Jean Thilmany, Contributing Editor A functional, well-designed item is a luxury, says Tim Prestero, founder and chief executive officer at Salem, Mass.-based Design That Matters. It’s not that functional items are hard to come by, but in impoverished areas of the world those items may not be designed to fit users’ needs. Medical equipment tends […]
SolidWorks Introduces CAM for Smart Manufacturing
Gian Paolo Bassi, the chief executive officer of CAD maker SolidWorks kicked off SolidWorks World, held this week at the Los Angeles convention center, by introducing SolidWorks CAM, to help manufacturing companies with “smart manufacturing.” Smart manufacturing, he said, uses all the content in 3D models to: Recognize how features will be manufactured Learn how […]
Learning about the IoT at SOLIDWORKS World 2017
SOLIDWORKS World always has technical session for attendees. At this year’s conference, there will be a specific learning path for the Internet of Things. Seven sessions are available to help users accelerate their IoT product development process. If you attend at least four of the IoT sessions, you can earn a SOLIDWORKS IoT Certificate. Attending […]
Saving lives with a solar-powered bush plane
How do you bring emergency supplies into a place with no airport? Engineers at a company called Solar Ship have developed a new type of solar-powered aircraft that can reach more places and save more lives.
Learn how these aeronautical pioneers are re…
SolidWorks World 2017 Keynote speakers
Industry visionaries, engineers and designers will provide new perspectives that will inspire you to reinvent how you approach design. Get inspired by speakers who broke the bounds of the “possible” to do something that has never been done before. Anousheh Ansari is Co-Founder, Chairwoman, & CEO of Prodea Systems. She is the first female private […]
SolidWorks 2017 Set to Help IoT Development
This week, Dassault Systèmes debuted the latest update to its SolidWorks computer-aided design system, which speeds model development as compared to past versions and acts as part of…
On Demand Webinar: See How the SOLIDWORKS Ecosystem Delivers on Design Innovation
Today Product Designers and Engineers are under pressure to speed up development and introduce ever increasing product complexity at a greater pace than ever before. Using the right tools to design these products is paramount. This webinar will explain how the SOLIDWORKS Ecosystem is here to meet the challenges of delivering increased product complexity while…
Be Your Own Designer
SolidWorks Make, released at SolidWorks World 2016, held this week in Dallas, lets consumers personalize their online products and the have those products delivered to their door, said…
Designing with the 3DExperience – First Look at SOLIDWORKS Industrial Designer
The 3DExperience Platform for SOLIDWORKS is a Single Modeling Environment from Dassault Systemes aimed at enabling social collaboration during the concept design phase. SOLIDWORKS Industrial Designer is a purpose-built app on the platform which can utilize traditional keyboard and mouse, or tablet input to create concept Industrial Designs using sketches, 2D or 3D primitives, and…
Round Up: SolidWorks World 2015
In early February, over 5,000 attendees—many of whom were only too happy to flee their snowy, frigid hometowns—filled the halls of the Phoenix Convention Center for SolidWorks World 2015. The weather wasn’t the only thing heating things up at the show. Intriguing general session speakers and many new products were introduced—both by SolidWorks and its…
Dassault delivers with SolidWorks 2015
Over 2.3 million CAD users have patiently awaited the release of SolidWorks 2015. Their wait is now over and their patience has been rewarded with a bounty of new features and enhancements that even the most cynical of users will appreciate. With much fanfare, Dassault Systems rolled out the newest version of its very popular…
Delcam Releases SolidWorks-Integrated CAM Version
CAD-integrated CAM software greatly facilitates the communication between design and manufacturing by removing the error-prone process of having to translate data between two systems. It also helps decrease the traditional disconnect that exists between the two groups of users, enabling both teams to do the work concurrently. Delcam recently launched Delcam for SolidWorks integrated CAD […]
Looking Under the Hood of SolidWorks 2015
A large group of editors, bloggers, users and analysts from across the country converged in Boston last week to hear all the details of the highly anticipated release of SolidWorks 2015. With SolidWorks 2015, the company focused on providing its users with a wider range of choices for improving everyday productivity, optimizing work processes, reducing […]
Design Technology Behind the Scenes at 2014 World Cup
Every four years, national soccer–or football as the rest of the world calls it–teams from across the globe duke it out to determine the best square on the planet. An estimated one billion viewers will be glued to their seats watching the action that kicks off today in Brazil, nearly 900 million more than who […]
Bosch Streamlines Processes and Improves Productivity by Standardizing on SolidWorks Software
Edited by, Barb Schmitz Nearly every automobile on the road today contains Bosch parts. From a car’s power train to its fuel system, brakes and chassis controls, Bosch components drive the global automotive industry. In addition to being the world’s largest automotive components manufacturer, the Bosch Group produces technologies and consumer goods for applications as…
SolidWorks Debuts Mechanical Conceptual
The biggest announcement made by SolidWorks at this year’s SolidWorks World was the upcoming release of SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual, software that enables users to quickly capture and develop their concept ideas digitally to compress cycle time and get products to market faster. The concept design phase is one of the most important phases of product […]
Mark Forg3D’s Mark One: World’s First Carbon Fiber 3D Printer
Software companies spend a lot of money trying to create excitement at their user conferences, but it was newcomer, Mark Forg3D, that clearly generated the most buzz at this year’s SolidWorks World with the announcement of the upcoming release of its Mark One 3D printer. The Mark One is the first 3D printer to print […]
Using CAD to improve free-heel skiing
By Michael Jermann, Assistant Editor Jeff found early on that if he had a fall and his bindings released, it was important to use runaway leashes to keep his skis from becoming hazards to other skiers. Jeff Cox, the owner of Bluebird Day Gear, has always loved skiing, especially telemark. Telemark skiing, often called ‘free-heel…
SolidWorks 2014—An Upgrade for New and Long-term Users
by Leslie Langnau, Managing Editor Adding to—or improving—an existing software program that already contains millions of lines of code is a task most engineers approach cautiously; it’s too easy to introduce code that wrecks havoc on either other parts of the program or on the whole program. So, while some will opine that the latest […]
The failed promise of parametric CAD: From the beginning
The modern era of 3D CAD was born in September 1987, when Deere & Company bought the first two seats of Pro/Engineer, from the still new Parametric Technology Corporation. A couple of years later, Deere’s Jack Wiley was quoted in the Anderson Report, saying: “Pro/ENGINEER is the best example I have seen to date of […]
Bertrand Sicot: Seriously, we’re not going to mess up SolidWorks.
A few days ago, SolidWorks CEO Bertrand Sicot posted a blog, reiterating yet again that, no, they’re not going to mess with the SolidWorks program that so many people count on. Just as since it was first written, it will continue to use Parasolid as its geometric modeling kernel. While I think it’s healthy for […]
How real people use CAD: Shane McKenna
In the CAD world, there are all kinds. Some people just use CAD as part of their job—in the same way as they use Word, Excel, or Outlook. Others become power users, investing themselves in becoming experts at using one or more of the mainstream or high-end CAD systems. Then, there are the CAD hackers. People who […]
SolidWorks 2014: No obvious surprises
There was a time, years back, when SolidWorks users complained because the annual updates of the software included so many major new capabilities that it was hard to keep up. SolidWorks is a mature product now, and the pace of adding major new capabilities has slowed down quite a bit. Now the big emphases with […]
Why Validation is important to SolidWorks users
What is your product master? Is it a paper drawing? A digital drawing? a 3D model? No matter what it is today, it’s likely that, in the future, it’s going to be a 3D model. According to NIST, there are some big advantages of using a 3D model as master: Faster design revisions Build and […]
The Maturation of SolidWorks
By Evan Yares, Senior Editor & Analyst, Software SolidWorks 2013 may be one of the best releases ever. SolidWorks Corporation was founded in 1993. The company’s initial plan was elegantly simple: build a CAD program that runs on Microsoft Windows, competes with Pro/Engineer, and sells for $4,000, through local resellers. Today, almost 20 years later,…