SolidWorks World 2014 is going strong. Sunday was a great time to catch up with old friends and meet a lot of new people. Many people are lucky enough to have joined the Bacon Brotherhood, including yours truly. For more details, see Twitter and search #baconbrotherhood.
This year’s SolidWorks World reached the record of 5600+ attendees on Monday! That is a new record, which is especially important since Monday (though technically Day 2) is really the first full day of the conference (often the number goes even higher by Tuesday).
The Monday General session was well reviewed by Brian McElyea of CAD Fanatic. Briefly, the morning was largely dedicated to SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual (SWMC) with a great presentation by Aaron Kelly, VP of User Experience and Product Portfolio Management and Kishore Boyalakuntla, Director of User Experience and Product Portfolio Management. They demonstrated a case where customers and vendors can work collaboratively to quickly develop new mechanical concepts on a common CAD model using social interaction and advanced design software. Brian then notes,
Representatives of four of the lighthouse companies (TriAxial Design and Analysis, Kennedy Hygiene Products Limited, Karl W. Schmidt & Associates, and J.G. WEISSER SÖHNE GmbH & Co. KG) that have been using the product over the last few months were then brought out and gave their thoughts on the software.
“Lighthouse” is a term that refers to real customers who are earlier adopters by invitation. They get a preview of functionality while an application is near completion but before it is made available to everyone. Lighthouse customers use the application in their real world enterprise on actual projects, and provide important feedback for further improvements.
Additional news is SolidWorks Industrial Conceptual was announced with a brief teaser. This generated a lot of excitement.
For a preview of Tuesday, see Michael Lord’s photoblog.
