The 25th SOLIDWORKS World, now known as 3DEXPERIENCE World, took place in Nashville, Tennessee on February 9-12, 2020. And of course we at PLM Group were there to get the latest news, a peek into what’s coming, mingle with the SOLIDWORKS community and to enjoy some good Ol’ country music!
So, for those of you who couldn’t join us, let’s take a quick peak at some of the highlights from the events. We arrived at the event on Sunday and started the day with the Application Engineer workshop. We had a peak into what the R&D (The SOLIDWORKS development team) has done in the past year and what they plan to do in the coming years.
Did you know that the R&D team has closed a large number of SPR’s the last year? You might have noticed this by receiving multiple emails about your SPR being closed. If you haven’t received the email you’re longing for yet, hang in there! It might not be too far away, as they’re planning to keep up this good work and focus to reach their goal to minimizing the number of SPR’s with remarkable numbers!
Another “must know”/key point from this session, if you don’t already know this, is that Windows 7 and Word/Excel 2013 are reaching their end of life in SW 2020 SP.5, so it’s highly about time to upgrade your system if you’re still using one or both!
Day 1 – “To be human is to dream”
This is what SOLIDWORKS CEO Gian Paolo Bassi opened the first 3DEXPERIENCE World General session with, and followed up with some questions we always ask ourselves; How can we turn our dreams into reality and how do the things we create truly reflect and improve our lives?
Not only are we in the SOLIDWORKS community dreamers, we are also doers. And this is what the 3DEXPERIENCE World event and SOLIDWORKS is all about; providing us with the tools we need to create the future we envision and to build a better world.
Monday evening it was time for the CSWE event, with retro games and a lot of fun.
Day 2 – 3DEXPERIENCE
The general session on day 2 took a deep dive into the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, and how it can be used anywhere and anytime on any device.
To recap day one, Bernard Charles, Dassault Systèmes CEO and Board Vice Chairman, highlighted how programs like SOLIDWORKS transformed our way of working from 2D to 3D and how the dream of 3DEXPERIENCE is to improve the future with easily accessible tools for visual and virtual experiences. On day two, Executive Vice President of R&D at Dassault Systèmes Florence Hu-Aubigny and her team, took the stage to show us how you can create things out of your pocket, and to easily share ideas and brainstorm with your colleagues and stakeholders at anytime, anywhere.
We were also excited that one of our entrepreneur customers, Awake, was up presenting on stage!
On Tuesday evening it was time for the main event; Bach on Broadway, where SOLIDWORKS closed of an entire street for us to enjoy live music, beer and food.
Day 3 – Battles, Model mania and News about 2021
The last day of 3DEXPERIENCE World focused on students and entrepreneurs.
So, in the general session we had a look at how different entrepreneurs uses SOLIDWORKS and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to develop and design their products and we witnessed a pitch battle between multiple young entrepreneurs.
As it was the last day, it was time to see who won this year’s Model Mania Challenge. Model Mania is a modelling competition in two steps. First, you get a drawing you should model as quick as possible. Then you get a new drawing with some changes and a simulation case. The one with correct result and fastest time wins! And usually customers are faster than us resellers and this year was no exception!
It is also time to summarize the news for SOLIDWORKS 2021, that we got to know through pop-up sessions in different break-out sessions. Just remember that new features and functionalities are always changing until fully vetted and not guaranteed to be in the next release.
We saw enhancements in both DETAILING MODE (where you now can edit legacy dimensions and detail views can be created as well as break and crop views), SILHOUETTE DEFEATURE (where you now can save the simplified assembly in a derived configuration) and SIMULATION (where blended curvature-based mesh improvements gives significantly shorter meshing times). Also, sheet metal users can in SOLIDWORKS 2021 create edge flanges on non-planar tangent edges of an existing base, swept or edge flange. Finally, simulation users can in SOLIDWORKS 2021 gain accuracy when using “incompatible mesh” for bonded contact. Also, nice to see SOLIDWORKS CEO, Gian Paolo Bassi, takes time to answer customers questions about new functionality. In-depth tech preview is found here
Some of these news and other topics from breakout sessions will be further discussed in upcoming blogs, where we will take a deeper dive into the knowledge we gained from the different sessions at 3DEXPERIENCE World 2020.
Next year we’ll be going back to Nashville for the 3DEXPERIENCE World 2021, and we hope to see Ya’ll there!
Read our highlights in SOLIDWORKS 2020
