SolidWorks Rollout Event

In what might be considered the premier SoildWorks Rollout event in the San Francisco Bay Area, Hawk Ridge Systems kicked off their rollout tour for SolidWorks 2010 at the Hiller Aviation Museum.  Now, I don’t normally rave Presentersabout VARs doing anything, but this event stands out.  Where other VARs are holding events at their offices or even just doing webinars, Hawk Ridge Systems went all out.  Despite the first major storm to hit California in a few years*, attendance to this event was good.

The topics covered during the event included many of the improvements in Solidworks 2010, from predictability and consistancy to the new Dimensions Palette.  Also included in the event were fairly in depth presentations for 3DVia, Enterprise PDM and SolidWorks Simulator.  For the first time ever, I’ve developed an appreciation for the functionality within 3DVia.  I’m still not the audience to which this application should be pitched, but hey, it looks cool.

On top of everything else, lunch from Pasta Pomodoro was an unexpected delight.  I’m SolidWorks Rolloutalso happy about being able to take a free tour of the Hiller Aviation Museum, which has been on my todo list for a long time.  The museum was a little smaller than I expected, though every cubic inch has some aeroplane or other sky contraption and wonderment.  I bought the t-shirt (as I always do).  One complaint I have about using this location for events like SolidWorks Rollouts is that the museum remained open during the presentations.  Once in awhile, arriving patrons did get a bit noisy which made it hard to focus on the presenter.

As usual, sponsors did get their chance to speak.  Fortunately, they kept their announcements short and sweet.  Taken on the whole, this was an event that stands out as being well above par (or below par if you are a golfer).

*A major storm for California consists of an amount of rain and wind that other portions of the planet may consider timid.  We had a lot of slowed traffic and neighborhood debris from trees and turned-over trash cans.  That’s about it.  But it’s enough to cause people to change their plans.

SolidWorks 2010 Rollouts season

A lot of VARs are planning some pretty cool events to rollout SolidWorks 2010.  I would recommend checking with your VAR if you haven’t already been contacted by them about their offerings.  Here’s a couple of examples:

In the San Francisco Bay Area, Hawkridge Systems has several planned events, one of which is at the Hiller Aviation Museum.  There are many other events around California and in Nevada, Oregon, Canada, etc.

GoEngineering has several morning-long sessions available in a variety of cities.

Then there’s 3D Vision Technologies and their webinar schedule starting this week.

SolidWorks 2010 tune-up

There’s something different about SolidWorks 2010.  It’s hard to put my finger on it.  It just seems to be a little …oh I don’t know… snappier or peppier.   That’s strange.   I mean, there are obvious improvements in such areas as user interface, reliability and predictable feature results, but there’s something else.

Well, I lie, I know exactly what is different.  SolidWorks has had a tune-up.  There’s a ton of really old code in SolidWorks that’s been acting like built-up sludge in an old 4-cylinder 1.0 litre engine that was stuffed into a 1969 Mustang Fastback.   (I know that the analogy is wrong on so many levels, which is the point.)   Some of that old code has now been cleaned up.  It’s not a magical change in every area.  But there is improvement on certain types of solid model features.  Due to the code clean up, those features will rebuild (much) faster.  This is accomplished without SpeedPak or Lightweight memory hacks, er I mean tricks, er I mean shortcuts, I mean…nevermind.  SolidWorks will naturally rebuild models faster now.   Finally, this is the improvement many of us have been requesting for years!  We still have the advantage of SpeedPak and Lightweight, but now the actual features themselves will rebuild faster with more efficient underlying code.  To realize the improved rebuilt times, each solid model must be saved as SolidWorks 201o format.  (Even SolidWorks 2010 will still rebuild older files inefficiently until that are saved in the current format.)

I hope to have a list of improved features soon.  One feature where I’ve seen significant improvement is Delete Face, which used to be memory intensive with long rebuild times.  It now rebuilds much quicker.