The Future of the SOLIDWORKS Communities

As many of you might be aware, there are some changes coming to the SOLIDWORKS User Forum. I wanted to take this opportunity to explain our plans for the future of the SOLIDWORKS Communities and the SOLIDWORKS Forums in particular.

For us the SOLIDWORKS Community is the most valuable thing that we have. It is composed of strong, passionate, incredibly diverse, amazing people from all over the world. This community includes everyone from elementary school kids to adults, who are generous and very much involved with local communities and all share a passion for using technology and science to improve everybody’s lives. They continue to be a constant source of inspiration and motivation for all of us.

Our plan is to constantly invest in our communities. In order to assure this content is rich and useful, we continuously add high-quality training material and invite star technologists to share engaging stories of their work. We have a team exclusively dedicated to ensure that these vibrant communities keep evolving and that everybody can benefit and contribute with free and easy access.

We also want to be part of the lives of these communities. We want to enable makers in all corners of the world to make anything they want, and for students to learn what they need to pursue their dreams. We want startups to grow and prosper, and we have even created a Marketplace for people and companies to trade their services.

This is all part of our vision for the SOLIDWORKS Community, and we are very much convinced that to realize our objective, the community must be fully integrated with everything else we do, literally one click away from a CAD model to a post. Our strategy is “From Products to Platform,” from scattered products to a single place where all collaboration can happen. This is why every application we have in the 3DEXPERIENCE Works portfolio includes tools to build and access communities.

The Forum is certainly part of this strategy. Please know that the current third-party underlying technology is being discontinued, and it makes sense to migrate to our own forums tool, SWYM, part of 3DEXPERIENCE Works. The advantages will be significant; we own the SWYM technology and we can continue to evolve it to meet your ongoing requests and needs much faster. We will continue our dedication to learning by growing the platform and the communities within it to the largest repository of technical and scientific knowledge on the planet.

We have been preparing for a long time to migrate all of the content and provide everybody access with the same credentials for the move in April. We will make sure that all the content will be accessible by all search engines, and that your access credentials and privacy are protected with the best and most up-to-date security protocols.

We acknowledge that this implies a change and there will be a learning curve. The look and feel will evolve and new features will be introduced. Very likely we will make mistakes and certain things may be missing at the onset. But again, we believe that perfection is a constant pursuit not an achievement, and I pledge to you we will not relent in the pursuit, and I am sure we can count on your help, as usual. Stay tuned for more news coming soon.