I slept in again this morning due to a little late night partying with the guys from our user group and a few bloggers in the French Quarter after we left Mardi Gras World. I got to go to Pat O's for the first time and had a hurricane. I felt better this morning than I thought I would though!
Today's general session theme was "Designing Better Products For The Future". The stage opened with the Star Trek set and several SW employees dressed in classice Trek costumes.
They went through the skit with the captain making some pretty funny Shatnerisms. Various times they were hailed by some destressed or angry designer, each one a different race consisting of human, Klingon, Vulcan, and Ferengi (very realistic costuming and acting, btw). Everyone in my group thinks the Klingon was John McEleney - I'm not sure.
They showed off quite a few new features coming in SW 2008 to help these designers, but then the crew mutinied when the captain kept taking all the credit for the new features. So they beamed in a new captain...Leonard Nimoy! He finished off the skit with them showing some of the new Instant 3D technology.
I will have some more pictures up in my album, but it probably be tomorrow or Friday, so check back.
Here is a list and description of some of the new stuff they have in SW 2008:
Large Assembly Management Tools - You can open large assemblies in fast preview mode, manipulate and isolate the parts/subs you want to work on and then only the visible parts are loaded into memory. You can also choose to turn on parts that are directly mated to the visible parts, turning them on. All assembly mates stay intact, regardless if the parts are visible or not. There is also mis-aligned hole detection.
SWIFT FilletXpert - When choosing an edge to fillet, this tool will allow you to choose from a selection of related filleting options that can be applied instead of having to pick each edge individually.
SWIFT DimXpert - This allows you to specify datums in the parts and SW will automatically add dimensions and annotations, including GD&T.
BOM Properties - You can add custom properties directly into the BOM on the drawing and that pushes the value back into the part/assy. You can also add parametric notes just by clicking, such as adding a balloon to a note. The BOM can be rearranged directly on the drawing by just clicking a row and dragging it.
Direct Editing - There is a RealView appearance pallette that allows you to quickly apply material textures to parts. Fillets, drafts, and holes can be automatically recognized in imported geometry.
Motion Simulation - This allows you to easily simulate motion in assemblies, including the effects of physics, torque, momentum, etc. They showed a very detailed assembly model of the game Mouse Trap and the ball moved as it would in real life.
DriveWorksXpress - Allows automated rules-based model and drawing creation.
FloXpress - Analyze fluid flow.
Drafting Enhancements - Can now copy and paste drawing sheets, both in the same file and into different files.
Repeat Mates - Allows you to place, say, a bolt and mate it and then click on another hole to place another mated instance.
Advanced Mechanical Mates - Screw mate, linear coupling mate, and path mate.
Dynamic Dragging - You can sketch a profile and then drag it to extrude or cut without having to use the feature manager. I was told that it will also work for shell. There is a "ruler" that pops up while you are dragging to enable acurate placement without having to enter values from the keyboard.
Instant 3D - Allows you to automatically dissect parts into their defining features/sketches to enable easier data reuse.
After the demo was over, Jeff Ray talked to Leonard Nimoy and commented on how some of the science-fiction Star Trek technology is now real-world technology.
<a name="goals">He also stated three goals that they have commited to.
1. To continue to provide improvements to focus on design, not CAD (i.e., make technology bend to humans, not the other way around).
2. Help people save time by increasing reuse of existing designs.
3. To help customers design with confidence.
John McEleny closed out the session by iterating the concept of "Absurdly Ideal". I didn't post about it Monday, but he showed the SawStop table saw and commented on how they came up with it by asking not, "How can we make a table saw safer?", but by asking, "How can we make a saw that will cut wood, but not flesh?" Kind of "out of the box"-type stuff.
He also announced the dates and location of SolidWorks World 2008 as January 20-24, 2008 in San Diego, CA.
Well, I guess that does it for SolidWorks World 2007. I hope these posts were informative. I'm off to my last sessions, and will be flying back home in the morning. It's been a blast, and I can't wait to see 2008!
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