and deliver 440 volts at 2000 amps.

And SolidWorks is taking this one step farther…  They are beginning a web series based on this experiment.  A website has already went live, Let’s Go Design, where you can submit design ideas for consideration.

CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT

Jeff then had a couple of follow-ups from two of the featured customers from last year’s General Session.

Terrafugia, with their street-legal flying car, has completed tests and had extensive media coverage.  Jeff mentioned that they had used Catia to design the complex wing shapes.  And MicroWind Technologies used SolidWorks Simulation to deal with vibration issues in their wind turbines.

Jeff then introduced some of folks attending from Walt Disney’s Imagineering group.  They were one of SolidWorks’ first customers, having used the software since 1995.

And as has been previously reported, SolidWorks shipped it’s one-millionth license last year to Ogio.

SOLIDWORKS IN THE CLOUD

As I mentioned in my previous article, SolidWorks showed off some new technology featuring cloud-based architecture.  They showed software running on a Mac, netbook, and iPhone; and a multi-touch interface running on a tablet.  What really blew me away was when they loaded up this huge factory assembly and instantly started doing a fly-through!  There was very slight stutter every once in a while, but it was otherwise very smooth.

According to Jeff Ray, it was all performed live, with no previously-recorded movies.  This technology has been working, he said, for the past 2 years or so, and they felt that it was now ready to be previewed.  They did not announce a release date, but Jeff said that the first aspects of cloud computing will ship later this year.  They will be showing SolidWorks talking to Enovia V6 in Wednesday’s General Session.

One of the big issues that they are trying to tackle is that CAD doesn’t really model real life.  Springs, o-rings, and the like are just some of the items we need in our models, but they don’t behave in the CAD model as they do in reality.  One of the demos they showed had them adding a spring to a jaws-of-life assembly, and it actually deformed and moved as it would in a real assembly!

KEYNOTE SPEAKER, JAMES MCLURKIN

The speaker for Monday’s General Session was James McLurkin.  Mr. McLurkin is a roboticist, inventor, researcher, and teacher at Rice University in the Computer Science Department.  The title of his presentation was “Dances With Robots: The Story of One Engineer, 112 Little Robots and the Toys, Insects, and Star Wars Movies that made it all Possible”.

He spoke about his research in swarm theory, and how those behaviors of swarms of insects can be applied to robots.  He did a demo with a swarm of 15 or so little mini robots on stage that was pretty entertaining.

I think being able to take a behavioral model from and insect species and apply it to programming for robots is amazing and brilliant; until they try to take over the world, that is! (Mr. McLurkin said that there wasn’t a robot that could pull open a door at the moment, so we should be safe for now…)

SUMMARY

I think the prospect of having the option to run your CAD software from the cloud is intriguing.  That’s right, I said option.  Jeff Ray said that there would still be a standalone solution for years to come, and that they were not going to force customers into making the decision on how they use their CAD software.  Dassault is still supporting Catia v4, and Jeff said that SolidWorks will follow that model.

DISCLOSURE:  DS SolidWorks Corp paid for my conference fee, lodging, and some meals.

One of the cries from some of the users here lately has been about porting SolidWorks to the Mac (and also Linux).  Could it be that SolidWorks was going to announce ports to other operating systems?

As it turns out, it WAS a Mac!  And SolidWorks used it (and the other machines) to show a rare technology preview today…  Codenamed “Avalanche” (and from a quick screen view, I believe it’s called “App”), it is new cloud technology from SolidWorks.  It allows one to access data from anywhere in the cloud; all that’s required is an internet connection.  It looked pretty well fleshed out.

What excited me even more than seeing a SolidWorks product running on a Mac was what they showed on the tablet: they demoed multi-touch functionality that looked really sweet!  Add that with multiple OS support, and you can see where they are headed with this: data access anywhere, anytime.

 
And of course, they were able to run the app on the netbook and access the data from the cloud (they also showed access on an iPhone/iPod Touch).

Here is a video with Austin O’Malley and Fielder Hiss discussing the new technologies that were shown in the General Session this morning:

While I think that there are still some kinks to be worked out, and I know there are certain systems and data that can never be on the cloud, it is exciting to see this much progress already made in this direction.  Some of us think that there is a possibility of running your own server to provide a cloud for your network.  What do you think?

I will have more information on this in my article on today’s General Session.

DISCLOSURE:  DS SolidWorks Corp paid for my conference fee, lodging, and some meals.