The SolidWorks Blog

SolidWorks Weekly News Roundup

Summer is the busy season here at SolidWorks. Various things I'm working on are keeping me away from my desk so long that I haven't been able to report on all of the things that are happening here. So here's a quick roundup of a few things you might be interested in. Things should slow down eventually...I hope.

1. The new SolidWorks forum environment is scheduled to go live next week, probably Wednesday or Thursday. We're migrating to a new platform, which will enable lots of functionality that we don't currently have, and they tell me that the search feature will be light years better than what's there now. So if you haven't checked out the forums in a while, take a look. Definitely a major improvement. https://forum.solidworks.com

2. SolidWorks 2009 Service Pack 4 is now available for those of you on subscription support. If you want to see what's been fixed and what's new, check out the SolidWorks Customer Portal.

3. SolidWorks Simulation and Enterprise PDM 2010 beta versions are now available, in addition to the regular SolidWorks 2010 beta. If you currently have either of these and you want to see what's new, head over to the beta page and get signed up. I promise it won't hurt.

4. Want to give a presentation at SolidWorks World 2010? Now's your chance--we're officially accepting submissions. All you have to do is click on this link right here and tell us why you have what it takes to get up in front of dozens (or hundreds) of your peers and lay down some knowledge.

What's in it for you? Well, in addition to adulation and possible fame, your admission fee to the event is comped, which could save you or your boss some serious cash. And who wouldn't want that? SolidWorks User Group guru Richard Doyle gives out some pointers on his blog, which you can find right here.

So that's it for right now. Hopefully this will make up for any perceived inattention, and if not, there's always next week. And speaking of next week, we'll have something pretty cool happening that I can't talk about right now. So stay tuned.

Design That Matters: saving lives one project at a time

Over four million children die each year before their first month of life; 99% of them in developing countries. For those of you who joined us at SolidWorks World this year (or watched the videos), you’ll recall us recognizing local nonprofit Design That Matters for tackling this problem with an incubator designed specifically for the needs of developing nations.

Well, DtM isn’t resting on its laurels; the engineering and design students have taken on the next phase, providing a low-cost, low-maintenance respiration device for “thermoregulation” using CPAP (Continuous Positive Air Pressure). This will help premature and low birth weight infants with respiratory distress.

I’ll let you go to their website to learn more about the medical condition – I’ve already exceeded the limits of my medical know-how. So, let’s look at the winning design, as presented by a cross-functional team of students from the MIT school of Engineering, the Sloan Graduate school, and the Rhode Island School of Design.

 

I was lucky enough to attend their final presentation and was blown away by the team’s resourcefulness and problem-solving skills. Now, these are students from very different backgrounds and disciplines, all thrown together to attack this one problem against a strict deadline (the grading cycle). So seeing them learn how to work together was fascinating. But the design was cool. Most respirators cost from $2,500 - $9,000 and require lots of training and expensive parts.

This device (shown above) had one moving part, and made clever use of off-the-shelf products to save cost and complexity. It ended up coming in under $600, and did all the important things of the fancy machines. The user interface got the same attention as the device itself, with no words and simple “happy face” and "sad face" pictures for three lights. There were three design goals: affordability, intuitive UI, and the ability to be locally-maintained. The DtM students went three for three!

What do we get out of this? Thousands of lives saved, and the next generation of engineers and designers who are inspired to make this world a little better. What a great time to be an engineer!

Who do you want to hear from?

Wow, no posts in a while. Things are busy around here, and I guess the rest of the crew and I haven't had much bloggin' time. I'll get to work on that.

That said, I need to go out and start recruiting some new faces. We should have some guest bloggers coming on soon (more about that later), and I'm going to get those guys in the UK cross posting some of the great technical stuff they've been writing. But what I really want to know is who you want to hear from. When I go out and start knocking on doors next week or the week after, it would be good to know which doors to be knocking on.

Let me know. Is it our VP of R&D? The guys writing the code? The mail guy? Sock it to me.

Oh, and info on beta coming soon.

It's official--SolidWorks has shipped 1,000,000 licenses!

This is awesome news, and we're really excited about sharing it. Earlier this month, we shipped our one-millionth license of SolidWorks to Ogio International of Bluffdale, Utah. We'd like to extend our deepest thanks to all of the customers, resellers, partners, employees, and other members of the SolidWorks community for your support, and for putting your trust in us. We truly could have never reached this point without all of you.

If you're interested in learning more about this milestone, take a look at the new section on our website. You'll find a video of CEO Jeff Ray handing the one-millionth license to the folks at Ogio, the official press release, and a funny little trivia game we've put together--see how much you really know about SolidWorks!

Again, thanks to all of you, whether you've been with us since the start, or you're just getting started with SolidWorks. And as Jeff and Jon say in the video below, this is just the beginning.

It's not how high you jump, but how well you bounce...

Last week, SWUGN leader Richard Doyle posted a blog entry about Rodney Hall. We first learned about Rod and his employment troubles on Twitter, and I had a chance to speak with him before SolidWorks World 2009, and even mentioned him on stage. Well, there’s some great news—as Richard mentioned, Rod recently found a new job, and when he emailed me to spread the good news, I gave him a call to congratulate him.

While talking to Rod on the phone, he told me “It’s not how high you jump, but how well you bounce that matters.” Rod personifies those values. Rod’s employer was bought out by a competitor, and in the interest of “synergies,” tossed most of the employees out the door, including Rod. Like so many others across the country–and around the world–he fell victim to the brutality of this economy.

Rod was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth; he grew up poor and did all the wrong things in school. He was bored, and saw little opportunity for the future. Then, in a high-school drafting class, a light went on. He fell in love with engineering design. He quickly progressed to wireframes and then discovered early 3D CAD during a class field trip to the local IBM plant. It was there that he saw his destiny.

But life wasn’t finished putting up barriers in front of him. He couldn’t afford college, so he got a job as a machinist after graduating from high school. His life story could have been completed then and there, but he saw the future in 3D, and taught himself 3D CAD. As a result of his machining experience, he could design products that could actually be manufactured, an edge he had over his college-educated peers.

Rod applies his practical design skills in his daily life, and recently designed and built a whole-house vacuum that saved him $1500. Rod gives back to the community, too. He teaches at the local community college, because, “...being a classroom leader forces you to know more than the people you teach.”

So, back to our story. When Rod’s employer closed the doors, Rod picked himself up and started to hustle, finding an exciting new job in less than a month. While his job has taken him over four hours away from his home, he’s already looking at a teaching position in the local community college system, and is planning to start a new SolidWorks user group at his new destination.

You know, a word that gets thrown around too often these days is “passion.” That’s a shame. If everyone got to spend five minutes with Rod (and so many of you just like him), we would treat “passion” with the respect it deserves. Of course times are tough, and innocent people are suffering. But there will always be a need for people like Rod on this planet. And that gets me up out of bed every day, because I get to work with them.

Amazing things happening at Boston's MATCH School

I recently viewed a remarkable video from a charter school in Boston called The MATCH School. Founded only seven years ago, and taking up residence in a former urban auto parts dealer (“Ellis the Rim Man”) building, the school was launched on the dream that underprivileged kids in some of Boston’s toughest neighborhoods are no different than their entitled peers in the bucolic suburbs.

The simple truth is that all kids have a thirst to learn and grow. Given the proper environment of discipline, unflagging respect, a strong sponsor at home, and some of the most passionate teachers on the planet, this school has achieved the impossible. In last years’ rigorous Massachusetts MCAS testing for proficiency, the 10th grade students beat their peers in the wealthy suburbs in math and science. Look, before entering MATCH, these kids didn’t have a chance of passing the test, much less beating the other schools.

Alan Safran is the school’s director, and he notes that all the teachers are housed in a dorm on the top floor of the building. They stay after school with the kids in what he calls “tutoring on steroids”.  The study has to be hard; many students entering as freshmen from other Boston public schools test out at a fourth grade proficiency in math. The day is long (most stay past 6:00 pm) and the study extends to Saturdays when other kids are sleeping in, throwing the football, or playing their Wiis. There is no transportation service; I spoke to one student whose commute entails a one mile walk, two buses, and the Boston T rail. Her journey spans an hour and a half–each way.

The results of this love, energy, and rigor? Watch the video announcing the test score results to the kids, along with some of the others on their YouTube page. And grab a Kleenex!