Tag: General Session

SolidWorks World 2014: Day 1, Day 2 Monday General Session – Mechanical Conceptual revealed

I'm an employee and also a member of the Bacon BrotherhoodSolidWorks 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.

 

SolidWorks World 2011 in quick review

SolidWorks World 2011

SolidWorks World 2011 offered attendees a unique experience.  The Apollo 13 sub-theme to the General Sessions was a treat.  The Monday General Session included a recounting of the Apollo 13 mission from an engineering perspective.  Kevin Bacon’s appearance during the Wedsnesday General Session was an added bonus, as he talked about the vomit comet used in the making of the Apollo 13 movie (among other things).  The cool customer profiles on Tuesday added a degree of depth as well.  Although there was a thorough What’s New in SolidWorks 2012 presentation, it does not seem (at this point) that new features will be added to the next version.  Instead, SolidWorks is getting some long requested user interface and performance improvements.

As a matter of full disclosure, for my attendance to SolidWorks World 2011, I was provided a Press Pass.  Though the Press Pass as no direct monetary value, it does include access that is equivilent to the Full Conference Pass.  Through various events, I received some additional value, usually in the form of meals.  SolidWorks Corp did not cover or reimburse me for additional costs, such as travel expenses, but did pay for my hotel stay.  I am under no obligation to write any material, nor present a particular point of view.  The content of my articles is solely my own.

SWW09: Wednesday General Session (Part 1: Annual Top 10)

Each year at SolidWorks World, SolidWorks Corp announces the top 10 enhancement requests, as voted upon by the users.  It is claimed that there has been a 70% implementation rate for the top 10 requests over the past 8 years.  It was implied that his years list comes from the new service on SolidWorks.com called Brainstorm (though I don’t remember this being explicitly stated):

10. Excel behavior for tables.

9. Abort any running command using ESC key.

8. Add lock points.

7. Dual monitor support.

6. On-the-fly equation creation and editing.

5. Faster rebuild on complex models and drawings.

4. Rename configurations that are in use.

3. SolidWorks backward compatibility

2. Clear memory when file is closed.

1. Increase program stability.