A Welcoming Reception

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Welcome reception is the official opening of the exhibit hall on Sunday night at SolidWorks World. Folks started arriving early in a steady stream and by 5:30PM the place was packed. Rows of exhibits lined the exhibit hall and in the center of it all was the Product Showcase with over 50 SolidWorks-designed products in all their glory.

I was anxious to see it all, but first on my mind was food, which promptly became available at 5:30PM. An assortment of eats was available, plenty of hors d’oeuvres, a pasta bar, and a salad bar with various salads in tiny ice-cream cones that you could eat along with the salad, and of course, open bars at all four corners of the room.

Turning my mind back to the exhibit hall, it was impossible to miss the yellow sports car smack dab in the center of the hall. It’s called the Koenigsegg CRR and was designed by a 39-employee company in Sweden. All the mechanical parts—the chassis, engine, shock absorbers—essentially everything that is not painted yellow was designed with SolidWorks software. According to company CEO Christian Von Koenigsegg, the carbon-fiber car has a 806 hp engine and is the fastest production car in Europe (an American version is due out soon) with a proven speed around a circular track of 242 mph. Later in the night, when SolidWorks CEO John McEleney climbed into the car and started the engine, a crowd appeared. Nobody could take their eyes off that car!

While wondering through the Partner Pavilion I spotted a few booths that seemed interesting. I had a hush-hush conversation with David Shoenfeld, the VP of marketing for Next Engine (https://www.nextengine.com/), a company located in Santa Monica, California. Monday morning the company is announcing a brand new product it’s been working on for five years. David was excited. According to him, the new product is the size of a cereal box and makes available something an engineer might normally pay 10x to 20x more for. I can’t say anymore, but I’m looking forward to seeing the response on Monday.

3Dconnextion (https://www.3dconnextion.com/) out of Los Gatos, California, has a new product this year called Space Pilot. Essentially, the product is an extension of the company’s earlier products Space Mouse, Space Ball, and Space Traveler, which are controllers that let you simultaneously pan, zoom and rotate your SolidWorks. Space Pilot adds new intelligent functionality that enable you to access up to 21 SolidWorks commands (such as Cut, Fillet, and Linear Pattern, if you’re working on a part) on the controller, putting more functions at your finger tips so your hand makes fewer trips to the keyboard. The device sales for $499.

Matthew West

SolidWorks alumnus. I like plate reverb, Rat pedals, Thai curry, New Weird fiction, my kids, Vespas, Jazzmasters, my wife & Raiders of the Lost Ark. Not necessarily in that order.