SLUGME8 – From 3D to Reality

By

SLUGME (The SOLIDWORKS Largest User Group Meeting Ever) has become one of the cornerstone yearly events for the SOLIDWORKS community. If you want a detailed history of how this event came to be, you can check out this SLUGME – Through the Years blog.

Todd Blacksher dreamed up this event in 2016 and fast-forward to this year as we are preparing to deliver the 8th iteration. When I joined the planning team for this event as part of SLUGME5, I never imagined the wild ride that SLUGME would afford us over the next couple years.

SLUGME6 was a 25-hour+ broadcast featuring presentations from talented SOLIDWORKS users across the globe. You can see a highlight video of that broadcast here. Along the way, our design team modeled an amazing racecar in 3DEXPERIENCE Works.

As part of SLUGME7, we collaborated with several charitable organizations around the world. Peruvian Hearts, for example, promotes and enables Peruvian woman to seek higher education in Peru. We even sent Jose Saldana, a SOLIDWORKS User Group Leader, to be there in-person and teach a SOLIDWORKS class to some young engineers. For the keystone design of this broadcast, our design team created a Dr. Who-themed workstation for an amazing young woman named Jenica. You can read all about SLUGME7 here. You can also see us deliver that amazing desk to Jenica’s house here.

SLUGME8

This year, SLUGME is all about the makers’ journey from 3D to reality. We will once again be broadcasting live from Waltham and streaming to the SOLIDWORKS YouTube Channel. Just like SLUGME 6 and 7, you will see a live 3D design session with our amazing design team. Jason Pohl, Andy Barnes, Jordan Tadic, and Shreyaz Vaidya have shown us the amazing capabilities of SOLIDWORKS, xShape, xDesign, xGenerative Design, SIMULIA, and much more over the past few years. These guys are super-talented.

As a SLUGME first, we will then take the design over to the 3DEXPERIENCE Lab to physically build it with some incredibly talented makers. Chin-Loo and Sal Lama will be our onsite experts for all things woodworking. Have you checked out their new YouTube Channel yet? – Our Next Make. Kirby Downey and Luke Daley are expert 3D printers, makers, and prop builders. They are traveling in from the UK to help with all the realism and fine details of this build. We are planning to take you on the journey through the lab as this dataset gets built from start to finish.

So, what are we making? You have probably seen one of those little lending libraries in a neighborhood near you. They are a perfect dataset for a typical maker to tackle with fairly standard tools. With the talented team that we have assembled and the capabilities of the 3DEXPERIENCE Lab, we are going to elevate this design to a higher level. You will have to tune into the broadcast to see the final version, but Jason Pohl has been throwing around the word “Whimsical” quite a bit. This house will be anything but ordinary when our Design Team and Build Team are done with it.

As if this awesome build wasn’t enough, we even partnered with the FabFoundation to sponsor five hand-picked, independent makers to prototype their designs. Neil Gershenfeld and Sherry Lasiter will drop into Waltham to recap these projects and talk all about the FabFoundation.

Before we go any further, Go and set your reminders now!

You will have to join the Live Stream to get the full story, but here is a quick recap of what you can expect to see:

  •        Broadcasting live from Waltham and streaming on YouTube at 1:00 EST on Thursday October 26th
  •        Focused totally on the Makers journey from 3D CAD through the physical build
  •        We will design a relatable and approachable, yet awesome little lending library in 3DEXPERIENCE Works and physically make it in the Fablab live on YouTube
  •        Woodworking, 3Dprinting, Painting and more will be on display
  •        We also partnered with the FabFoundation to sponsor five, hand-picked projects with $1000 as part of SLUGME8. We will review those projects during the broadcast.

Make sure you join the Live Stream Link to talk with our design and build teams in the Live Chat.

See you there!

Dan Wagner

Dan Wagner

Dan is manager of the SOLIDWORKS User Group Network (SWUGN). he has spent over 12 years in the reseller channel providing technical support to SOLIDWORKS users, teaching SOLIDWORKS classes, and delivering marketing & sales presentations to new and experienced SOLIDWORKS users. He is a Certified SOLIDWORKS Expert and is thrilled to continue serving the SOLIDWORKS community for many years to come.