SolidWorks World 2008 Inspired to Design VEXplorer Video from Solidsmack on Vimeo.
This was the introduction animation (linked above) used each day at the start of the General Session. In a presentation with Jeff Ray, VEXplorer was introduced. This is a Student Design Kit where kids of ages 10 and up can build their own robot, and design other variations with the Student Edition of SolidWorks, which is now provided for free with the robot kit. Honestly, I wasn’t that impressed with the robot itself. I saw the live demonstration of the robot in the Partners Pavilion. It would be fun for one or two uses for one or two times. I don’t see what would keep the average kid coming back to it. However, it is a start in the right direction to help inspire kids to explore design at a younger age. It is certainly a good way to expose kids to SolidWorks as the preferred software for accomplishing engineering tasks.