There’s a funny commercial from Priceline.com where William Shatner plays his own evil twin who tries to talk someone into booking through a website that is offering a sale by declaring, “it’s a sa-ell; nothing beats a sa-ell.”
This is a sly reference to a Star Trek episode where Kirk did indeed have an evil twin.
As far as getting good prices for rooms and flights for SolidWorks World 2011, be sure to shop around. If bidding on rooms and flights isn’t your thing, then check out KAYAK. It provides alerts via email when deals that fit your criteria become available from almost any other travel site.
Also, be aware that business travel is more complex in these times of airline baggage fees, carry on bag fees, handling fees, overweight fees, Groundhog Day fees, unleavened bread fees, etc. Many travel agencies simply will not handle baggage and other particular fees, which leaves the traveller to pay when they arrive at the airport. Reimbursement for these on-the-spot fees from your company can be a serious pain. Have you ever tried collecting credit card interest from an employer? It’s next to impossible.
So, travellers should be cautious and frugal. Plan ahead for any trips. It’s hard to believe that SolidWorks World 2011 is so near. Didn’t we just get done with 2010?
SWUGN Summit San Jose came to a close with many satisfied attendees. In the past, San Jose area attendance to SWUGN Summits has been a bit up and down. For whatever reason, attendance picked back up this year. I haven’t checked to see the actual numbers yet, but I believe it is one of the best so far for this area. Another bonus, I’m happy to report that both major VARs from this area contributed by giving some of the presentations!
Our star presenter was Gabi Jack. Over the past week, she was stating much consternation over twitter about her impending presentation. It turns out, she did a great job with her Surfacing presentation. It was not obvious that this was her first live and public presentation ever since finishing college. She’s a natural pro!
Another seasoned pro is Phil Sluder. His SolidWorks tips and tricks session is always a crowd pleaser. In fact, the session description simply said, “Phil’s tips and tricks…enough said.” His presentation is good for all comers, from beginners and experienced users alike.
Elisa Moss had a heavily attended session that covered how to use derived configurations and display states for drawings. She was also a very supportive attendee during other sessions.
Another star presenter was Alex R. Ruiz, who just recently released his new book, SolidWorks 2010: No Experience Required. His session was partially based on the new book, which earned some well deserved attention. I’ll be reviewing the book on SolidWorks Legion soon.
My own presentation was about advanced SolidWorks customization techniques. Although labelled “advanced”, I did cover some easy topics as well to give something for all levels of experience. My presentation went pretty well, except for a couple of times where SolidWorks did not momentarily cooperate. Part of the challenge of presenting is working through the surprizes when they come up. I was glad that the audience participated frequently and showed a lot of interest in the topics that were covered.
As usual, I’m going to have to thank Richard Doyle for putting on yet another great summit!
In other related news, Arthur Kwun of KLA Tencor earned his free CSWP test by uttering the words “SolidWorks Legion is awesome, dude!” He did this during the lunch hour, so I wasn’t quite expecting it. It took me a minute to realize he said the winning phrase. Anyway, congrats!!
At SolidWorks World 2010, there was the announcement of a new brand called SolidWorks PLM. This new brand is presumably the first step in a new focus at SolidWorks Corp to offer cloud computing services for PDM/PLM file management. (Basically, cloud computing services is software or other services that are run on remote servers that are often offsite.) At some future date, the SolidWorks application itself is slated to be run via cloud services. As stated before, there are considerable advantages to this approach. For example, the customer doesn’t need to invest heavily in computer hardware to run resource intensive software.
However, there are major issues that still need to be addressed in order for the cloud computing approach to be viable for many SolidWorks customers. These are not small issues either. Other companies in other industries have not been able to address many of the associate problems. However, there are examples of cloud computing companies that have thrived, such as Salesforce.com. The difference is those other companies do not have 3D CAD applications.
Issue 1: Customer’s information (Intellectual Property) is stored in the cloud. However, it is owned by the customer. How does SolidWork’s PLM cloud service not hold a customer’s data hostage if the customer does not maintain their monthly payments? To extend this thought, if a loophole is created that allows customers to access their data without making payments, will this defeat the business model for the cloud service?
Issue 2: The customer’s rights are not limited to just accessing their data. If the SolidWorks 3D CAD tool itself is run as a cloud service, a customer will still need it in order to use their Intellectual Property. If the customer is not able to maintain their monthly payments, how does SolidWorks Corp allow the customer to not only access their data, but also continiously use that data?
Issue 3: Security is a big concern for every company. By definition, cloud services transmit all of a customer’s sensitive data over the internet. How does the cloud service provide access to the correct users and prevent access to all others? If the data is illegally intercepted, will the encryption be strong enough to prevent others from cracking it? This is particularly important for high security customers that are under extremely strict access rules.
Issue 4: By definition, the software of a cloud service is controlled and operated by the company that offers the service. The advantage is that updates can be made without requiring any action from the customer. The problem? The software can be updated without any action from the customer! This can drastically affect customers under ISO certification and/or FDA regulation, where any change to a process (including revisions the software itself) needs to be validated and verified before they can be implemented. The cloud service will be offered to hundreds, if not thousands of customers. How is the cloud service going to reconcile the need to update the software frequently with the need of the customers to have their processes verified and validated prior to the implementation of any software updates? This isn’t a concern for the SolidWorks 3D CAD tool itself, since it is an authoring tool. The concern here is how this impacts the PDM/PLM aspects of the SolidWorks products.
Issue 5: This cloud computing business model can potentially create variable costs that can change each month. The variation in costs is based on how often the cloud service is accessed and used. This creates a massive disconnect between the end user (the engineer) and whoever signs the checks (such as the CFO). Such viable costs may provide confusing usage visibility to a group of people that may not understand engineering processes well enough to assess that usage. Will usage of the cloud service be limited by pencil pushers that may be making such decisions in a vacuum? Fears about this sort of interloper interdiction may push Engineering Departments away from cloud computing services.
Perception is reality. Even if these issues are addressed in some way, SolidWorks Corp may be fighting an uphill battle in trying to convince their customers to jump into cloud computing without a parachute. What may seem like white and puffy clouds to SolidWorks, may look like a violent thunderhead to their customers.
SolidWorks World 2011 will be held in San Antonio, TX, from Jan 23 to Jan 26, 2011. To highlight this new location, I’m going to give a few facts about this historic city.
Facts
Named for Portuguese Saint Anthony of Padua.
On average, it has three hundred days of sunshine annually and an average temperature of 70 degrees.
Average January temperature is 62 degrees.
More than 26 million people visit San Antonio each year.
Tower of the Americas
It is Texas’ second-largest city and the seventh largest U.S. city
It is one of the fastest-growing cities in America.
There were 2,808.5 persons per square mile in 2000.
Almost 60% residents are of Hispanic or Latin heritage.
It is site of the Battle of the Alamo in 1836.
San Antonio Zoo is the third largest in the U.S., with over 3,500 animals including 230 endangered species.
It is the home of the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs
Tommy Lee Jones resides in Terrell Hills, TX, a town near San Antonio
Robert Cade, inventor of Gatorade, was from San Antonio
Monterrey, Mexico is a sister city
Major attractions
The San Antonio Botanical Gardens and Conservatory
Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum
El Mercado (old Mexican marketplace)
Aztec On The River (restored historic 1926 movie palace)
Enchanted Springs Ranch (authentic old west 19th-century town used for westerns)
The San Antonio Zoo
SeaWorld San Antonio
Six Flags Fiesta Texas
Buckhorn Saloon & Museum
Casa Navarro State Historical Park
San Antonio Missions National Historical Park
Japanese Tea Gardens
Brackenridge Park
Tower of the Americas
SeaWorld San Antonio
The Alamo
San Antonio River Walk
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I’m looking forward to having a great time in San Antonio, TX!
Another theme of today’s General Session where potential improvements to 3D CAD, much of which is cloud computing based. These include collaboration to allow more than one person to edit the same model at the same time. Searches to use data from the database instead of making models from scratch. Bring a “lifelike experience” (soon to be trademarked term, I’m guessing) to SolidWorks and other applications. Predictive Engineering that can do things like calculate interferences or handle material properties before the user even requests such data. With all these improvements associated with cloud computing, I am willing to predict that there will eventually be no distinction between SolidWorks and Catia.
A new game has taken SolidWorks World 2010 by storm. Count how many times the word “cloud” (as in cloud computing) is spoken. At one point, it might seem that entire speeches consist entirely of the word ”cloud cloud cloud cloud cloud cloud cloud cloud cloud.” There’s a message somewhere. Oh, that’s right. Cloud computing is the future of SolidWorks and the rest of the Dassault Systemes applications (maybe even for high security customers).
Cloud computing has many advantages over traditional installed software, according to Jeff Ray, CEO of SolidWorks. No matter how good SolidWorks is, it is still limited by the computer upon which it is installed. A significant investment is required to purchase computers that are powerful enough to get the most out of 3D CAD software. Also, installed software tends to be limited by computer operating systems. SolidWorks, in its current form, will not likely to be ported over to run natively on a MAC OS. Instead, SolidWorks will bypass these limitations with cloud computing. With cloud computing, “SolidWorks” (in whatever form it takes) may run on any platform. In fact, the user’s computer power will play very little roll. CAD files (even hugh assemblies) can be accessed instantly and edited on practically any platform, such as Microsoft, MAC OS, Google OS, Firefox, and iPhone. This is all accomplished without installing any software. They even discussed SolidWorks running seamlessly with ENOVIA V6, maybe even sometime this year.
According to Ray, the new cloud technologies will be rolled out as they are ready. The customer will choose when (if ever) to implement. These improvements represent a “completely new design environment”. Ray also stated that these new techologies where developed in secret and “run like a start up”. Technically, all this cloud talk represents nothing more than vaporware right now. However, if Dassault Systemes delivers, they may have a massive game changer on their hands.
The owner of this website and some of its contributors are occasionally in contact with employees of DS SolidWorks Corp and other mentioned companies. Some of us are provided with non-commercially licensed software and hardware for review by these companies, including DS SolidWorks Corp. Sometimes feedback is also requested by these companies. Additionally, we are sometimes included in events where DS SolidWorks Corp. pays for expenses (such as accommodations). We receive no payments (quid pro quo or otherwise) for any content of this website. The contributor is solely responsible for the content they add. Separately, purchases made via affiliate Amazon.com links on this site may yield a small commission for site owner. Such links are incidental and have no bearing on this site's content.
Label View: Macro designed to make Labels for Drawing Views. Label View can replace the default (mono-font) SW view labels with (multi-font) SW Notes labels. By: Tobin Sparks
