Students display robots, cars, plane, tractors and their own designs at SolidWorks World 2011

It has been a busy week at SolidWorks World 2011 in San Antonio Texas. We announced 1 million licenses sold to educational institutions and I love coming to work everyday to help out so many students who use SolidWorks to design amazing products.

I have to thank all the students and educators who attended SolidWorks World; especially the teams that displayed their own products in the Partner Expo Hall.

LASA Robotics displayed their robots from both the high school First Robotics FRC 418 and Texas Best Robotics competitions.

They were joined by the University of Texas Arlington Battlebots team, University of Texas Austin FSAE team and Rube Goldberg team, and the Texas A&M Formula Hybrid team, SAE Aero team and ASABE 1/4 scale tractor team.

Other students featured at the Day 3 General Session including Riley Lewis age 13, who uses SolidWorks for a variety of design projects for competition and to solve design problems.

Ben Gulak, MIT student, and founder of BPG-Werks, wowed the audience with the "Shredder".

Also featured were students from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. Professor Paulo Iscold and his students from UFMG Brazil that set four world aero records for the Red Bull racing team this year.

The educators that attended SolidWorks world represent all ages from middle school and high school through college and university. They really created an excellent program for both our commerical users and their fellow collegues.

Monday night I got to have dinner with Casey Pieretti and Bill Spracher of Discovery Channel's new pilot Bionic Builders. Just watch their video – Amazing.

Growing up, we had a black and white TV. I had a chance to remember the days watching the news about Apolo 13 – glued to a fuzzy screen and praying. To listen to the events from Commander Capt James Lovell and Lead Flight Director Gene Kranz on stage Monday gave me enough inspiration to last a lifetime.

It's a great time to be a mechanical engineer – I am fully recharged! Marie

Bio
Twitter
Latest Posts

Marie Planchard

Senior Director, Early Engagement, 3DEXPERIENCE Works at Dassault Systemes

Marie Planchard is an education and engineering advocate. As Senior Director of Education & Early Engagement, SOLIDWORKS, she is responsible for global development of content and social outreach for the 3DEXPERIENCE Works products across all levels of learning including educational institutions, Fab Labs, and entrepreneurship.