Today was our last day at SolidWorks World. This morning was the final keynote presentation by the SolidWorks product development team.  First, they discussed the top 10 complaints of SolidWorks as reported by it’s users. They do this every year and they use the feedback from users it to improve the next SolidWorks release.  I was able to snap a few shots of the slides as they went whizzing by…

Top Ten Enhancements, (as requested by users)

Just because SolidWorks points out complaints or “enhancement requests”, doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be implementing them. However, the VP of product development did inform say they will likely implement about 70% of requested enhancements.

Exciting new web announcement

Another exciting announcement was a new “PLM” content manager that will be implimented online this year. We aren’t exactly sure what SolidWorks plans to do with this, but from the quick demo they showed, it looked pretty cool.  This will provide users the ability to upload CAD drawings and dimensions online so that co-workers and even non-CAD users can access them in order to view models in a fashion similar to eDrawings. They referred to it as a kind of “Facebook for Engineers” but instead of sharing their status and photos, they can share their drawings and engineering projects.

Product Sharing

Many engineers and I.T. personel are likely to be concerned with sharing engineering data and product information online. SolidWorks was sure to mention that their new service will be completely secure, and discussed how how it will benefit engineering companies.

There were some other things announced for SolidWorks 2011, such as references to “cloud computing”, speed and performance enhancements, and reliability that will be “unbelievable”. We are very excited about these announcements and look forward to seing them implemented! — Brock

What does Monday’s announcement mean for the future of SolidWorks? At the show we heard a lot about the future of SolidWorks, cloud computing, and all manner of new ways of doing things. Does that mean we’ll be seeing a native Mac version of SolidWorks? Unfortunately, the answer seems to be “No”. However despite that apparent disadvantage taking SolidWorks online and utilizing cloud computing seems to be even more promising, that is, if they can pull it off.

During the presentations on the future of SolidWorks they talked about other “cloud” programs like Google Docs and Gmail. While I love both of those services Google Docs has a long way to go before it will be able to compete head to head with Microsoft Office. Sure the online capabilities, the data storage, the ability to collaborate and share documents is awesome, but the sheer word processing and document editing capabilities fall short when compared to Microsoft Office. Web applications may be the future of computing but in my humble opinion that future has yet to be fully realized. –Sam

Some photos from today’s opening session with James Cameron. –Sam

This chopper motorcycle was on display at the Partner Pavilion. –Sam

SolidWorks Chopper

Chopper Engine

We had a special party this evening at Ruth’s Chris Steak House for GoEngineer employees and customers. Founder of SolidWorks, Jon Hirschtick was on-hand for the event and we got this photo of him and Ken Coburn, President of our company GoEngineer. –Sam

Jon Hirschtick and Ken Coburn