Registration for SolidWorks World 2014 is now open!
SolidWorks World is the yearly premiere event for SolidWorks users and partners.  There are multiple tracks over three days, and it’s a great venue for networking with your peers, SolidWorks users from around the world, SolidWorks Solutions partners, and SolidWorks employees.
The Partner Pavillion is open throughout the conference and features booths from 3rd party providers and partners, along with some very interesting models that have been created using SolidWorks tools.
If you register on or before October 25, 2013, you can save $200 off …

Some of my coworkers are presenting at the upcoming Nashville SolidWorks User Group Network (SWUGN) Summit in September.  They have put together a survey on 3D interactive input devices to help them build their presentation.  It’s a very short survey and you do not have to divulge personal information.
Please help them out!
Today’s 3D environment is evolving at a torrid pace.  This is due in part to the pairing of emerging 3D input technologies with the flexible design environments of existing software.  Not only do 3D professionals have total control over …

The Wednesday General Session is usually bittersweet for me, because while it is the day we get a sneak peek at the upcoming version of SolidWorks, it is also the last day of the conference.  This year is no different; things start winding down and we say goodbye to friends and colleagues, many of whom we won’t see until next World.
DUDE, WE’RE SPONSORED BY DELL!
Fielder Hiss opened the General Session and introduced Kirsten Billhardt from Dell.
MODEL MANIA
SolidWorks Product Marketing Specialist Mark Schneider took the stage to announce the winners of …

Tuesday’s General Session opened with Fielder Hiss, VP of Product Management taking the stage.  Hiss talked about how SolidWorks had been working with Intel on creating better experiences for users.  Frank Soqui, Workstation General Manager from Intel was then brought up on stage to give a short talk.
BETA AWARDS
Time to talk Beta – there were 4000 activations for the SolidWorks 2013 Beta program.  Hiss then announced the winners of the SolidWorks Beta 2013 Awards.
Reseller awards were announced first.  Here are the results:

Customer awards were announced next.  This year was a …

SolidWorks World 2013 kicked off today with CEO Bertrand Sicot taking the stage.  He seemed a little more comfortable this year than last.
Sicot announced that there were over 4500 attendees at the conference this year.  Four years ago, Jeff Ray announced that SolidWorks sold their 1 millionth license; Sicot said that they had hit the 2 million mark this past December.  Sicot also said that SolidWorks was in 25,000 schools worldwide, with 2.5 million students having access to the software.

NEW PORTAL
Sicot then talked about my.solidworks.com, a new portal into the …

Registration for SolidWorks World 2013 in Orlando, FL is now open!  I just received this in my inbox:

The 21st release of SolidWorks, SolidWorks 2013, was released last Monday and it looks to be an exciting release…  There are several new products that have been added along with many new enhancements.  There have also been improvements in the efficiency and speed of SolidWorks 2013.
The theme for SolidWorks 2013 is Respect Our Core Technology.  With powerful new products and design tools, faster model creation with more efficient 3-D models and 2-D drawings, improved performance and productivity and enhanced collaboration, SolidWorks 2013 is “3-D design simplified”.
According to SolidWorks CEO Bertrand …

I’ve had several inquiries over the past several days on how to enable measurement in a SolidWorks eDrawings file, so I thought I would put up a quick post on how to do it.
There are actually two ways to output eDrawings from SolidWorks.  You can choose Publish to eDrawings from the File menu, or you can do File|Save As… and choose eDrawings (*.easm, *.eprt, or *.edrw).
If you choose the latter, after you change the save as type, hit the Options… button and make sure the option Okay to measure …

The Monday General Session of SolidWorks World 2012 opened with Bertrand Sicot, SolidWorks CEO, taking the stage.  He gave some numbers regarding attendees and SolidWorks users:
There were 4300 attendees in 2008. This year there are 5650 people attending from 33 countries. There are now 1.7 million users in the SolidWorks community. He said that if they were to create a city of all the SolidWorks users, it would be the fourth largest city in America.
Sicot then mentioned Daniel Hertzberg, who was the previous SolidWorks intern and is now an …

Wednesday is the last day of SolidWorks World, and they do save the best for last…Wednesday is the day they preview the next version of SolidWorks!
Fielder Hiss, Vice President of Product Management at DS SolidWorks Corp, took the stage once again.  He mentioned that Center Rock, Inc. (CRI) was mentioned Tuesday night in President Obama’s State of the Union address, in talking of people coming together to aid in the Chilean miner rescue.
Fielder then recognized Dell for their platinum sponsorship.  Patrick Hannan, Senior Manager of Strategic Market Development at Dell, …

There are several new enhancements coming in SolidWorks 2012.  Below is a quick run-down of the highlights they showed.  Unfortunately, they ran through it so fast, that I was not able to capture all the details.  I will add more to this list when I make my post on the General Session.

You are now able to pin documents to the recently used document fly out.
You can now switch document units on the fly with the unit switcher located in the bottom right corner of the status bar.
You can now …

Today’s General Session started off with Fielder Hiss, Vice President of Product Management at DS SolidWorks Corporation, taking the stage.  He recapped yesterday’s session with Gene Kranz and Captain Jim Lovell.
Fielder then recognized HP, one of the conference’s Platinum sponsors.  Tom Salomone, HP’s Worldwide Marketing Manager for MCAD, took the stage for a few words.
SWGUN AWARDS
First up was Richard Doyle, User Community Manager for DS SolidWorks Corp.  Richard talked about the SolidWorks User Group Network (SWUGN), which is the global community of SolidWorks users.  There are currently 195 …