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.

James Cameron answers questions from the press corps after the SolidWorks World 2010 General Session on Tuesday, February 2, 2010.

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

Tuesday’s General Session opened with Fielder Hiss, VP of Product Management, taking the stage.  He introduced SolidWorks Certification Specialists Mike Puckett and Avelino Rochino to talk about the various certifications that SolidWorks offers.

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 Bill Kitchen’s SkyVenture, an indoor skydiving wind tunnel designer based in Orlando, FL.

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.

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.

The proceedings from the SolidWorks World 2009 International User Conference and Exposition in Orlando, Florida, are now live! And things are a little different this year… Based on feedback from previous World’s, SolidWorks has opened up access to a broader audience and captured more media data to share.

CUSTOMER PORTAL USERS REJOICE!

In year’s past, attendees used a unique log-in to access the presentations and files from the conference. This year, SolidWorks is making the proceedings site available to all users with a Customer Portal account. If you do not already have a Customer Portal account, you can create one by visiting the SolidWorks Customer Portal and clicking the link under the “Not a member?” section.

MORE SWW CONTENT & FEATURES!

In addition to the standard presentations and supporting files of previous years, SolidWorks captured video of many of the sessions. These videos are available for streaming from the site. There are also pictures of all the exhibitor booths from the Partner Pavilion. (And remember, all my pictures from the conference, including most of the displays in the Product Design Showcase, are available on my Flickr photostream!)

So, be sure to go to SWW09 proceedings site to access all the SWW goodness. If you have any issues accessing the conference proceedings or have further questions, you can get help by emailing swworldinfo@solidworks.com.

***EDIT***

Some clarification from SolidWorks on the SolidWorks World 2009 proceedings site: 

Login access to content:   Essentially the site is open to anyone who has a customer portal login.    Anyone who went to World will see all of the presentation videos that we recorded.   If you did not attend World we are going to add new video content each week.

We check the e-mail you use to login against a database that we have of e-mails from conference attendees.  (So if your customer portal login uses a different e-mail than the e-mail you used to register for world you won’t get full access (but we’ll fix this case by case)).

Last edited on 03/11/2009 @ 5:10PM CDT.