SolidWorks chants 'collaboration' mantra

ORLANDO, USA: It was all about innovation and collaboration. The 15th annual SolidWorks World event showcased new capabilities to the SolidWorks 3D design software.

Though the SolidWorks software is a matured product now, it continues to get a fair number of enhancements year on year.

Dassault Systèmes, the parent company of SolidWorks, announced the introduction of My.SolidWorks, a new free service that aggregates company and community knowledge. Presently in beta version, My.SolidWorks is designed to pull relevant information (blog posts, forums, help files, YouTube, Twitter, and more) into a single view.

The new free software can be customized so as to view only relevant information and updates concerning particular industry. The existing SolidWorks subscription service customers can also gain access to customer portal information, such as Knowledge Base resources and Software Performance Reports, and can browse and search both
public and private areas for answers to their questions.

Bertrand Sicot, CEO,  Dassault Systèmes, said that the SolidWorks community has doubled in size-- to two million users-- in just three years. This, along with one million users on 3D ContentCentral, demonstrates that SolidWorks users are active and collaborative online.

Sicot said: " As custodians of the community, we're passionate about helping our customers create, innovate and design the best products possible. My.SolidWorks will help our users better leverage the energy and knowledge of community."

The 3D ContentCentral is also a free service enabling users to search, configure, download and request 2D and 3D configurable models of engineering components from thousands of suppliers.

Boyalakuntla Kishore, Director of Product Management, SolidWorks, pointed out that 'Data Live' and collaboration will be key component in new SolidWorks products. "When it comes to designing, the real IP is not the geometry but the intelligence that is built into the geometry. Today, this intelligence is not being reused every time when a new design is being created. With our next generation products we want to ensure that data is always live. This means that the thing that values most to the companies (IP) is always live and can be reused also."

"In a collaborative environment, people also need to be allowed to search and find relevant information. So 'Tagging' and 'search' are also key components in SolidWorks products."

Moving ahead, Solid Works is expected to bring a slew of enhancements to the SolidWorks 2014, due to ship later this year. Though little information is available on the new software a preview to the new software shows several enhancements like introduction of Replace view model, a feature that allows you to replace the reference for a given view or views inside a drawing, sunlight and sunlight animations, network rendering animations among others.
(This author was hosted by SolidWorks at the 15th annual SolidWorks World event held in Orlando)