SOLIDWORKS World 2017 Highlights

Here’s some highlights from SOLIDWORKS World 2017:

And, yes, SOLIDWORKS World 2018 will be returning to the Los Angeles Convention Center for 2018.  In case you missed some of the fun that LA has to offer this year, you’ll have a second chance to indulge in 2018!

Here’s some of my experiences at SOLIDWORKS World 2017:

Super Bowl Party at SOLIDWORKS World 2017 sww17

Lining up on the first day for the General Session of SOLIDWORKS World 2017 sww17

Main stage at SOLIDWORKS World 2017 sww17

Tremonti at SOLIDWORKS World 2017 sww17

Special Event at SOLIDWORKS World 2017 sww17

Special Event at SOLIDWORKS World 2017 sww17

Main Stage at SOLIDWORKS World 2017 sww17

JPL Robot at SOLIDWORKS World 2017 Partner Pavilion sww17

Walking Robot at SOLIDWORKS World 2017 Partner Pavilion sww17

Baby Groot found in the wild at SOLIDWORKS World 2017 sww17

And some more fun afterwards:

Mars rovers at JPL

Voyager at JPL

Robots at JPL

Mission Control at JPL

Grizzly Peak at California Adventure

Venice Beach 2

Venice Beach 3

Presentations at SOLIDWORKS World 2017

SWW2017 banner

Normally, members of the Product Definition team at DS SolidWorks Corp give two presentations at each SOLIDWORKS World.  Presentations can be either Hands-on or Breakout.  Hands-on sessions involve attendee participation at desktop computers provided for the conference.  Attendees typically follow and repeat steps shown by the presenter.  Breakout sessions are essentially talks with demonstrations of functionality in SOLIDWORKS products.

Sometimes our team gives extra presentations.  There are cases where our hands-on sessions are very popular, so we add an extra hands-on session of the same material for the overflow.  Other times, we give the multiple breakout sessions on various topics.

My Presentations

At SOLIDWORKS World 2017, I gave three presentations and a panel discussion.  It almost never fails that I give a presentation right after the General Session on Monday of the conference.  This year, my Monday presentation was a hands-on session about new functionality that’s been added to SOLIDWORKS over the past 5 years.  The session was Streamline Drawing Creation with Newer SOLIDWORKS Drawing Tools.  In this session, attendees got to try out newer drawing tools that they may have missed before, such as

  • User Interface improvements
  • Drawing Zones, Location Label and Automatic Border tool
  • All uppercase setting for notes
  • Angle Dimension enhancements
  • Model Break View
  • Balloon improvements and more

If you’d like to check out this session’s materials, please feel free to download:

Streamline Drawing Creation with Newer SOLIDWORKS Drawing Tools (6MB+)

On Tuesday, I gave two breakout sessions.  The first one was planned and well-prepared about MBD called Model-Based Definition using SOLIDWORKS MBD.  This session covered very general overview of  MBD, ways to implement settings in SOLIDWORKS for the best MBD experience, SOLIDWORKS MBD tools (3D Views, 3D PDF Publisher, etc), and DimXpert.  A lot of people attended this session.  Though, I didn’t pack the house to the wall.

Filling in the room to talk about MBD

The Powerpoint for this session is downloadable here (SOLIDWORKS files not included):

Model Base Definition using SolidWorks-2017 (4MB)

The second Tuesday breakout session,  I presented on BOM’s, called Building SOLIDWORKS BOMs.  Due to a cancellation by the original speaker, I had to step to not only cover the empty slot in the schedule, but also talk about BOMs without a prepared Powerpoint slide deck or file set.  Since there were no materials for me to work from, I had to skip the Tuesday General Session to give myself time to pull together a session plan and file set.  Given the circumstances, I believe I did well.  I was able to cover many basics about BOMs, and also more advanced capabilities.

  • BOM table display options
  • BOM Type (Top Level, Parts Only and Indented)
  • Options for displaying configurations of the same part
  • Keep Missing Item settings
  • BOM Anchor
  • BOM Template
  • Virtual Parts
  • Document Properties
  • Sorting
  • etc.

Unfortunately, because the session was off-the-cuff, there is no Powerpoint outline to provide.  The session was recorded, so it should be available as a video while the SOLIDWORKS Proceedings are available (soon).

On Wednesday, I was part of the panel discussion about MBD.  Five speakers participated in an engagement with attendees who are interested in MBD.  This session was called SOLIDWORKS World 2017 MBD Learning Path Panel Discussion.  Attendees asked about many MBD related topics, including STEP, real world implications, specific use cases, vendor adoption, etc.