Well, today was a long day…but it was very interesting!  There was a few of us blogging live from the press event.  I took notes and want to formulate my thoughts a little (plus, I’m really tired!), so I will have a few posts coming up on the goings-on in Barcelona.  I just wanted to give an overview of the day’s happenings.

The day started off with Jeff Ray, CEO of DS SolidWorks, delivering the keynote, “Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Initiatives”.  The theme was:

“Provide our customers with all the necessary tools to design the world’s greatest products.”

Bertrand Charlès, President and CEO of Dassault Systèmes was also on hand and gave a presentation titled “Dassault Systèmes Vision & Strategy”.  There was some discussion concerning the recent DS/SolidWorks realignment, which I will detail later.  But suffice it to say, I am looking forward to see what the closer interaction will bring to SolidWorks users and the CAD market in general.

There was also a few presentations from companies using SolidWorks, which are always interesting to see.  Marie Planchard gave a presentation on SolidWorks’ education initiatives.  It’s good to see them getting involved with colleges, high schools, and even middle schools to get kids thinking about engineering, creativity, and design.

Bertrand Sicot, Executive VP Worldwide Sales spoke of the State of the Software, giving the latest financial data, revenue, installed base, seat sales, etc.  Rick Welch, VP Worldwide Customer Service presented on Customer Satisfaction, talking about how they determine what customers want, the results of the latest customer loyalty and transaction surveys, and gave information on their VAR training and certification programs.

The last section was what us users were waiting on, the DS SolidWorks 2009 product line presentation.  It was given by Neil Cooke, Product Marketing Manager, Fielder Hiss, Director of Product Management, and Mark Schneider, Product Marketing Manager.  They showed several video and real-time demonstrations that showed the increased speed (a claimed 65% time savings!) of 2009.  They also showed improved 2D interoperability with DWGEditor, data management scenarios with DS SolidWorks Enterprise PDM (formerly PDMWorks Enterprise), DS SolidWorks Simulation, sheetmetal and plastics improvements, CircuitWorks, routing, and demonstrations of 3DVia and Photoview 360.

Of course, after each presentation, there was a Q&A session.  Tomorrow we head over to the IQS Engineering School for a presentation on IQS and the hands-on Technical Sessions with the DS SolidWorks Product Marketing Team.  Then, a little sight-seeing before heading back to the States.

In the coming days, I will have more details on each session, so check back!