DraftSight in Sight at 3DEXPERIENCE World 2025 #3DXW25

3DEXPERIENCE World 2025 has nearly a full schedule of DraftSight sessions! Time to go!

3DEXPERIENCE World 2025 is about a month away in Houston, TX at George R. Brown Convention Center. There’s a variety of sessions available. This includes a full catalog of DraftSight presentations and discussions. You can build a nearly full schedule each day of the conference with just DraftSight topics.

Day 1

All of this starts on February 24, 2025 (the first full day of the conference). After the General Session, at 11AM you can join the DraftSight Keynote in General Assembly B auditorium. This presentation will be hosted by Manish Kumar, CEO of DS SolidWorks Corp.

Later that day, at 5:15PM you can attend DraftSight for the AutoCAD User in room 351. This session will cover the similarities between DraftSight and AutoCAD, including AutoLISP, UI, batch printing and more. Also covered will be similarities with SOLIDWORKS.

Day 2

The first session on Tuesday (February 25, 2025) at 11AM will be DraftSight: Explore 2025 features, BIM integration and xDraftSight. This session will introduce the new features released for 2025 to “revolutionize your 2D CAD workflows”. Special attention will be given to new BIM integration and xDraftSight.

After lunch at 1:30PM, you’ll be able to attend DraftSight: Enhancing Industry Collaboration with the 3DX Ecosystem. This session will discuss how this amazing application can be used in collaboration with advanced 3D solutions like CATIA and SOLIDWORKS, providing a robust platform for detailed schematics, technical drawings, and design documentation.

Tuesday has a full schedule with more sessions, all in room 351.

  • DraftSight Unlocked: Tips, Tricks, and Time-Saving Secrets at 2:30PM
  • DraftSight: Everything a CAD Manager Needs to Know at 4PM
  • DraftSight: Ask the DraftSight Team Anything at 5:15PM

Day 3

Wednesday (February 26, 2025) sees a shift in gears with a hands-on session at 8AM, called DraftSight: xDraftSight Hands-on. I know that name sounds like a sequel for an action movie, but this session will put you at the helm to try out an important new tool that allows you to use 2D CAD functionality on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Since this is a hands-on session, space is especially limited. If you haven’t already signed up, you may still have a chance to join if there are no-shows by the start of the session.

At 9:30AM, you’ll have a chance to show the world that you’ve got skills in DraftSight with the Certification Exams! (Check availability before you go.)

At 11:30 will be the DraftSight LIVE Closing Session to recap all the great things you learned during your time at World. Also, Steve Brazier is the Keynote speaker. Steve Brazier is a globally recognized tech analyst and the visionary founder of Canalys, a leading global tech analyst firm. Steve is renowned for his dynamic presentation style, cutting-edge insights, and bold, forward-thinking analysis. Are you ready to evolve? In an era where AI is reshaping industries and redefining roles, adaptability is no longer optional—it’s essential. 

Retrospective

It’s been a long time since I covered DraftSight topics. This old article from 2011 has some images of the original interface. A lot has improved since then.

Check out all the new enhancements and xDraftSight at 3DEXPERIENCE World 2025! I hope to see you there!

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Presentations at SOLIDWORKS World 2017

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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.

Just over two week until SWW15

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Just over two weeks remain.  There’s still time to sign up and plan to go to SOLIDWORKS WORLD 2015.

I’m presenting 3 sessions this year:  Two identical hands-on sessions on new Drawing Zones functionality in SOLIDWORKS 2015; and one breakout session to introduce the topic of Model Based Definition in the context of SOLIDWORKS.

There are many other great SOLIDWORKS WORLD 2015 sessions, well over 200!  Below is just a short sample.

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SolidWorks World 2012 Proceedings site is now available ( #fb )

SolidWorks World 2012 presentations are now available for download or viewing on the preceedings website.  Visit http://www.solidworks.com/sww/proceedings/ to access the proceedings information.

Also available there are videos of the General Sessions, Partner Pavilion information and some photos.