by Sam Scholes & Brock Vasic

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