By Marc Young, President/Owner, and Ilan Madjar, Managing Partner, xLM Solutions
We look forward to certain user conferences each year – they are perfect opportunities to network, share experiences and questions, and hear directly about what’s coming next in the tech world. SolidWorks World user conference in early February lived up to all of our expectations. We met up with many colleagues and friends at the Los Angeles conference and spent invaluable time together expanding our professional community. We also had opportunities for hands-on experiences and new technology demos. As with the best user conferences, the featured speakers bring an added sense of excitement.
Here’s what stood out the most to us at SolidWorks World 2017.
PDM Manage
We’re very excited to see the new PDM Manage solution for SolidWorks PDM 2018. We believe it will bring greater PLM functionality to the product. PDM Manage has the capability of bringing all departments together on one system, one platform for better data management. It facilitates engineering efficiencies, saves engineering time and helps companies develop and innovate new products for the market. The product should result in significant savings in time and efficiency. It includes:
- Project timelines and resources
- Complex business processes
- Advanced Item Management
- Dashboard and reports for critical data
Read more about working with SolidWorks PDM.
3D EXPERIENCE (Enovia) and Engineering Change
We watched several exciting presentations around 3D EXPERIENCE (Enovia) and engineering change. We are eager to explore some of the change action functionality in Enovia 2017x.
Bernard Charles CEO of Dassault demonstration included a 3D EXPERIENCECity, a virtual project in Singapore, helping the country better plan and optimize infrastructure. There were also breakout sessions, presenting the new version of 3D experience and how engineering has been improved to handle change in different ways and streamline the engineering change process.
Read an overview of basic 3D EXPERIENCE concepts.
Special Guest Speakers
Each year, SolidWorks World seeks out innovators to address the conference. For 2017, we were delighted to hear Anousheh Ansari and Jason Silvia speak about the future and how technology will drive it.
Anousheh Ansari is an Iranian-American engineer who was the first female private space explorer. She spent eight days aboard the International Space Station. She is co-founder and chairman of Prodea Systems, a platform for the Internet of Things. She spoke about her interest in science and engineering coming from such influences as sci-fi from Jules Verne to Gene Roddenberry. Imagination always played a major part in her experiences.
Jason Silva closed the first day of presentations. He is called a futurist, media artist and philosopher. He is the host of National Geographic’s Brain Games TV series and he is also the creator of Shots of Awe, a short film series that explores innovation, technology creativity, futurism and the metaphysics of the imagination. His passion and excitement about technology and influencing the future was inspirational.
Other Experiences
As always, product demos and simulations catch our attention. We were especially delighted with the cool demonstrations of viewing and manipulating solid models in virtual reality.
To round out our experience at SolidWorks, we greatly enjoyed the special event at Paramount Studios in their backlot. Even the rain couldn’t diminish the fun, good food and terrific music.
With some 5000 attendees, including partners and service providers, SolidWorks World never disappoints. Networking, educational opportunities and the chance to meet with users all contribute to an exciting conference.
What did you take away from SolidWorks World?