The SolidWorks Blog

SolidWorks World Japan - the CEO's perspective

You probably know that SolidWorks World 2012 is coming soon, but did you know that another SolidWorks World took place only a few weeks ago? In fact, I was there with some of the team.

Of course, I’m talking about SolidWorks World Japan, which takes place every fall; however this year was a little different. In addition to the usual Tokyo event on November 9, there was a second event in Osaka on November 11. So when you add in SolidWorks World Russia and SolidWorks World Israel, that makes five SolidWorks World events this year.

You may recall that I visited Japan earlier this year, and was impressed by the way the people of the country pulled together in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami in March. That continues to be the case—in fact, there was record attendance at the Tokyo event with over 1000 people participating. The event in Osaka drew 250 people, with an additional 250 people tuning in later online for an archived broadcast. That’s not bad for the first time around. A few highlights:

• I was truly inspired by the keynote speech by Professor Ei-ichi Negishi of Purdue University. Professor Negishi was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry last year. What struck me most was his assertion that he never set out to win accolades or prizes—he simply wanted to do work that he thought was meaningful. The point he made was that success comes from doing work that you truly believe in, and that if you are passionate about what you do, it will drive you to do amazing things.

• The SolidWorks Japan team hosted a CSWP party, similar to the one at the larger event. This was the first event I attended since becoming certified myself, and the team presented me with a customized event bracelet to show my status. CSWP certification is highly valued in Japan, and it was a real honor to be part of this celebration and talk with our Japanese customers.

• I also got to meet with Masanobu Higashino and Makoto Yamamoto, winners of the SolidWorks 2012 and Enterprise PDM 2012 beta contests respectively. It was great to talk with both of them about the importance of beta testing, and also to get their opinions on SolidWorks 2012!

  

• The Swiss may claim to make the world’s best watches, but I would be willing to bet that the Japanese make the world’s best elevators. I was really impressed by how smooth they were. It may sound funny, but it takes real engineering skill to design something that works so well under repeated use. In my mind, the teams designing the elevators in Japan are true experts.

Of course, there were lots of training sessions, user presentations, and even a special SolidWorks User Group meeting—more than I can go into in a single blog entry. But what really made me excited was seeing that the SolidWorks community remains vibrant, dynamic and positive, despite the challenges facing the country. Our Japanese customers, resellers and employees have done some amazing things in the last eight months, and I am excited to see what they have in store next year. If you have attended SolidWorks World Japan before, leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.

Reporting back from the SolidWorks Executive Forum in Minneapolis

I had the opportunity to sit in on one of our Executive Forum gatherings in Minneapolis recently.  Despite unseasonal heat for Minneapolis, approximately 30 customers from our largest accounts in the area joined us for the day at the Walker Art center downtown.

If you’re not familiar with them, the Executive Forums are a fairly new program started last year and sponsored entirely by SolidWorks.  They’re geared more toward managers than the power users who normally attend SolidWorks User Group meetings.  The sessions are small, informal, and provide attendees an opportunity to hear the SolidWorks strategy as well as network with peers and exchange best practices (two users from Trail King in South Dakota earned the honor of having driven the farthest with a 4.5 hour road trip).  Customers present as well – rather than a case study on WHY they picked SolidWorks, they talk about HOW they’re using SolidWorks products.  For the SolidWorks employees in the audience, this is the best part.

Trip report: my SolidWorks User Group tour

As you may recall from my earlier post, I spent the week of May 23 driving through the southeastern US with SolidWorks User Group Network coordinator Richard Doyle, attending user group meetings and visiting customers. It is always exciting to get out of the office and meet with SolidWorks users, and I learn something new every time. Rather than give you a day-by-day retelling of my trip, I thought I would talk about some of the highlights.

Each of the user group meetings was different and enlightening in different ways. The first meeting was in Atlanta, Georgia, and was held at the Quickparts headquarters. The second meeting in Greenville, South Carolina, was held at Clemson University. At this meeting, several resellers set up a display of 3D printers for the 70 attendees to demo, and SolidWorks customer Redneck Engineering brought out a few custom choppers. Here’s a picture of me sitting on one of them along with Vince “Nobody” Doll, who runs the company.

A Visit With the Laney SolidWorks User Group

I recently had the pleasure of attending a pretty unique user group event at Laney College in Oakland, California. The group is run by Elise Moss, a long-time supporter of SolidWorks and instructor at the school.  If you’re not familiar, Laney is an urban community college, focused on building skills and career/technical education.

When I arrived for the meeting, Elise gave me a tour of the impressive machine shop and lab where she teaches SolidWorks.  After talking to a few of the instructors and students, I really got a sense of how they focus on skills that students can use to get jobs immediately after completing the course. The school even has a covered area where students build a house each semester. All of the classes contribute to its construction using the skills they’re learning at Laney, such as carpentry, electrical, plumbing, etc. It’s a very different way of learning compared to memorizing dozens of formulas, which was the case when I studied for my ME degree.

When it came to the user group, I learned that while some members were local SolidWorks customers, most were either Elise’s current or former students.  Elise had shared some renderings from the students’ final projects before the meeting, and I was blown away by what they had done in a 12-week course, especially considering they were starting from scratch.  She makes her students work in teams so they learn about sharing files, and all the headaches of references. 

As we got closer to my presentation, I have to admit that I was pretty nervous. I don’t usually speak to students, and I was concerned about the topics I was covering being relevant to the group. I talked about how we plan our products here at SolidWorks, and how we design our software and iterate with users though the process. I also talked a bit about the next release of SolidWorks, and connected the dots with the process.  The group was great. There were all kinds of questions about leveraging GPUs, why we can’t do certain things, and (of course) conversations about graphics cards requirements. This gang knew their stuff, and they weren’t afraid to tell me where we could do better.

I really want to thank Elise and the group for having me—it was a great pleasure. A few days after the event, Elise emailed me to let me know that 9 of 12 students from this semester passed the CSWA exam. That’s pretty impressive.

Congratulations to our newest CSWAs from Laney College!

Meet the CEO at a SolidWorks User Group meeting

Hello all,

I am writing to let you all know that I will be visiting several SolidWorks user groups in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina next week, as follows:

• May 24 - Atlanta, GA                        
• May 25 - Greenville, SC                    
• May 26 - Raleigh/Durham, NC            

If you live in one of those areas, it would be great to meet and talk with you. You can find out more about the meeting times and location on the SolidWorks User Group Network website. I’m also interested in learning about things that are important to SolidWorks customers, so if there are any topics you would like for me to cover, please leave a comment here and I will do my best to prepare for them in advance.

If you can’t make it to one of these meetings, I will be sure to post an update shortly after my trip letting you know what I learned from everyone.

Five Questions Friday with Anne Yust of Micromedics, Inc.

Name: Anne Yust

Title: Engineering Document Control/Drafting

Company: Micromedics, Inc., a company that develops, manufactures and markets FibriJet® Biomaterials Applicators for dispensing biomaterials such as platelet gel and tissue sealants.

Job description: Support Engineering Department with drafting and document control

Hometown: Hanover, Mass. and Richmond, Va.

 

1. How did you find yourself in this career?
My husband suggested in 1997 that I take a CAD course, so I started with AutoCAD and loved it. When we moved from Arizona to Minnesota in 2000, I worked for a medical device company that eventually merged with another company that used SolidWorks. So that’s when I learned it, doing document change orders (DCOs). Mostly I made changes to SolidWorks parts and drawings, and I would also model from scratch. Of course, once I learned SolidWorks, I never wanted to return to AutoCAD (why return to a Sentra when you can drive a Murano?). I really enjoy organizing files and encouraging everyone to follow the same procedures for file management.

 

2. What is your proudest career moment?
I was honored to be on stage at SolidWorks World two out of the five years I attended. In 2008 I was nominated and in 2009 I was awarded the SolidWorks User Group Leader of the Year from among more than 150 user group leaders worldwide.

 

3. What goal inspires you most?
Sharing SolidWorks and computer tips and shortcuts; setting up systems to simplify workflow. I know that Lynn Allen of AutoDesk has a job title of “AutoCAD Evangelist” and I would like a similar title, maybe even working for SolidWorks one day (hint, hint).

 

4. How has SolidWorks made a difference in your life?
In 2006 I volunteered to lead the Twin Cities COSMOS (now Simulation) User Group. This is what opened doors for me as a familiar face and name at SolidWorks World and in the SolidWorks community. I am amazed and humbled by all the people who recognize me and greet me wherever I go, all related to SolidWorks.

 

5. What do you do for fun?
I’m a member of the Minnesota Mandolin Orchestra. We perform in local parks in the summer and at nursing homes in the spring and fall. I have my first small solo this weekend at our first performance of the season. I’m also part of the mandolin group that plays Christmas music in December. I also play guitar and mandolin in bluegrass jams around town. It’s cool to play “with a bunch of old men” for 2-3 hours at a time!

Five Questions Friday with Rachel York of Applied Robotics, Inc.

Name: Rachel Diane York

Title: Mechanical Draftsman

Job description: Responsible for routing and completion of Engineering Change/Support Requests submitted to the Engineering Department.

Company: Applied Robotics, Inc. Applied Robotics is a leading global provider of specialized end-of-arm tooling and connectivity solutions designed to meet unique application and market needs, and bringing new levels of flexibility and efficiency to bear on the industrial material handling process.

Hometown: Atlanta, Georgia

1) Why do you choose to do the work you do?
I grew up the only child of a man who could fix anything, almost to the point I would want to break things just to watch him work his magic.  Watching him tear things down and build them back up to something even better made me want to take everything apart, just to see how it worked. Worse case scenario: Dad could fix it.

My mother encouraged my curiosity; whenever something broke, a can opener, garage door opener, radio, lawn mower, whatever it was, she would always give me the chance to mend it before it was deemed a lost cause and handed off to my dad. My favorite part of what I do is seeing the ‘insides’ of machines and applying what I know about how one works to fix and improve, or even help create another. The greatest challenge of all is wanting to be a part of creating something that can’t be improved, simply because it was perfect the first time – come on, it could happen!

SolidWorks User Group Network hits 200 groups!

I copied and pasted this from Richard Doyle's blog on the SolidWorks forums. For those of you who haven't met him, Richard is the SolidWorks User Group Network coordinator, and all-around great guy. I know he's really excited about this.

***

Just a little over an hour ago, the Kettle Morain SolidWorks User Group (KEMSUG) in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin became the 200th SolidWorks User Group registered with SWUGN.

Little did we know back in 2000 that SWUGN would be so successful.  In fact, in 2000 we didn't really know just how many SolidWorks User Groups even existed.  A 2004 "reconciliation" put the number at 66 worldwide.  In November of 2007, the Central Savannah River Area SolidWorks User Group became the 100th group in the US.

And now we stand at 200, but not for long.  There are at least 2 more groups coming on line in the next few days, and our 2011 "Fill The Holes" campaign is meant to create additional SolidWorks User Groups in areas that are lacking.  I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see 220 - 230 groups registered by the end of this year.

The credit for the success of SWUGN lands square on the shoulders of the SWUGN Committee and the local chapter leaders. These folks take time away from their families and other activities to provide SolidWorks users with an amazing resource.  If you're not a member of a local SolidWorks User Group chapter, you are missing out on additional training, terrific networking opportunities, and a chance to make some great friends.

Check the SWUGN "Find a Group" page for a local chapter in your area.  If you live and work in an area that needs a group, consider starting one.  If you hurry, you could be group number 201 (or 202, or 203).