I cannot help but feel a little melancholy when I realize that I will not be meeting all the wonderful users of SOLIDWORKS again until next year. This year was the first year that 3DEXPERIENCE World returned to the “original” form with everything in person, and no virtual sessions. Except for a few sessions, like the keynotes (see them here), everything was in person.

In other words, you had to be there.

I was worried that this might make for a smaller event, but it still attracted more than 4,000 people. Hopefully, this number will increase in time. While the virtual version of the event has been great, and the hybrid version worked to ease back into the “new normal,” it is now a good time to return to past glory.

 (Photo: Lennart Tinndahl.)

Getting there

Before I go into my impression of the event, I want to say a few words on how I got there.

With CO₂ emissions coming under scrutiny, I tried a new approach this year: First I took a plane to Boston, and from there I took a train to Chicago and on to Dallas. This 44-hour train ride saved one ton of CO₂, the amount of CO₂ used to produce electricity for two standard houses for a year.

It also gave me a chance to write my “Tips from the Train.” During the ride I created ten “Tinndahl’s Transatlantic Tips” and video journals on the way.

While it was fun to do, this was significantly more expensive than a plane ride. But if you like adventure, I highly recommend it.

The general sessions

Once again, the charming Manish Kumar, Gian Paolo Bassi, Bernard Charlès and Suchit Jain guided us through the general sessions.

When Bassi enters the stage in an electric sports car, the crowd goes wild. You cannot help getting caught up in the moment. What an entrance!

(Image: screenshot from SOLIDWORKS Live.)

SOLIDWORKS CEO Manish Kumar said in the first general session, “In my simplistic view, SOLIDWORKS only has two flavors of today: we come with the platform or we come on the platform.”

(Image: screenshot from SOLIDWORKS Live.)

This means that you can use your SOLIDWORKS with the 3DEXPERIENCE platform no matter what version you have, standard or connected, and take advantage of the many possibilities. On the platform are the cloud-based possibilities that you have: xShape, xDesign etc., where you can use SOLIDWORKS in your browser.

You may fear that the “with the platform” is temporary but Kumar assured us that “both these flavors are here to stay,” and ended with “we are moving forward with SOLIDWORKS,” which, of course, earned him great applause as this has been a great concern for many users.

For me, one of the most interesting aspects of the first general session was a sneak peek at the work with AI. We already have AI in SOLIDWORKS to some extent; for instance, with the Selection helper. But more is on the way: Image to sketch, command prediction and automatic drawing creation.

(Image: screenshot from SOLIDWORKS Live.)

As far as I could tell, these AI initiatives are meant for the products on the platform, as this was what they showed pictures from, but we will see.

My personal favorite of the general sessions is the skits that show what is new in the upcoming version of SOLIDWORKS and 3DEXPERIENCE.

The tradition of introducing upcoming features goes back to 2005. It is much more fun than just listing the new features.

As always, it is clear that a lot has gone into the skit. This year’s skit was called “Splines Out,” a fun spoof of the movie “Knives Out,” featuring a mystery woven into the use of SOLIDWORKS and 3DEXPERIENCE, complete with a detective with a southern accent.

(Image: screenshot from SOLIDWORKS Live.)

All the actors—and actors they were, not SOLIDWORKS users or Dassault Systèmes employees—on stage were wonderful. They ensured that you as a user would be looking forward to the next release.
I will not dive into the different upcoming news, as I have not tested the new features yet, but I am most excited about these:

• Option to use the round tool on multiple bodies in the same command.
• Using rollup in assembly visualization to isolate components.
• Copy cutlist properties to all configurations.
• Reload drawings (something that has been only for parts and assemblies so far).
• The ability to assign colors in an assembly visualization.

These features are, of course, not final and can be removed at any point in the development process.

Previously when releasing a new version of SOLIDWORKS, all the features were added, and service packs were issued to fix errors not caught by the development team. But ever since SOLIDWORKS 2024, new enhancements will be added to the different service packs. For instance, in 2024 SP1 a new import filter was added that allowed you to select which part of the files you want imported.

Of course, during the last session, we were all excited to find out where next year’s event will be held. And here it is:

Next year’s 3DEXPERIENCE World will be in Houston, Texas, from February 24 to 26, 2025.

The breakout sessions

After the general sessions came a myriad of breakout sessions to select from. Over 300 sessions took place over three days. Each of them with some unique input on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, SOLIDWORKS, PDM, Simulation, MBD etc.

Many of the presenters were well-known faces in regard to 3DEXPERIENCE World, and once again they did not disappoint, delivering top-notch information presented with their own special twist.

You could be sure to find a session of interest. If you want some great tips and tricks, there was “Jazzy Tips and Tricks” with Betty Baker, John Matrishon and Joe Lance, or “Tank’s Top Tips and Tricks” with Brad ‘Tank’ Meador. If you wanted to know something about importing geometry, Danute Nikolova-Petrova finished off nicely with her “SOLIDWORKS Mastery: Importing and Proficiently Working with STL files,” a great tutorial on how to work with imported files.

For a complete overview of my preferred sessions, see this article. All sessions will be made available on the platform on March 4^th.

The Playground

The Playground, AKA the exhibit floor, is the best places to spend your time between sessions. Start with Model Mania and check out the latest trends in hardware and software. You will not be disappointed. Everywhere you go, there is something to do or see. You will have to go back to be sure that you didn’t miss anything.

The Playground seemed a bit smaller this year, no doubt a result of people still getting back to the “in-person” participation. I hope to see a lot more people there next year.

Final impressions

This 25^th anniversary was, to me, a great success and I have high hopes for the next 25 years.

For me, the mission is to meet with old friends and maybe even make a few new ones. Again, the event fulfilled my mission.

But of course, the work-related part of the event is also important. I gained a lot of new knowledge as well as connected with people who can help me in the future. All there is left to say is: Houston? Not a problem.

The annual event attracts SOLIDWORKS users from around the world.

Last year’s 3DEXPERIENCE World was a hybrid event, which had both virtual sessions as well as live sessions. The year before, 3DEXPERIENCE World 2022, was initially planned as a hybrid event but eventually became an all-virtual event because of COVID.

This year it seems as if Dassault Systèmes has returned to form, making it an all-in-person event, which means that none of the sessions will be broadcast live. However, they will be recorded and available on demand later.

But what should you see while there? In this article, I will share some of the sessions that I am looking forward to seeing at 3DEXPERIENCE World 2024.

Currently there are 365+ sessions to choose from, and it can be very overwhelming to know where to start. This is especially true if this is your first time attending.

Monday, February 12^th

Most of the sessions that I am looking forward to are on Monday, the first day.

The best way to kick off 3DEXPERIENCE World is in the company of Joe Lance. Joe will give his tips on how you can have a great experience at this event.

Joe is a well-known face in the community and if you need some help in any way, he is your go-to guy.

At the time of this writing, space was still available to see Andrew Bonica and Umar Ahmed’s hands-on session “Hands-On Experience Personalizing Your 3D Dashboard for Maximum Productivity”—but you had better move fast!

I have been fortunate enough to be on some of Andrew’s sessions. They are always worth the time.

After lunch, I really don’t have any options. I have my own session, “3DEXPERIENCE Made Simple.”

It is not about how you use the platform but a different take on the concepts of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

And while I would love to see as many people as possible, it is very hard to compete with Betty Baker, Joe Lance and John Matrishon, who have joined forces in what can only be a truly epic tips and tricks session. I’ll be sure to catch it in reruns.

Do not miss Kevin McCleery’s session “Off-Label Weldment” if you are working with weldments. Knowing Kevin, I’m sure you will learn a lot from his session.

After my own session, I am hopping over to sit in on Daniel Deoreo’s and Sarah Idemoto’s hands-on session “SOLIDWORKS Connected and xShape Interoperability,” as this subject is something that I am very interested in.

If you are not into the platform, my recommendation is to attend Alin Vargatu’s session “Healing Imported Geometry Errors - The Ultimate Guide 2024 Edition.” Alin is well known to EngineersRule.com readers.

Alin is a legend when it comes to handling large assemblies and imported geometry. Take notes. I guarantee you will learn something from him.

For those curious about the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, I highly recommend “Beyond Data Management – What Can you Do with the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform” with Andy Rammer.

Andy has done a lot of presentations previously and you can always be sure to learn something from him.

And after all these sessions, be sure to take the rest of the day off enjoy what Dallas has to offer.

Tuesday, February 13^th

The second day of the event will be a day to learn and relax—my first presentation is over, and I don’t have another until Wednesday.

After the General session, I will be joining the session “101 Things Your Mother Never Told You About Mates.”

This sounds like an awesome opportunity to get under the hood with mates.

If you are more interested in the platform, there is still room at Jody Stiles’ “Lofty Aspirations: Hands-on with Loft in xDesign,” which will give you an introduction to loft in the xApps.

Jody’s experience will make for a very exciting presentation, I’m sure.

After lunch, I am very much looking forward to Brad ’Tank’ Meador’s “Tank’s Top Tips and Tricks.” He is a legend in the SOLIDWORKS community.

But if you’re into PDM—or curious about it—you will want to attend Jeremiah Davis’ “SOLIDWORKS PDM Tips and Tricks” instead.

Jeremiah has been training some of the best PDM people I know, so it will be exciting to see what he will be sharing.

And afterwards, I am really looking forward to spending some time in the company of Eric Beatty and his “Taming that Other Guy’s Model” which will show you capabilities of FeatureWorks that are not in the documentation.

I have attended this one before and I highly recommend it. You will learn how to repair a model using FeatureWorks—among other things.

The best way to finish off Tuesday will be to drop in on Alin Vargatu’s “Ultimate Import Geometry Optimization for Large Assemblies.”

Wednesday, February 14^th

The last day of the conference is always bittersweet. You’re so full of information, but you still don’t want the event to end because it will be a whole year before you see all these people again.

Better make the best of it.

For the first session, I am going to recommend Artem Taturevych’s session on custom properties.

Artem is very experienced and has a good understanding of the different custom properties.

Then it’s time for my second session, “Tinndahl’s Troubleshooting Techniques.”

I will give an overview of some of the techniques I use when I troubleshoot, as well as show some of the tools you can use when contacting support.

If you want to join a meetup session instead, I recommend joining Danute Petrova-Nikolova’s “Freelance - A World Without Borders for Design and Innovation.”

I have been in contact with Danute for the past three years and not only is she a very talented SOLIDWORKS and xApp user, she also has a lot of insight on how to become a successful freelancer.

Besides missing Danute’s session, I will also be missing Brad Meador’s “Motorcycle Mayhem.”

This session sounds like a good way to finetune your SOLIDWORKS workflow.

After lunch, it is time for the third general session. Tradition has it that they will announce where next year’s 3DEXPERIENCE World will be located.

After the general session, I will be hard pressed to make a decision. On one hand, I really want to go see Danute’s presentation on “SOLIDWORKS Mastery: Importing and Proficiently Working with STL Files.” She really knows her stuff.

On the other hand, there is John Matrishon presenting “Getting a GRIP on Surfacing,” which ought to be a real treat for those doing surfacing on SOLIDWORKS.

Oh, well. I can’t be two places at once. Thankfully, the sessions will be available on demand.

I hope that this article has provided some useful guidance. But no matter what, I am sure that you will be spending these three days learning new stuff, meeting new people and having a blast.

See you in Dallas!

Dassault Systèmes delivered as promised in July. What exactly does that mean to you, should you choose to purchase a new license of SOLIDWORKS? Let’s take a look.

CAD-Aware Cloud Storage

Your SOLIDWORKS models and assemblies can become quite complex (especially if you work with other designers). How much time do you waste recreating data, searching for information and incorporating changes? Imagine renaming a part and not having to do any extra work, such as relinking and updating assemblies and file paths.

Cloud Services provides you with online storage that understands the intricacies of CAD relationships and protects you from the common pitfalls of designing with others. And it is simple, because you save your data to the cloud right inside of SOLIDWORKS, as seen in figure 1.

Figure 1. Save to the cloud from inside of SOLIDWORKS.

 If you are working with other designers, simply lock your designs to ensure nobody can overwrite your hard work. SOLIDWORKS with Cloud Services means a single source of truth – no misplaced outdated duplicates. The icing on the cake? When you save your designs on the cloud, you can access them from anywhere. Work from home, the office or a white sandy beach – the choice is yours.

Cloud Services also makes managing revisions a piece of cake. No more need for complex file names. Just perform a Save and indicate a revision, as seen in figure 2. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform will keep track of revisioning for you. You can go home early -- with your mind at peace.

Figure 2. Creating revisions is easy with Cloud Services.

With Cloud Services, you’ll become so organized you’ll feel like the Marie Kondo of CAD.

Collaboration and Markup

A variety of great apps come with your Cloud Services that lend themselves to robust collaboration and mark-up. The 3D Markup App allows markups on the actual model (so you aren’t creating a duplicate) that you can share with your team, as seen in Figure 3. The end result is a full digital paper trail of markups and comments. No screenshots needed. No harm done to the model either.

Figure 3. 3D Markup comes with a robust set of tools.

The Collaborative Tasks app creates a handy online to-do list that is accessible directly in SOLIDWORKS, as seen in Figure 4. This will ensure that your team remains organized and on task. You can even attach the actual CAD model to the task by dragging and dropping it onto the task so there is no doubt about what needs to be done. When a task is completed, simply drag and drop it to the “completed” column.

Figure 4. Collaborative Tasks app keeps you on time and on track.

The Compare app can be used to verify if assigned changes were actually made (or made correctly). These are just a few of the powerful apps that come with Cloud Services. So many apps…so little time.

Share Your 3D Designs with Anyone

With SOLIDWORKS and Cloud Services, you can share your designs with anyone – even if they don’t have SOLIDWORKs – directly from within SOLIDWORKS. Now that sounds like some smooth collaboration going on. Getting real-time feedback from suppliers or outside consultants and iterating on your work is as easy as sharing links. No viewers to install, because everything happens in a web browser. All the stakeholder needs to do is set up a free 3DEXPERIENCE ID account to get the collaboration ball rolling.

And it isn’t just about viewing; there are some great markup capabilities as well. Check out this video to see Share and Mark-up in action.

The workflow is simple:

1. Click on “Share a File” from the “Lifecycle and Collaboration” toolbar in SOLIDWORKS.
2. Type in an email address and your message.
3. Click a button to share the file and the recipient gets an email with a link to view/mark-up your design. They can do this on any web browser on any device.
4. You get a notification inside of SOLIDWORKS when they provide feedback.
5. You can view their comments and markups and can communicate back and forth without ever leaving your comfy SOLIDWORKS environment. It doesn’t get much easier than this.

And your data is always secure. When you share your model, you get to assign access rights (and you can change those any time you like).

Be sure to check out the amazing Cloud Services that come with every new license of SOLIDWORKS. Feeling left out because you aren’t buying any new SOLIDWORKS licenses? Worry not – there is a pathway for you to add Cloud Services to your existing SOLIDWORKS license, as well. Just contact your reseller for more information.

SOLIDWORKS with Cloud Services is definitely going to make your everyday design life a little bit easier and a lot more organized. Try them out today.

“When dealing with the ocean, it's not a question of if it's going to fail. It’s just a question of when,” said Philip Fullam, chief engineer at Ocean-based Climate Solutions.

But the New Mexico-based company Ocean-based Engineering Solutions is no stranger to taking on daunting tasks.

Initially founded on the idea of finding a method to lessen the strength of hurricanes, the company is now attempting to create tools which use the ocean to pull carbon dioxide (CO₂) out of the atmosphere. The goal is to make a meaningful contribution to fighting climate change. To do this the team has created devices that float on the ocean and, as the company puts it on their website, “turn CO₂ into fish food” by artificially causing ocean upwelling.

One of Ocean-based Climate Solutions buoys deployed in the ocean. (Image: Ocean-based Climate Solutions.)

How It Works

Ocean upwelling is a process which causes nutrient-rich deep ocean water to rise to the sunlit surface. CO₂ then dissolves into this new water. Tiny organisms called phytoplankton use sunlight and dissolved CO₂ to undergo photosynthesis, taking in carbon dioxide. Since these phytoplankton are the base of the ocean food chain, more phytoplankton in the environment can support higher numbers of larger organisms, as well.

“Over time this results in marine snow, which is dead or eaten phytoplankton and all the marine life it feeds sinking to the deep ocean, which is a natural form of carbon sequestration,” said Salvador Garcia, chief revenue officer of Ocean-based Climate Solutions, when speaking at 3DEXPERIENCE World 2023.

However, ocean upwelling only naturally occurs in specific places around the globe. 

“As you travel away from the coasts, there are virtually no phytoplankton. They’re ocean deserts. Blue oceans are beautiful, yes, but instead green water is thriving and a living ocean,” Garcia said.

The company’s device deploys a 400-meter fabric tube down from a hefty floating buoy into nutrient rich deep waters and pumps the water to the surface to artificially create an upwelling effect. The pump operates solely on ocean wave energy, while the other sensors, GPS and electronics are powered by solar energy. The pump could be deployed in these ocean deserts to create new areas rich with phytoplankton and sea life which could store carbon in this marine snow.

Improving the Design with SOLIDWORKS and Testing

A few of the CAD models during the pump production process. (Image: Ocean-based Climate Solutions.)

Although they aren’t yet in full-scale production mode, Fullam says the company has come a long way since their first small-scale models and computational fluid dynamics testing.

One of the key tools for their development process has been SOLIDWORKS.

“If you build your models intelligently and use the parametric modeling features [in SOLIDWORKS], you can make dramatic changes in your model without having to start from scratch,” Fullam said. “That allows you to easily scale things, which is a big benefit when you start with a scale model and then you have to move it up to full scale or vice versa.”

A three-quarters scaled version was tested about two years ago. From that, a second full-size iteration was designed. One full-size pump was deployed off the coast of California and another off the Canary Islands.

The company also used SOLIDWORKS for structural analysis and dynamic modeling. This was crucial as they analyzed part movement in an attempt to reduce their part count and create a simplified design with less risk of failure.

“That's the beauty of design. Anybody can come up with a complicated design. The art of design is simplified,” Fullam said. “We’re slimming it down to what is the absolute minimum number of parts necessary. That's what I think we've gotten pretty close to.”

Pack and go. The buoy in the factory is ready to be shipped. (Image: Ocean-based Climate Solutions.)

Testing so far has been too short to get a measure of phytoplankton increases or carbon dioxide removal caused by the pump, but Ocean-based Climate Solutions CEO Phil Kithil predicts up to 430 tons of carbon dioxide removal annually per pump.

The data they did gain from these tests was more focused on device function and failure modes.

“We know in the initial units we're going to put out, they're going to have a shorter lifespan than our final productions. Part of that is we're learning what breaks,” Fullam said.

This info has fed into the creation of a new version which weighs significantly less and was made with different construction techniques. However, it still has the same functionality.

“SOLIDWORKS allows us to optimize structure,” Fullam said. “The initial unit had a steel structure that weighed close to 2,000 pounds. That's just basically the buoy. The second generation we've got that down to about 800 pounds. That's a significant savings and, based upon our numbers, should have a longer life expectancy.”

The buoy pre-deployment loaded onto the ship. (Image: Ocean-based Climate Solutions.)

What’s Next?

The main improvements Ocean-based Climate Solutions is still looking to make lie in the manufacturing techniques and materials selection.

Although they are becoming lighter with each iteration, the devices are still heavy and large. With the company’s goal of removing carbon from the atmosphere, they don’t want to create more carbon emissions by shipping these machines around the globe. Instead, they are designing the devices to be manufactured near where they will be used. This means Fullam cannot lean on just any expensive, high-tech equipment in his manufacturing process.

“Instead of my half-million-dollar laser, could I do it with a $15,000 plasma cutter? The parts were designed based upon the low end, not the high end. That was a bit of a challenge,” Fullam said.

The other element of improvement comes down to selecting the right materials for long-term deployment in the ocean.

“Some of the materials we chose with our initial requirements were less than optimum as far as environmental considerations go,” Fullam said. “[They were] readily available, relatively inexpensive and functional. It showed us what worked, what didn't work. As we move forward, we'll end up choosing much more environmentally friendly materials.”

As for the next steps for testing and deployment, the company is currently applying for grants to support its next stages of development. They plan to use those grants to build three 400-meter ocean upwelling pumps and deploy them off the coast of Hawaii.

Looking further into the future, if they begin longer term deployments, the company hopes their customers will include high carbon-emitting companies wanting to convert their waste into phytoplankton. If they can validate their technology, Ocean-based Climate Solutions would be in a prime position to sell reliable and reputable carbon offsets to these large businesses.

“With the technology that's become available, with measuring devices and communication through satellites, we can measure, we can report and we can verify what's happening locally with our ops,” Fullam said. “So, as we get a few pumps out there and get the correlation between the measurements we're taking and field measurements, this is going to be a major step forward. Private industry is going to be much more interested.”

Square Robot specializes in the manufacturing of industrial inspection robots. Their technology inspects pipelines, storage tanks and other similar structures. These robots navigate complex environments all while collecting data, which is used to spot potential issues before they become major problems. 

(Image: Square Robot.)

In a recent customer spotlight at 3DEXPERIENCE World, Square Robot's chief mechanical engineer, Charles O’Connell, highlighted the common practice of inspecting above-ground storage tanks. These tanks are drained and cleaned so that a person can enter and inspect the tank. Not only is this time-consuming and costly, but it also leads to harmful waste disposal, unnecessary emissions and subjecting a person to work in confined spaces.

A traditional out-of-service inspection averages 700 high and low-risk man-hours. The down-time involved leads to a might-as-well-repair-it-now attitude: making those repairs that are not required now, but done in case they may be needed later.

Square Robot’s bots have autonomous hovering while submerged for oil and gas inspections. By using this robotic equipment, the in-service inspection time is reduced to 60 low-risk man-hours. And most importantly, nobody enters the tank.

(Image: Square Robot.)

“Quality data means quality decisions,” says O’Connell. To summarize, Square Robot focuses on innovative solutions helping companies find problems while minimizing downtime. Keeping equipment like tanks in service means the equipment continues to do its job. It earns income and creates value, uninterrupted.

(Image: Square Robot.)

The Start

Founded in 2016, when the cloud had become commonplace, Square Robot founders architected the business to run in the cloud. This was important as the company had many offices and teams were spread across multiple locations—and it keeps IT costs low. This means no local servers, only a collection of cloud-based tools. Square Robot used applications like Monday.com and Trello for project management, Slack for communication and Google Drive for data storage. 

Two desktop applications, Matlab and SOLIDWORKS, were able to sneak in. These tools were familiar to the engineering team, and became the main design and engineering tools. But desktop applications store data locally, so the users manually stick-handled the data into Google Drive. How? By using pack-and-go, so the large datasets could be worked on by others. 

With SOLIDWORKS in many locations, data was manually managed by the users—and although Google Drive is capable of storing CAD data, it doesn’t do it intelligently (like maintaining the links between parent-child relationships). This became burdensome and dangerous as they were unintentionally overwriting and duplicating data.

Enter 3DEXPERIENCE

Square Robot used the cloud-based 3DEXPERIENCE to create, simulate, manage and share product designs. This let the teams work effectively together across multiple locations through a secure and scalable platform. 

As Square Robot’s team was spread across many locations and the amount of data was small at that time, they became the first member of the cloud-based “Lighthouse Program.” This led to Square Robot being early adopters of PLM Services (now 3DEXPERIENCE), and they now have seven SOLIDWORKS users on the platform through multiple collaborative workspaces.

Is 3DEXPERIENCE a product data management (PDM) system? ENOVIA, the PLM application by Dassault Systèmes, can do PDM. ENOVIAWORKS, the version used by Square Robot, allows users to manage files directly within SOLIDWORKS.

One person no longer needed to be the gatekeeper, and soon after starting to use the platform Square Robot saw a significant collaboration improvement. Like Google Drive, ENOVIAWORKS supplies a centralized location for data storage. However, users could now instantaneously upload parts and assemblies directly from SOLIDWORKS. Others were notified of the changes and could synchronize the changes with their local copies. 

Bookmarks as one of their “best friends” for the organization of parts. Although not as good as knowing what you are looking for, they tag each commercial part (like hardware) so that they can scroll through parts in a category.

The platform handles data organization and controls who has ownership. As a PDM tool, users reserve files for changes, locking them and making them read-only to others. You can iterate on the current design, bumping the revision. Or branch off into a new design, merging it back in later.

(Image: Square Robot.)

Reservations forced single-user edits and no longer did the last save win. Although users now had instant access to data, ENOVIAWORKS maintains the revision history, and users no longer needed to manually archive old revisions. 

Square Robot uses both the browser-based and the SOLIDWORKS add-in. No investment in hardware infrastructure was required.

ENOVIAWORKS provides a collaborative environment for cross-functional teams to work together. The platform’s tools allow non-CAD users to review and collaborate on models through the 3DPlay app with the assurance that they are looking at the most up-to-date versions. They have transitioned from paper-based redlining to 3D markups within ENOVIA.

(Image: Square Robot.)

The embedded project management allows users to track project progress. The included tools allow for managing compliance data as well as documenting compliance activities. 

Although most of Square Robot’s task management still occurs in Trello, the mechanical engineers are using collaborative tasks within the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Why? The tasks are associated with SOLIDWORKS items, meaning direct navigation and no manual updates.

“Don't be scared of the immense capability of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform,” says Matthew Hall from SOLIDWORKS.

ENOVIAWORKS came “just in time” for Solid Robot as they started iterating on their SR-1 inspection robot. Although changes were occurring, they had access to the older revisions, as they were built, so they could review vehicles in-service. Additionally, they could push changes to the assemblies of their choice, including publishing changes to the entire fleet.

Because of the regulatory process, they must be diligent in the as-built conditions. The built-in controls facilitated locking down CAD data about new revisions and releasing the mature (good-to-go) states.  All parts are released using the ECO process, documenting the changes as they occur.

Solid Robot uses Collaborative Lifecycles to set the maturity of the product. In Work is the start where anyone can work on the design. However, a user can demote the component to Private in order to work on it solo, with no possible interactions from others. With the design complete the component transitions into Frozen, a temporary holding state while the design is reviewed and then into Released when it is ready for the field. 

What’s Next for Square Robot

Future initiatives for Square Robot are removing the redundancy of day-to-day activities. 

Dassault Systèmes developed ENOVIA as a cloud-based PLM solution for medium and large businesses. It offers data management, collaboration, project management and workflow automation functionalities.

Square Robot currently uses Fusion 360 (Manage) as their PLM. Fusion does the part number generation, and they currently use it for bills of material management, cost tracking, ECO’s (engineering change orders), non-conformances and serial number tracking. 

(Image: Square Robot.)

But Fusion does not integrate with SOLIDWORKS so users must bounce between the two systems. They use SOLIDWORKS to start the design, Fusion for the part numbering then its back to SOLIDWORKS to complete the design before returning to Fusion to complete the change order and build the BOM.

Is ENOVIA a product lifecycle management (PLM) system? Yes. ENOVIA offers end-to-end product lifecycle management capabilities, and allows users to manage the product from ideation to retirement. And not just the design, but also manufacturing, quality control and service.

So, one initiative for Square Robot is to integrate the PLM capabilities of ENOVIA, replacing Fusion.

Another is to broaden the usage of ENOVIA Planner including collaborative tasks, integrating related tasks and incorporating manufacturing processes. This will reduce (and hopefully eliminate) the reliance on Microsoft Project and Trello.

The future is now, and the feature is SOLIDWORKS Cloud Services.

What that means is beginning July 2023, all new licenses of SOLIDWORKS come with an upgraded subscription that comes with the stuff to connect it to the Cloud (3DEXPERIENCE). So, what does this mean for you? Keep reading for a complete breakdown of what this means for you and your SOLIDWORKS licenses and what we think about it. Spoiler alert: It’s awesome.

What is SOLIDWORKS Cloud Services?

In a way, it’s enhanced subscription. Cloud Services goes beyond the traditional SOLIDWORKS CAD to boost your productivity. When you think of traditional CAD, you’re thinking of what Dassault Systèmes now calls SOLIDWORKS Desktop. It’s the 15-gigabyte behemoth that gets installed on your Windows PC with a certified graphics card. The productivity boost is additional functionality powered by the 3DEXPERIENCE platform (“the cloud”) which users experience in three different ways:

1. Share and markup.
2. Store and revise.
3. Manage and control. 

What Changed in July 2023?

SOLIDWORKS Cloud Services is free for all new purchases of SOLIDWORKS Desktop licenses. Let’s unpack that. Any new license of SOLIDWORKS purchased now includes Cloud Services. It doesn’t matter if you are a new client purchasing your first license or an existing client since 1995 – every new desktop license you add comes with SOLIDWORKS Cloud Services as part of the subscription. This bonus is included for the following flavors of SOLIDWORKS Desktop CAD licenses:

• Perpetual*
• Term
• Standalone
• Network

(*A minimum of two years subscription is required for the perpetual licenses.)

Do I Have to Do This?

No. For those wanting to maintain the status quo for whatever reason, there is no obligation to change – from a license and services standpoint, everything can stay the way it was.

Can I Upgrade My Existing Licenses?

So far, we’ve only mentioned Cloud Services for new licenses. But the good news is, there’s an upgrade option/path available if you’ want to upgrade your existing licenses. What’s more is that you can upgrade as many licenses as you’d like. It isn’t an all or nothing situation, meaning you don’t have to upgrade all of your licenses to cloud services, or none of them.

Why Is It Worth It?

Is upgrading to Cloud Services worth it? Yes.

SOLIDWORKS Cloud Services takes the best features of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, the ones that are most useful for SOLIDWORKS CAD users, and packages them up into an easy-to-use tool embedded directly into SOLIDWORKS for these primary reasons:

1. Collaborate.
2. Store, manage and control.

Reason 1: Collaborate

You can instantly share and easily collaborate with anyone. There’s a new button added to SOLIDWORKS called “share a file.” You can use this to create a link to share with someone and they can view the design on any device, phone, tablet, or computer. No additional software or plugins required.

It goes beyond just sharing the model. The tools are incredibly powerful and easy to use with viewing, measuring, mark up and comment functionality available. I like to think of it as automating everything you’d normally do in design review meetings—but now it’s being done from a phone while on the go, no meetings slowing you down. Here’s a breakdown of everything you can do with the new share button powered by SOLIDWORKS Cloud Services.

• Viewing your designs and even change display style in a web browser.

• Interrogate assemblies and create exploded views in a web browser.

• Measure geometry in a web browser.

• Comment and mark up in a web browser.

• Review and act on comments within SOLIDWORKS. Remember these comments and markups were added using a web browser.

As you can see in the above videos, your web browser with SOLIDWORKS Cloud Services has become a design tool.

Reason 2: Store, Manage & Control

Cloud Services, provides you with online storage that is purpose-built for managing your CAD data. In other words, it’s CAD aware and understands the file relationships and how you (a SOLIDWORKS user) will want to save, share and use your data. This includes everything from basic data storage – storing and revising – to a full suite of data management tools for things like change actions and approvals.

• With Cloud Services, you can easily save your data to the cloud.

• 3D Drive is a CAD-aware storage to easily share designs from within SOLIDWORKS. This makes old-school Pack and Go easier than ever before.

• You can explore relations and references.

• You can collaborate with other designers and manage who can make changes.

• You can access your data anywhere…

• …and easily manage revisions.

There you have it: many uses of the two big reasons why I think this is a great addition for SOLIDWORKS users. SOLIDWORKS Cloud Services can supercharge your productivity and streamline your design process – and it’s all included with your subscription to SOLIDWORKS. 

If you look back, it’s been a long journey, but I think July 2023 will go down as a pivotal moment in the adoption of the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform by SOLIDWORKS users. It all comes down to this packaging of the most powerful yet useful tools for SOLIDWORKS users as part of the new enhanced subscription called SOLIDWORKS Cloud Services. There’s something for everyone, which makes this a welcome addition for people looking to easily make the most of the power of 3DEXPERIENCE. And there are productivity gains for people looking to leverage new tools to work the same way (i.e. sharing Pack and Go’s using 3D Drive).

If you absolutely don’t want to deal with anything new, you can go ahead and ignore Cloud Services—but that would mean ignoring the future. Do that at your own risk.

Everyone else will be enjoying SOLIDWORKS Cloud Services.

The man’s name is Robert, an active, healthy 70-year-old—except for one previous heart attack. He was lucky. Unlike millions of people who suffer heart attacks, he survived.

This brief yet shocking incident was captured on a CCTV video and the video was played during a session at the 3DEXPERIENCE Conference by Boston Scientific, the company that made the medical device that saved Robert.

Surviving a heart attack is remarkable and miraculous in itself, but what is even more remarkable is how Robert was saved using new innovations.

The Prevalence of Heart Attacks and Cardiac Arrests

Innovations are always in demand for treating cardiovascular diseases; heart attacks and cardiac arrests have long been a serious public health problem in the U.S. and worldwide.

In 2020, there are more than 19.1 million cardiovascular deaths globally, and the prevalence of coronary heart disease is increasing. In the same year, about 697,000 people in the United States died from heart disease in 2020, which is 1 in every 5 deaths—more than from cancer, COVID and accidents.

More than half of cardiovascular deaths occur suddenly. Deaths related to heart disease occur when patients have a heart attack or cardiac arrest outside of the hospital (pre-hospital setting) or in a hospital (in-hospital setting). The pre-hospital survival rate is much lower than the in-hospital survival rate, likely due to lower availability of medical equipment and personnel. In addition, out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur more frequently than in-hospital ones, making their treatment even more challenging.

Due to the sudden nature of a cardiac arrest, its optimal treatment needs to happen within an hour after the onset of symptoms (also known as “the golden hour”). For example, the “door-to-balloon” time, which refers to the timeframe within which a procedure called angioplasty needs to be performed to stretch open a narrowed or blocked artery, is 90 minutes.

The patient needs to be discovered by somebody who can correctly diagnose his or her condition or recognize the severity of the situation. Then, first-aid such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) or treatment with an automated external defibrillator (AED) needs to be administered. Next, the patient needs to be transported to a hospital promptly and treated by a doctor in the emergency room within an hour.

A delay in any or several of these steps will subtract from the golden hour.

While CPR improves the survival rate of patients undergoing out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, it works best for the first 20 minutes; beyond that window of opportunity it becomes much less effective. In addition, the frequency of bystanders performing CPR (10 – 65 percent) and resultant survival (3 – 22 percent) in the United States varies significantly due to socioeconomic and demographic factors, to the disadvantage of low-income and minority communities.

In addition, while AEDs are life-saving and can achieve a 95 percent success rate, they are hard for a person to carry around. Therefore, they are often set up at home or installed in public spaces. Occupational Health and Safety Administration estimated that 30 million are needed to cover 70 percent of the population, which lives in urbanized areas and another 10 million to cover the population living in non-urbanized areas. However, only about 4.5 million AEDs are in use. As a result, AEDs are rarely used by bystanders to treat cardiac arrests.

There are other technologies that can help reduce the occurrence of cardiac arrests. For example, pacemakers are small, implanted devices which can help prevent cardiovascular abnormalities by regulating heart rhythm with emitted electrical pulses.

Another example is telemetry, in which dedicated personnel collect and monitor measurements from patients and identify ones who are having issues. But telemetry is more applicable for patients who have cardiac arrests in a hospital.

Taken together, most preventive technologies cannot be used to treat cardiac arrest when it happens outside of a healthcare facility and there is a need for technologies that can address one or several of the bottlenecks in the process of identifying, triaging, transporting and treating patients who suffer heart attacks while out in the world.

How VIGILANT Works

VIGILANT, the device made by Boston Scientific that saved Robert’s life in the video, is an example of a class of disruptive devices called cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillator (CRT-D), which can address several of these pain points.

A CRT-D is similar to an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD), an electrical device that constantly monitors a patient’s heart rhythm to detect and stop irregular heartbeats. ICD shocks the heart if it senses a dangerous heart rhythm. However, CRT-D differs from ICDs in that it has an additional lead (ICDs have two leads) passed through a vein traveling behind the heart to pace the heart from the left-hand side, helping the heart’s lower chambers—the ventricles—work in tandem. As a result, CRT-Ds increase the effectiveness of a diseased heart and elevate blood flow, thus improving heart failure symptoms like fatigue, shortness of breath and exercise intolerance, and reducing the patient’s risk of dying due to cardiac events.

Also, patients with ICD are at risk of electrical storm occurrences that are associated with mortality and poor quality of life. CRT-D minimizes the number of inappropriate ICD shocks, lowering the risk of electrical storms and the risk of mortality, and improving a patient’s quality of life. Moreover, CRT-Ds have a longer battery life than ICDs. For example, ICD batteries last around six years and the VIGILANT CRT-D’s battery lasts from 7 to 14.7 years. ICDs and CRT-Ds both require surgery to be implanted into patients, so a longer battery life will reduce the need and frequency for additional surgery and lower the cost of care.

In addition to longer battery life and improving heart failure symptoms, the VIGILANT device contains HeartLogic, a highly sensitive heart failure diagnostic technology that provides weeks of advanced notice and a low-alert burden for detecting early signs of worsening heart failure.

With the combined functionalities, the VIGILANT device circumvents the many bottlenecks in the process of treating patients having a heart attack. The patient no longer depends on being found and diagnosed by a passerby, whether the passerby knows how to administer CPR properly or can find an AED nearby and operate it, or call for an ambulance so the patient can reach the emergency room in time for treatment. The patient can be diagnosed by the HeartLogic function and administered appropriate electric pulses on the spot.

In Robert’s video, there were only ten seconds between his collapse and the activation of the VIGILANT device to deliver electrical pulses to his heart. The time of detection, diagnosis and treatment has shrunk from tens of minutes to ten seconds. Because the resuscitation happened so quickly, Robert was able to not only get up and walk off in no time but also feel fine afterward.

He recalled, “Honestly, if I hadn’t known that I’d collapsed, I never would have thought anything happened…I felt completely normal.” After double-checking his health in the hospital, he has gone on to live his usual, active lifestyle. The effects of delayed treatment on health and well-being, prevalent in many patients suffering from a heart attack and who unfortunately did not receive treatment promptly, are nearly impossible to detect in Robert.

VIGILANT’s Downside

CRT-Ds, such as the VIGILANT device, are not without a downside.

Aside from having risks similar to those associated with implanted ICDs, such as infection at the implant site, swelling or bleeding, blood vessel damage, bleeding around the heart, blood leakage, collapsed lung and shifting of the device, the main issue for CRT-D is cost. On average, CRT-Ds are significantly more expensive, at more than $36,000, compared to ICDs which cost around $23,000. In addition, CRT-Ds are suitable only for a specific section of the population of patients with cardiovascular issues.

Moreover, while many more lives could be saved if defibrillators were implanted prophylactically in patients at increased risk of sudden death, one can argue that the cost of implanting CRT-Ds in a certain number of patients can be used to cover a much bigger potential patient population in a longer timeframe.

Conclusion

However, if we stop looking at disease in terms of populations and statistics and instead look at each patient as a person, we can see each implanted device is worth it.

It certainly is to Robert. “The VIGILANT CRT-D gives me peace of mind,” he said, “I feel confident working, going to the gym and exercising, knowing that my device works. It is very comforting.”

Every life saved also means a great deal to the people who develop life-saving technologies. As Matt Sheldov, the Senior R & D Manager at Boston Scientific, puts it, knowing the impact of VIGILANT on patients like Robert is an “emotional paycheck.”

The company is relatively small, with a team of less than a dozen mechanical engineers, along with a manufacturing team and field service team that operates the robots. The team of mechanical engineers are based in different locations. The chief mechanical engineer, Charles O’Connell, is based in New York. A few engineers are based at the headquarters in Massachusetts, and a couple other engineers are located in other cities across the Northeastern United States. Even before COVID, Square Robot was 100 percent committed to hiring talent that worked remotely because that provided them the flexibility to hire the best minds in the field.

The company was founded in 2016, and Charles O’Connell was one of their first hires, joining the team in 2017.  Like a lot of mechanical engineers, Charles found himself pulling double duty—designing Square Robot’s first-class robots and acting as the CAD Manager. Because the company is relatively small, they don’t have an IT department and they don’t use servers. Instead, they store all their company documents in the cloud. In 2017, when Charles came on board, they were using Google Docs to manage their engineering files. Design work is being done primarily in SOLIDWORKS . The robotic design required a lot of analysis, which was done using Matlab.

It didn’t take long for Charles and his team to get frustrated with Google Docs. Google Docs didn’t provide any notifications if a team member “checked out” a document, and revision control was almost a full-time job.

Charles reached out to Square Robot’s SOLIDWORKS reseller, Tri-Mech, to see if they had a suggestion for a PLM solution that wouldn’t require a major investment. They wanted to keep their documents in the cloud to facilitate collaboration between the engineering team and allow their employees to continue to work remotely. Additionally, having a cloud-based PLM solution meant that regardless of where their field technicians were sent, they had access to the latest information.

The 3DEXPERIENCE platform turned out to be a perfect fit. It allowed the engineering team to continue working in SOLIDWORKS without having to do any messy conversions. The platform manages revision control, and team members are notified instantly when an updated component is uploaded into the cloud. They simply perform a “refresh” and can see what has changed in real time.

A benefit of being one of the early adopters of 3DEXPERIENCE was that Dassault listened to any changes or feature enhancements Charles and his team made. Because changes were made that were tailored to Square Robot’s workflow, they were able to be even more efficient in their design process. At this point, the Square Robot team considers the 3DEXPERIENCE platform a crucial part of their success as a company.

SOLIDWORKS remains their primary design tool while the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is used to manage their entire engineering database.

Government regulations require regular inspection of chemical storage tanks to ensure that the tanks are structurally sound, not leaking or outgassing any dangerous fumes.

Square Robot’s main product is an autonomous inspection robot. This robot is dropped into a petroleum tank and uses phased ultrasound to determine wall loss in the tank. Their product is unique in that they do not require the tank to be emptied, an operation which can cost up to $2 million dollars. A Square Robot field technician operates the robot from outside the tank and monitors its performance.

There are some serious design challenges. The robot is powered with lithium-ion batteries which can spark an explosion in a fuel tank if not designed and operated properly. Square Robot has designed a mechanical pressure sensor and switch that controls whether it is safe to tun on the power.

Additionally, there is often debris in the tank, such as rust, which can interfere with the robot’s transit. The robot is equipped with on-board sonar to detect debris and a brush system that allows the robot to clear debris from its path before it moves forward.

The engineering team has met and conquered the challenges using custom built SOLIDWORKS API macros that allow them to calculate mass properties, best operational velocity and more. The ability to write custom macros using the SOLIDWORKS API has helped the engineering team in a myriad of ways, from auto-generating engineering drawings to performing buoyancy calculations on models.

Post-COVID, many companies are struggling with hiring new talent and figuring out how to support remote or hybrid work models. Square Robot is ahead of the game having already established a work process and the tools—using SOLIDWORKS and 3DEXPERIENCE—to manage 100 percent cloud-based collaboration and protecting their intellectual property by using a cloud-based PLM system.

About the Author

Elise Moss is a senior mechanical engineer with a BSME from SJSJU. She is a regular contributor to engineersrule.com as well as a published author of CAD textbooks. Elise is currently traveling through the United States on horseback. You can read more about Elise here.

Here’s everything you need to know about 3D Pattern Shape Creator.

What Can You Do With It?

Here are some examples of geometry created using 3D Pattern Shape Creator. You will clearly notice the common themes of intricacy and complexity. The results will leave even the most experienced SOLIDWORKS Experts speechless. Even a veteran Elite Application Engineer will be absolutely blown away by not just the geometry but the ease of use. What would otherwise take several painfully tedious days—or even weeks—can be easily done in a matter of minutes.

What’s It All About?

3D Pattern Shape Creator is a tool that enables you to explore and create next level patterns and shapes. But let’s go beyond the official marketing terminology to explore what that really means. To find the answer, we’ll break down both those words to take a deeper look at how you can explore and create amazing shapes with 3D Pattern Shape Creator.

1. Explore

In terms of 3D Pattern Shape Creator, when we say “explore” we are referring to its functionality, which enables you to easily play with the shapes in a way that has more of a free-form or experimental feel. 3D Pattern Shape Creators offers an environment where you can be free from the constraints, limitations and inhibition of parameters you are probably used to dealing with when it comes to traditional parametric modeling applications such as SOLIDWORKS.

In this environment, you don’t have to define shapes directly. In 3D Pattern Shape Creator, you have the flexibility (read: the ability) to define shapes indirectly in various ways. This means you can quickly create some incredibly complex shapes—which brings us to the second term: create.

2. Create

With 3D Pattern Shape Creator, the impossible becomes possible. This isn’t hyperbole. Shapes that are impossible to create using traditional modeling practices with a tool like SOLIWDORKS are easy to create with 3D Pattern Shape Creator.

3D Pattern Shape Creator not only offers additional features and functions, it also offers a completely different method for geometry creation. There’s a lot of familiar terms and tools, such as split, thicken or extrude but you can also extend the functionality to some new tools like Voronoi and user operators, all within a completely different interface.

As you can see in the image above, on one hand there is the traditional graphical user interface such as you are accustomed to with SOLIDWORKS or other 3DEXPERIENCE applications. But on the other hand, there is an additional graphical interface, like a block diagram, for visual scripting. This graphical interface is the engine that drives all the magic. The best way to work is with a combination of the two—using both the graphical and scripting interfaces.

How Does it Work?

Using the graphical visual scripting interface, you can easily explore and create these complex shapes and patterns. It is simple to drag and drop commands to the interface and connect them, creating a web of elegance but not complexity. Everything you do in the scripting interface instantly generates in the graphical modeling interface, in real time. This gives you the ability to play with the geometry and continually tweak it to get exactly what you want.

What Is a Voronoi Diagram?

Any article about 3D Pattern Shape Creator must explain Voronoi diagrams. Named after Russian mathematician Georgy Voronoy, the Voronoi diagram it is the keystone of the 2D Pattern Shape Creator. It is a most useful feature and enables the ease of use.

When we said that using 3D Pattern Shape Creator enables you to create things that are perhaps impossible or just extremely painful or tedious, we said it with the Voronoi function in mind. The Voronoi function allows you to easily break up the shape and define the instances for the pattern. Easily breaking up the geometry in an algorithmic or organic way in this manner is just not practical or possible in an application like SOLIDWORKS.

What Is 3D Pattern Shape Creator and How Do I Get It?

3D Pattern Shape Creator is a piece of the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform. It seems that nowadays, all roads of exciting new technology from Dassault Systèmes lead to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. If you haven’t already, I recommend you do yourself a favor and look at all the amazing technology available there.

How best to get this functionality? Since it’s on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, we need to explain roles. With the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform, you will need to shift your mindset to roles rather than applications. 3D Pattern Shape Creator is a role that gives you access to the application to generate complex variable patterns.

What App Do I Need?

The app needed to create these shapes is xGenerative Design, affectionately known by its trigram XGG. This is actually the only app that comes with the 3D Pattern Shape Creator role. For the purposes of this article and when talking to a reseller, you can use these names interchangeably for they mean pretty much the same thing.

Introducing xGenerative Desisgn (XGG)

When it comes to creating these amazing shapes, xGenerative Design is what you want. To get it, you need to have the 3D Pattern Shape Creator role on the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform. All the images in this article were taken using xGenerative Design. The “X” in the name means it is browser based. Because it’s not installed on the local computer, it also means that you can use it on your phone or tablet. It works on any modern browser, such as Chrome or Edge.

It’s a little mind-blowing. Imagine easily creating all these crazy shapes while comfortably sitting on the beach or flying on a plane—not tethered to your workstation. That’s the true power of the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform: design anything, on any device.

For Complex Shapes and Patterns, What Options are There?

When you want to create complex shapes, you have a few choices available in the Dassault Systèmes portfolio, so let’s recap these options:

1. SOLIDWORKS Desktop - SOLIDWORKS Surfacing: B-rep modeling

Nothing new here. Of course, you can continue to use surface modeling just like we’ve done since 1995 and still model complex shapes with SOLIDWORKS Surfacing.

2. 3DEXPERIENCE Platform, xShape: sub-d modeling

Introduced a few years ago on the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform, with x-Shape you can leverage sub-divisional modeling. Think of it like working with clay. You can push or pull to form the shape you want.

3. xGenerative Design from 3D Pattern Shape Creator

Above are three choices for creating complex shapes and patterns. The last one is truly amazing and offers a mind-blowing combination of power and ease—not just making the impossible possible but also making the impractical, practical.

Don’t believe it? Take a look at the perforated sheet metal plate in the image below.

This is a model created in SOLIDWORKS which has over 40,000 holes cut in it. Each hole is positioned to match a pixel from an image to create the shape. The gradient was created by varying the size of the holes. Try as you might, you will not be able to do this with SOLIDWORKS. But with xGenerative Design, it’s not just possible, it’s easy!

Learn more about 3DEXPERIENCE with the ebook Developing Better Products in the Cloud.

Part 1: A Crash Course in Pitching a Product or Idea

“If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together.”

If you want to get something in your hands quickly, all it takes is a 3D model in SOLIDWORKS and a 3D printer. In a few hours, you have made your concept into reality—but only to yourself. That’s where it will end if you don’t inspire others with your concept.

Start With the Why, Not the What

You have the “what”—the idea—now you need to convey the “why.” That is the hard part when pitching your idea. The “what” is easy—it’s your idea. You get it. The “why” takes your idea from concept and can help make it real to everyone else. People imagine their reality with it. This shared reality is what makes ideas happen.

How to Start with Why

Don’t tell them about the features and functions. Instead, tell them why or how it will change their life. Listing the features and functions, or speeds and feeds is easy, but it’s not impactful. You can start with the details, but don’t stop there. Take it one step further and explain how it will help them achieve their goals. Don’t focus on the details, focus on the outcome.

Let’s look at a shovel, for example. A homeowner doesn’t buy a shovel because of the features it has. They may not want a shovel at all. What they want is what the shovel enables them to have—shade from a tree they can plant, or privacy and security from a fence they can build.

Don’t Just Inform—Inspire

When it comes time to pitch your product, think about your intention. You want to inspire rather than inform. Have customers imagine their life with your product. You want to inspire your colleagues to work with you to get your project to the finish line. This process will, of course, require some sharing of information, but the intention should be to inspire.  

What’s the Difference?

Pitching your product is an art more than a science. There is nuance in the methodology that enables you get more people on board with your idea and more buy-in from key stakeholders. Again, you will need to consider your intention. There are two categories for this—inspiring or informing. The difference lies in your end goal, but a good way to think about the differences is in the way you share the content.

The means by which you share the content is critical. Think of PDF handouts versus a conference keynote. If the content could be shared via email attachment and have the same effect, then it is probably informational content that has the intention of informing.

The flip side of this is inspiring, which is usually done in presentation format delivered live at a conference keynote or through a reusable asset such as a recorded video or even your website homepage. There is a time and a place for informing and a time and a place for inspiring. Think about what role you want to play and be deliberate with it. When you are pitching your product, a handout or data sheet will inform—but you as a product developer will need to inspire.

Part 2: Creating Content that Inspires

Starting with SOLIDWORKS and the 3DEXPERIENCE Tools

Once you have created the mindset for pitching your product, you can create the content and collateral necessary to support you in inspiring your audience. There is a typical five-step process for product design that looks something like this: idea, napkin sketch, 3D model, prototype and final product. This being 2022, most of that can be done in SOLIDWORKS CAD and the cloud-enabled 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

You can get started with the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, including SOLIDWORKS desktop CAD, for only $10 per month thanks to the SOLIDWORKS for Makers license. This may be the best deal in engineering, and I love to tell the community about it. To learn more about it you can check out our article here. If you are ready to get started, click the link here. If you want to see how it can be used to help you pitch your product, then keep reading.

Why 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS for Makers?

This is not just another sales pitch for the newest SOLIDWORKS tools. I’m a product design consultant in the business of helping people bring their products to market, and the 3DEXPERIENCE tools are my go-to recommendations and truly what I believe are the best in the industry.

You don’t just get the SOLIDWORKS CAD program, you get a complete suite of product development tools that help you go from concept to reality faster and easier than ever before. At the time of this writing, you get 66 applications including:

• SOLIDWORKS Connected: Desktop SOLIDWORKS CAD basically indistinguishable from the commercial application.
• x-Design: Cloud based CAD modeling applications.
• x-Shape: Cloud Based sculpting, surfacing and freeform modeling.
• 3DSketch: Ideation tools combining free form sketching with CAD modeling.
• 3D Markup: View, redline and notate edits on your drawings in the cloud.
• Project Gantt: Manage your team and project with powerful project management tools.

How 3DEXPERIENCE Can Inspire

When we say cloud-based, we mean that it works on any web-enabled device. I use the tools on my iPad and in a pinch, I have even used them on my phone. When you need it, this functionality could be a life-saver for your business.

Imagine this: you are on a flight from your hometown to San Francisco to pitch your design to potential investors. You get settled in your seat and you connect with your seat mate while each of you shares niceties about the weather and spends a few minutes talking about the upcoming trip. You find out that they are a legendary angel investor in products just like yours, and could offer capital and expertise to help you make your vision a reality. Once the plane lands, you may not have their attention again. But for now, they have to hear your pitch.

But you packed your computer into your checked bag because you didn’t want to bother with it during your flight. No problem. Even with the painfully slow satellite connection in flight, you can log into your 3DEXPERIENCE drive on your phone and show off your concept.

They love it! They connected with it on a personal level, and they are inspired by how people’s lives can be different using your product. They are on board and now your life will never be the same—all because you inspired them. It wasn’t the information, but rather the inspiration and the shared vision that makes product concepts become reality.

Tools like SOLIDWORKS and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform helped support you, but your inspirational message is what can truly take your product and make it a reality.

Learn more about SOLIDWORKS with the eBook SOLIDWORKS 2022 Enhancements to Streamline and Accelerate Your Entire Product Development Process.

I don’t think I’m alone when I say that I want to use 3DEXPERIENCE, but I’m just a little (or maybe a lot…) overwhelmed by the platform. Between the apps and the roles, the PLM backbone and the cloud UI, I have repeatedly found myself retreating to my comfort zone: SOLIDWORKS.

From one perspective, this is a testament to the power of SOLIDWORKS. Half my time in CAD is spent programming CNC machines and because of SOLIDWORKS CAM and CAMWorks I have been able to do everything I need to in the SOLIDWORKS desktop program. So far.

But I know my apprehension toward change has stunted my growth and could (if it hasn’t already) be the beginning of a skills gap between myself and my competition. Resolved not to become an “old dog” in the industry, I have been searching for the right entry into the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

I needed a role that delivered functionality that was undeniably better than what I had access to in SOLIDWORKS, and which was pertinent to my specific type of work.

In other words, I needed an awesome CAM experience.

And fairly recently, I discovered a role that has the potential to thrust me into the 3DEXPERIENCE platform permanently: NC Shop Floor Programmer.

The NC Shop Floor Programmer role includes the following apps:

The two apps pertinent to my interests were Shop Floor Machining and Wire EDM Machining. Armed with these apps, I could program advanced 3-axis milling machines (including 2.5-axis machines, of course) and both 2- and 4-axis wire EDM machines.

Quick note: NC Shop Floor Programmer is the entry-level role for machining in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Other apps powered by DELMIA NC technology can handle just about any machining task, including 9+ axis mill/turn machines and 6-axis robotic arms.

With 10 years of CAMWorks (and later SOLIDWORKS CAM) experience behind me, it is difficult to imagine using anything else. Programming parts is almost muscle memory at this point: Automatic Feature Recognition > Generate Operation Plan > Generate Toolpath and tweak from there. I can’t program parts in my sleep, but I would be lying if I said CAMWorks has never appeared in my dreams at night.

I was relieved to learn that the underlying technology that powers CAMWorks and SOLIDWORKS CAM is also utilized in the Shop Floor Machining app. An important difference, however, is that the 3DEXPERIENCE implementation presents the NC programmer with more buttons to push and levers to pull. More of the core technology is exposed to the user, giving more complete control over toolpaths and toolpath simulation.

This app was starting to sound pretty darn good.

Then I learned about Power’By and I knew I had no more excuses—I had to dive into 3DEXPERIENCE. The day had come.

If you aren’t familiar with Power’By, it is the technology Dassault Systèmes is developing to connect CATIA V5 and SOLIDWORKS with 3DEXPERIENCE. Long story short, it is what allows me to continue designing in SOLIDWORKS if I prefer, then pivot to 3DEXPERIENCE for CNC programming.

Someone with a more trailblazing attitude will use a platform tool such as Xshape and Xdesign to design parts and seamlessly transition over to Shop Floor Machining for NC programming. But I’m keeping one foot in the SOLIDWORKS pool for now, and Power’By makes that fairly simple. After saving to the platform and converting to a platform object, I end up with two files that are parametrically linked to one another: one for SOLIDWORKS and one for 3DEXPERIENCE. Cool.

From the start of the workflow, it is evident that NC Shop Floor Programmer is providing an elevated CNC programming experience. Unlike any other CAM tool that I have used, the 3DEXPERIENCE apps encourage users to program inside a full machine environment.

To clarify—because this is an important difference—the programming takes place within a context that includes the entirety of the machine tool (called a manufacturing cell). Anything that occupies space in the real world would occupy space within the virtual machine. The movement (or kinematics) of the machine are replicated exactly, as well.

Most programmers are accustomed to programming parts that seemingly float alone in space or interact with fixturing only in their immediate vicinity. More advanced users might export the program and validate the toolpaths in a third-party machine simulation software.

I don’t have to imagine how challenging it is to catch every mistake and prevent every crash with these options; I have had my fair share. When I learned that I would be programming within a full kinematic machine environment and validating true G-code toolpaths in real-time, I was shocked. This was an immediate delivery on the promise of increased functionality over SOLIDWORKS CAM and the like.

This does add a bit of work to the front-end of the workflow, however. In SOLIDWORKS CAM, I can leap into CNC programming only a few seconds after opening the file. There is almost no barrier to entry and with the help of technology such as automatic feature recognition (AFR) and knowledge-based machining (KBM), the overall workflow is very rapid.

This brings me to my primary complaint about NC Shop Floor Programmer:  it is more complicated than I’m accustomed to. The terminology is not intuitive and I have to click my mouse a lot more than I think I should.

As an example, here is the workflow for starting a program:

1. Create PPR context file (PPR = process product resource)
2. Create manufacturing cell
3. Insert manufacturing cell into PPR context file
4. Import product or NC assembly (new or existing part to machine)
5. Insert machine into PPR context file
6. Insert manufacturing product into PPR context file
7. Import tools into PPR context file
8. Define part to machine
9. Define the coordinate system
10. Program features using Automatic or Interactive feature creation
11. Generate toolpaths
12. Simulate toolpaths
13. Post G-code

It feels a little convoluted, especially coming from SOLIDWORKS. But I have no doubt that most of my apprehension is rooted in the novelty of the workflow more than anything else. It only feels heavy because my baseline is a tool that does not offer the same value that I’m getting in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform: associativity.

The associativity between objects within the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is unprecedented. The cutting tools I use can be tracked to inventory and the features I program are linked to both engineering and manufacturing data elsewhere within the organization. Design changes made by other departments propagate through to my NC programs and the entire design-to-manufacture process is made as efficient as possible. Machine scheduling, cost estimating and resource allocation all become traceable and optimizable with the use of the PPR containers.

While I do have some grievances, overall, I believe CNC programming within the 3DEXPERIENCE platform offers immense value over more traditional CAM solutions. Even though the enterprise-level benefits are lost on my personal use case, the NC Shop Floor Programmer apps bring more toolpath-level control and significantly better toolpath validation to every user.

Improved versions of my favorite toolpath technologies, simpler file management, access to additional apps through the 3DEXPERIENCE roles… I am starting to regret waiting as long as I did to give the 3DEXPERIENCE platform the shot it deserves.

Learn more about 3DEXPERIENCE with the ebook Developing Better Products in the Cloud.

Most universities have long supplied students with access to top engineering software programs and platforms through campus license agreements, computer labs and discounted software purchases. But the world has changed both professionally and academically, moving increasingly toward online collaboration, remote work and multi-platform multi-device experiences. Many commercial platform and software offerings have moved to cloud and SaaS models, which provide flexibility and accessibility to engineers no matter where or when they work.

“We are on this journey toward having everything on one system with various levels. We all know that’s where the world will be,” said Suchit Jain, VP of Strategy and Business Development at Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS. “But we know customers are at different stages of adoption. Some have a cloud or digital adoption strategy for data management, in the sense that they want their data on the cloud, on whatever servers they have. Some are even saying, ‘All these editing tools we’re using—what do we do with that?’ Some companies have the philosophy of, ‘Don’t even bring your work laptop, just bring whatever laptop you have,’ because the data is always on the cloud and all the company work is being done that way.”

There are different phases of this adoption everywhere and in the commercial world, Dassault Systèmes offers users the flexibility they need. “If you want to run products on Windows, we have those. If you want to procure them in a SaaS environment as a term license, you can do that. You can lease the car, or you can buy the car if you want,” Jain said.

“We also said, ‘Let’s invest in cloud technology. Let’s invest in data being managed on the cloud,” he continued. “This is where the 3DEXPERIENCE platform comes into play. We have created commercial offers with 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS, which essentially connects the SOLIDWORKS desktop application to cloud data management in a SaaS environment with its own admin.”

It turns out, students want the same things.

When the Dassault Systèmes team looked into education, the same questions kept coming up. Universities have been at one stage, where they want SOLIDWORKS and some cloud-based capabilities, so they have focused on portfolios of software available on desktop. These are in some ways connected, as in doing calculations on the computer but storing the data on your laptop or on the cloud. But on the other side of this, you have students who are looking for purely cloud-based and browser-based design software.

“Pretty much every university out there is using SOLIDWORKS inside the classroom to teach the curriculum,” said Jain. “And they [universities] provide lab access, they provide software access to the purchased licenses they have available through the university. But we also knew a lot of students need to do homework at home, or especially with COVID-19, a lot of times learning needed to be remote. So students need access to SOLIDWORKS now that they can’t go to a physical lab.” 

The need for students to work with SOLIDWORKS remotely meant an increased demand for the student version. Dassault Systèmes has offered a student version for a number of years, which provided access to students through a standard desktop version for $99 and could be purchased through SOLIDWORKS websites and resellers. But the new drive toward remote work and cloud collaboration means students are keen to work with cloud-based platforms.

“Of course, a lot of people will use competitive software as well, but students kept on coming back and saying, ‘I would rather have SOLIDWORKS, because SOLIDWORKS gets me a job,’” Jain added. 

Giving Students “Cloud Power”

To that end, Dassault Systèmes has launched three new 3DEXPERIENCE offers geared toward students. These offers are designed to help engineering students build their skills and prepare for their future careers, and are affordably priced at $60 to $72 USD.

“What the 3DEXPERIENCE for Students offers are saying is that we want to give students cloud power,” said Jain. And it is this “cloud power” that makes the new 3DEXPERIENCE Student offers different from the previous student editions.

The new offers are built on the same SaaS model already used for 3DEXPERIENCE in the industrial and commercial spheres, which means that students can access and work on their projects, and collaborate with their peers, from any device and at any time—no longer dependent on access to campus labs or licenses.

But it’s not just cloud power that makes these offers unique. It’s the other parts of the package: device independence, a path to certification and a strong support community.

“These new 3DEXPERIENCE for Students offers are not just about a response to COVID-19,” said Jain. “This is a response to a few things happening. One is the ability to provide device-independent CAD design software to students in the same way as we are doing for commercial partners. We also wanted to include certification, so this is a career-based thing for the students besides just having the software available. Besides that, what we did not have for students was the cloud-based software; in the same way, certification was not included. We also inherently created this platform as a community-based platform with the means to helps students showcase their projects.” 

These are the three key elements packaged together in the new 3DEXPERIENCE for Students offers—so not only do students have access to the same software that they had before, but now they also have these three additional tools.

“Device independence; the cloud and a device independent in the cloud. Certification and career growth. And the community collaboration, a way to showcase your things. These are the three elements now combined in the 3DEXPERIENCE Student offers,” Jain said. “At the Dassault Systèmes level, they have introduced three products for students: one is SOLIDWORKS centric, one is CATIA centric and then we have 3DEXPERIENCE Engineer for Students which includes things beyond design, such as simulation.”

Device Independence

The value that device independence offers students is something that can’t be understated, especially with the prevalence of devices being placed into the hands of students at ever younger demographics.

“Students, you know, they have tablets,” said Marie Planchard, Senior Director, Education and Early Engagement at SOLIDWORKS. “Whether it’s given to them starting at primary school, or they are given a tablet of some sort by middle school. In high school, tablets have become very prevalent for many subjects.”

“In high school you’re going to see a Chromebook; they had iPads and now they have Chromebooks, if they’ve made an investment,” Planchard continued. “When you get to engineering school, there are Windows-based laptops. There are a lot of high schools with older computers that aren’t so powerful, now, to run the latest version of SOLIDWORKS. That hardware situation, and trying to make sure that every student has an opportunity, is why—in my opinion—students like to use Chromebooks in high school, because it wasn’t as strict an investment. You get to take the device home with you; it’s not tied to a lab. So now your work with this technology can be propagated to the home, even if you couldn’t afford a computer.”

Jain added, “The tablets are there, but also you have the MacBooks and the Chromebooks. And if you look at the competition, some may have browser-based CAD and some may have connected CAD. The beauty of what we do is that students have the choice, depending on whether it’s related to SOLIDWORKS being used in the university or their career. If they are interested in powerful technology but want to be able to run it from a tablet, Chromebook or Microsoft laptop, they can do that.”

This device-agnostic access also means that students can take advantage of valuable opportunities for collaboration and communication through whichever device they have at hand. While you may not be able to run a full simulation on a tablet or smartphone, for example, having the ability to share or access your projects when and where you want is still a valuable tool.

Path to Certification

In many cases, it was difficult for students to access and pursue certification processes and exams while they were still in school. These difficulties were one of the driving forces for including a path to certification with each of the new 3DEXPERIENCE for Students offers.

“Students actually came to us because, unless they were in a specific class where a professor or instructor gave the certification exam, they did not have access to it. You had to be in that special class,” said Planchard. “But there are lots of students who use SOLIDWORKS on a campus or at an institution. So, this way, if they truly want that certification, they have a way to prepare for it and to take it.”

“And those certifications are exactly the same as what we offer on the commercial side. It’s not watered down; it’s not something special,” she added. 

Completing the 3DEXPERIENCE certifications are a defined way for students to make their resume more attractive to employers when coming out of school into the workforce, by proving that the student already possesses the right knowledge and skills needed to succeed in the cloud-based, collaborative workplace of the future.

Community Support

No one can succeed entirely in isolation; engineers especially work best when in an environment of collaboration and support. The new 3DEXPERIENCE Students offers bring young engineers into the active Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE community filled with industry experts, innovators and educators.

The 3DEXPERIENCE community also offers a vast supply of educational resources, including webinars, collaboration and communication opportunities, as well as real-life examples from industry and experts around the world.

But the new collaboration tools are perhaps the most crucial—and most useful. 

“One of my favorite apps on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, is all about task scheduling and task management,” said Planchard. “It has nothing to do with the creation of the model or the analysis. But when you're able to have a project and see what you have to do and when do you have to do it. To be able to see what you have done. The wonderful feeling when you slide something over to your teammates to say, ‘This is complete.’ All those things that you would put out a little yellow sticky note somewhere around your office. You can keep track of those ideas and what you have to do, and you can do it in a method that ties it back to what you're working on in this computer-assisted or computer-aided design. It gives this all to students, and that to me is one of the areas that I find revolutionary.”

What’s Inside the Box?

SOLIDWORKS Education has expanded its portfolio with the three new 3DEXPERIENCE for Students offers, which include access to SOLIDWORKS, CATIA and a host of other Dassault Systèmes apps. Depending on what a student needs for their education or prospective career path, they can choose the package that offers them the best mix of software and certifications.

All three offers include certification paths, as well as access to the peer and expert communities of SOLIDWORKS and 3DEXPERIENCE. This includes learning materials, webinars and thousands of other students and Dassault Systèmes experts sharing their knowledge, projects and more.

3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS for Students

The new 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS for Students offer helps engineering students take their designs to the next level with the advantages of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. This enables students to leverage the platform’s artificial intelligence and design guidance.

Included in this offer are seven apps covering everything students need for their designs:

The SOLIDWORKS app is cloud connected, and requires a Windows computer.  All the other apps, including xDesign, xShape and xSheetMetal can be run from any browser and any device.

The roles included in this offer are:

• 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS Student
• 3D Designer Student
• Collaborative Industry Innovator
• Collaborative Business Innovator

Students who master their SOLIDWORKS skills can pursue three certification exams through this offer:

• 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS – Associate
• 3DEXPERIENCE 3D Creator – Associate
• 3DEXPERIENCE Collaborative Business & Industry Innovator – Associate

Passing all three exams earns students the “Be a SOLIDWORKS Collaborative Mechanical Designer” certification with a digital recognition badge.

3DEXPERIENCE CATIA for Students

The 3DEXPERIENCE CATIA for Students offer targets students working on mechanical design projects and gives them access to cutting-edge 3D design right in their browser. The certification path with this offer also includes the opportunity to upgrade skills for students who are currently CATIA V5 users and helps them transition to CATIA V6.

Apps in the CATIA Student offer focus on the needs of mechanical engineering:

The roles included in this offer are:

• 3D Innovator Student
• 3DEXPERIENCE CATIA Student
• Collaborative Industry Innovator
• Collaborative Business Innovator

The three certification paths available through this offer include:

• 3DEXPERIENCE Mechanical Designer (hands-on) – Associate
• 3DEXPERIENCE 3D Innovator – Associate
• 3DEXPERIENCE Collaborative Business & Industry – Associate

Passing all three exams earns students the “Be a CATIA Collaborative Mechanical Designer” certification with a digital recognition badge.

3DEXPERIENCE Engineer for Students

The 3DEXPERIENCE Engineer for Students offer helps students stay ahead of the curve when it comes to the tools they need to succeed in the workplace. This offer contains a suite of connected tools specifically aimed at fulfilling the broader toolkit needs of designers and engineers, including part design, surface design, sheet metal, assembly creation, mechanism motion and drawing generation.  Generative design tools are also available, as well as a complete set of simulation and analysis solutions including SIMULIA, multi-axis machining tools and photorealistic and virtual reality design review.

Apps included in this offer:

Roles included in this offer are:

• 3DEXPERIENCE Engineer Student
• Collaborative 3DEXPERIENCE Engineer Student
• Collaborative Industry Innovator
• Collaborative Business Innovator

 Four certification paths are available to students who master the skills:

• 3DEXPERIENCE Mechanical Designer (hands-on) – Associate
• 3DEXPERIENCE Structural Designer – Associate
• 3DEXPERIENCE NC Prismatic Machine Programmer – Associate
• 3DEXPERIENCE Collaborative Business & Industry Innovator – Associate

Passing all four exams earns students the “Be a 3DEXPERIENCE Collaborative Cross-Discipline Engineer” certification and digital recognition badge.

All three of these offers also include access to the 3DEXPERIENCE Edu hub for community interaction and project sharing in the Showroom, as well as the Job Place where students can find job opportunities from all industries looking for engineers with the right skills in the Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE platform programs and apps.

These three offers are available at an affordable price point, to ensure that students can get the access they need:

• 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS for Students - $60 USD
• 3DEXPERIENCE CATIA for Students - $60 USD
• 3DEXPERIENCE Engineer for Students - $72 USD

To learn more, visit the 3DEXPERIENCE for Students page at Dassault Systèmes.

While there’s nothing 100% new in SOLIDWORKS 2021, it is so good you can’t miss it! It has some of the most significant improvements ever, earning SOLIDWORKS 2021 the title of the best release yet.

As you can see from the agenda, this live stream lists all the greatest hits of SOLIDWORKS. They showed the improvements to things including the UI, Parts, Assemblies and Drawings. We’ll break this down and touch on some of the biggest improvements to the tool and come up with the top 10 best enhancements.

Quality & Performance

The amount of time given to SOLIDWORKS R&D was impressive. The event began with John Sweeny, the Senior Director for Product Development at SOLIDWORKS, who had 20% of the program to personify the improvements to quality and performance showcased in SOLIDWORKS 2021.

Every year at about this time the entire SOLIDWORKS community gets together to wait with eager anticipation of brand-new tools or features, giving them a compelling reason to upgrade. Something like a new simulation tool, or perhaps a surfacing feature or even a sheet metal or weldment tool. But shiny new bells and whistles like those won’t make a huge impact on every user—not like 2021’s performance improvements.

The can’t-miss improvement to SOLIDWORKS 2021 is performance. The enhancements to quality and performance in SOLIDWORKS 2021 will improve the life of every single user.

10. Enhanced Graphics Performance

SOLIDWORKS 2021 is the culmination of a multiyear effort to completely rearchitect the entire graphics engine. This is what drives the model and essentially paints the pixels on the screen. It is covered in “Enhanced graphics performance” in the system options.

The enhanced graphics option has been there for three years now. It was first introduced in SOLIDWORKS 2019, but to take advantage of it you had to know it was there. Many users never saw it. With SOLIDWORKS 2021 this option is on by default and it’s available for parts, assemblies and even drawings. Right out of the box, SOLIDWORKS 2021 will have significant performance improvements for all users with a certified graphics card.  During the live stream, they showed off some impressive time savings with this option.

9. Collapsible Command Manager

By collapsing the Command Manager, users can now work in a simpler environment—taking advantage of every pixel on the screen for designing.

This doesn’t just clear the clutter, but makes it easier to use, especially on a smaller screen like you might have at your home office. To me, there’s an elegance in the simplicity of a UI with nothing distracting you from your model.

8. Search for Commands in Customize

Although this functionality was shown using the Shortcut Bar (S-key), it is not exclusive to the Shortcut Bar. You can use the search bar to search for commands to customize the Command Manager and even the Heads-Up Display.

Although many power users already take advantage of customizing their commands, this new feature in SOLIDWORKS 2021 makes it easier for even beginners on day one to customize the interface and work how they want.

7. Evaluate Equations in Custom Properties and Cut Lists

With SOLIDWORKS 2021, custom properties now natively support equations, which are fundamental to intelligent parametric design.

6. Color Picker for Appearances

The new color picker tool makes an appearance, and with it you can get the right color for your parts. Use the color picker to mouse over and select a color on anything on your computer’s display—a website, PDF or any document.

5. Flip Mate Alignment Default Option

By setting the default option for “flip mate alignment” in assemblies, you can minimize the number of things that can get in the way and reduce productivity.

We all have been in the situation at least once where you are building an assembly by putting the pieces together using mates. It happens when the alignment of previously defined mates need to be switched or over define the assembly. With SOLIDWORKS 2021, the default response to the dialog box asking if you want “to change mate alignment” can be set as a default system option, thus removing one dialogue box interruption from your mental workflow.

4. Export Interferences to Excel

Automatic interference detection has always been a key advantage of solid modeling over 2D, 3D wireframe and surface modeling. Solid modeling has allowed us to put our parts together and see how they interact in 3D. SOLIDWORKS 2021 expands on the capabilities of interference detection.

You can take interference detection a step further and export an Excel sheet of each interference along with a thumbnail image to visualize the interference. This will make design review meetings or collaborating with colleagues or clients much easier.

3. Save Silhouette Defeature as a Configuration

The Silhouette Defeature had some of its capabilities extended with SOLIDWORKS 2021. Now instead of just a separate file, a simplified “silhouette,” or outer surface of the model can be captured in a configuration, making an already powerful process much more useable.

2. Dynamically Load Lightweight Components

When working with assemblies opened in lightweight mode in SOLIDWORKS 2021, the components resolve automatically by simply expanding the item in the Feature Manager. This removes a big downside to lightweight mode and sets up users for incredible performance gains in SOLIDWORKS 2021.

1. Detailing Mode for Drawings

Detailing mode for drawings, introduced in SOLIDWORKS 2020, has been greatly enhanced in SOLIDWORKS 2021. You can open massive drawings in seconds.

The drawing shown was made from a 2,400-part assembly with multiple sheets and many drawing views. It opened in less than 5 seconds. Just remember it’s a drawing “mode,” meaning there is a list of things you can’t do. However, that list got a lot smaller this year as the capabilities of detailing mode were expanded. With SOLIDWORKS 2021, here’s what detailing mode can do:

• Create and modify break views.
• Create and modify crop views.
• Create and modify detail views.
• Add dimensions and annotations to those views.
• Add and edit hole callouts.
• Edit dimension tolerance values.
• Edit dimension characteristics.
• Add and remove dimensions in sets of chain and baseline dimensions.
• Edit annotation characteristics.

Essentially, you can detail your drawing. It’s especially useful for those times you just want to open up the drawing, look at it and maybe move some things around. If you need capabilities beyond the detailing mode, no problem. You can always resolve the drawing and get the full drawing capabilities.

For more about SOLIDWORKS simulation-driven design, check out the whitepaper Design Through Analysis: Today’s Designers Greatly Benefit From Simulation-Driven Product Development.

While the messaging may feel redundant, a true realization of all that the Cloud brings to the table is far from fully realized by most of us in product design, development and engineering. I absolutely believe that if we “really” understood the extent of the power of the Cloud, we would all be singing and dancing on the Cloud bandwagon—especially when it comes to CAD.

So, what exactly is this mysterious “Cloud” that we all speak of? In most cases, we’re talking about the 80 million super-servers located in data centers around the world that we leverage via an internet connection. Of course, we could have an internal or private Cloud—a set of internal company servers—for those of us working in highly confidential industries with stringent mandatory security protocols. But typically when we think of the “Cloud,” we are thinking public servers. I don’t need to manage or maintain these pricey servers, worry about disk clean-up, viruses or hardware storage—those are somebody else’s problem. The role of these Cloud providers is to keep my data safe, secure and sound (for a fee, of course).

That doesn’t sound so magical. Where does this power you speak of come into play?

The Cloud delivers powerful benefits that fall into four categories for Engineering and CAD: Collaboration, Mobility, Data Management and Infinite Computing. Let’s take a look at each of these game changers.

Collaboration

I wrote an in-depth article back in June about the benefits and advantages of collaboration as it relates to Product Design and Development. At the risk of repeating myself, we need to realize that the days of working in silos are over. Never has the mantra “two heads are better than one” been truer than it is today. The Cloud makes it easy to collaborate with as many team members as you want, anywhere in the world, at any time. Now you can easily share your designs and CAD models with other team members and make collective modifications in real time. 

I find this even more valuable when it comes to solving design problems. Multiple sources of input and creative ideas can often conquer a design issue in a fraction of the time, and lead to greater levels of innovation.

Collaboration on the Cloud also lends itself to better project management, concurrent engineering and increased cross-pollination between departments. The list of advantages is long.

Of course, COVID-19 has forced us to embrace Cloud Collaboration more than ever—hopefully we won’t forget its effectiveness after we return to the office.

Net-net: a great collaboration platform can dramatically shorten the product development timeline.

Mobility

With your valuable CAD data stored up in the Cloud, you can access it anytime and from anywhere! Do you need to discuss a design change from your sunny beach “home office?” That’s no problem as long as you have an internet connection. Pull up your CAD model and mark it up on your tablet if you like. 

When COVID-19 hit, there were so many issues with working from home versus the office where many engineers’ CAD data was safely tucked away. If you had your CAD data stored on the Cloud, it would have been much easier to adapt as we all transitioned to that home office. Taking it one step further, choosing a CAD-connected product like 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS, and you can access your CAD program from the workstation of your choice, as well.

Note: CAD data can be tricky with all of its associated parts and assemblies, so you don’t want to simply sign up for Dropbox! You’re going to want a solution that fully understands the complexities of all things CAD, such as the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

Data Management

You would be amazed at the number of problems that are eliminated when there is one central depository for everyone’s CAD data. A low-stress CAD data management program on the Cloud with check-in/out, that speaks “SOLIDWORKS,” and requires zero additional investment in hardware or the usual IT nightmare is a God-send. You don’t want to waste time working on an out-of-date file or searching for that pesky part you know you’ve already created. Plus, it’s so nice to have the ability to backtrack and see what changes were made, and by whom! You also don’t need to devise or manage some intricate naming convention and pray that everyone follows it to avoid disaster. 

In addition, while we all might get excited when the next release of SOLIDWORKS comes out, none of us are excited about the installation process. As you move to all things Cloud. However, you will experience lightweight “updates” throughout the year as opposed to one heavy release annually. That also means you’ll have access to the cool features before everyone else does—bragging rights for sure!

3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS covers all the above bases and for nearly the same price as stand-alone SOLIDWORKS. My apologies if I sound sales-y, but what’s not to love about that?

Infinite Computing

I actually believe this is the most powerful benefit of all, and yet it may be the least recognized. No longer are your complex engineering activities limited due to the capabilities of your workstation. When it comes to undertakings such as simulation, the sky is the limit! 

You won’t be taxing your own computer with these complex compute-intensive tasks; instead, you will turn that job over to one (or more) of those Cloud super-servers. What used to take 24 hours on your own workstation could easily take less than 20 minutes when handed over to the Cloud. You will get results back in a fraction of the time, allowing you to make highly educated decisions faster regarding your product design.

You will be more apt to try things you never dreamed of before, pushing the boundaries of engineering and product development. This also opens the door to an increase in innovation, ideally leading to better products. I believe we are only just beginning to see what infinite computing can truly bring to the CAD and engineering table.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention 3DCreator, a total Cloud CAD solution. If you are brave and want to go full-on Cloud, take a look at 3DCreator—though I do realize it is hard to let go of your beloved SOLIDWORKS. 

It not an outlandish prediction to say that someday all desktop products will probably become extinct, and eventually all of our software will be accessed via the Cloud. Why not get a jump-start and, at the very least, connect your CAD data to the Cloud with the 3DEXPERIENCE platform? All of the benefits mentioned above could be yours—you would be living the CAD dream.

I hope that I’ve managed to convert some of your eye-rolls to light bulbs—if so, my job is done!

To learn more about 3DEXPERIENCE in product development and cloud collaboration, check out the whitepaper Developing Better Products in the Cloud.

I had the pleasure to join a team in the 3DEXPERIENCE for Good Hackathon, and this is my story of how Team Prosthetic ARMada developed our design and prototype. Before getting into the design, I’ll share some background into the rules of the competition and how it was setup.

The Competition

Five teams comprised of engineers, students, SOLIDWORKS employees and industrial designers from around the globe collaborates on designing the next generation prosthesis for the Ellen Meadows Prosthetic Hand Foundation (See Image 2).

Image 2. The LN-4 Prosthetic Hand.

My team contained members from the USA, Canada, the United Kingdom and Italy. We called ourselves Team Prosthetic ARMada (see Image 3). Teams had one month to do all conceptualization, design, project management, presentation preparation and prototyping—all using the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Teams had a limit of working on the project for 30 hours per week, or 120 hours for the entire project.

Image 3. Team Prosthetic ARMada.

The Foundation

The Ellen Meadows Prosthetic HandFoundation was founded in 2005 with the mission to distribute prosthetics to those most in need in the world, at no cost to the end recipient. Since its inception, the foundation has distributed more than 56,000 prosthetic hands to people in over 80 countries, mostly in developing nations in Africa, Southeast Asia and India. There are over 12 million people affected by lower arm amputations worldwide and the foundation’s founder, Michael Mendonca, stated that they would love to distribute 1 million prosthetics.

The Design Criteria

There had to be boundaries on a competition that only lasts one month, but that doesn’t mean there would be compromises to design and ingenuity. Teams received a document with around 30 design requirements, including:

• Design must be manufacturable for under $100.
• Prosthetic should be able to be easily attached.
• Prosthetic should be ambidextrous.
• Prosthetic should be able to lift up to 20 pounds without coming off the recipient’s arm.
• Prosthetic should look more like a human hand than the current design.
• Design must be rugged and be able to get dirt and grime on it (many recipients work in agricultural fields).
• There should be multiple colors available to closely resemble various skin tones.
• Prosthetic should hold everyday objects (pen, cell phone, broom, hair brush, etc.).

Team ARMada’s Design

With such a short timeframe to get a design completed and agreed upon by the team, there was no time to waste at the beginning when doing as much research as would normally be needed for a product such as this. After all, nobody on the team had a background in prosthetics and the time to research would have benefited everyone prior to going into this project.

As a team, we decided to hit the drawing board right away and broke the project down into three main parts:

1. How will the prosthetic attach to the arm?
2. How will the fingers and thumb work together?
3. What will the palm or hand look like?

We decided right away that we wanted to focus on the aesthetics of the prosthetic after we heard that some amputees would use a non-functioning wooden hand rather than the current LN-4 design, since it did not look like a real hand.

Our team came up with many sketches and preliminary designs (see Image 4) on these three design aspects before landing on a direction, which we all originally thought was risky—using compliant mechanisms for the fingers. Compliant mechanisms gave us the flexibility to have a single hand lock a finger into place, and then also release a finger without the use of another hand. This was particularly attractive for double amputees.

Image 4. Prosthetic hand concepts.

With the team choosing to use compliant mechanisms, there were a lot of design iterations that were done to hone in on a working prototype. Instead of sticking with just plastic parts, we used wire-infused plastic to provide much better durability in the joints that move (see Images 5 and 6). This ensured that the overall durability of those heavily-used joints would last for a long time, which was one of the design requirements.

Image 5. Finger Prototype, opened and closed.

Image 6. Finger with wire infused.

The palm component was the next major design task to tackle. We wanted the hand to look realistic, so we used xShape to get an organic shape for the hand (see Image 7). When we put the palm and fingers together, we could get an idea of what our creation would look like (see Image 8).

Image 7. Palm Design in xShape.

Image 8. Palm and fingers together.

Now that the palm and finger designs were complete, we needed to make the fingers look more realistic, so our effort was placed on making “finger coverings.” This task was difficult, with a lot of effort going into designing the coverings to have as few unique parts as possible. With the deadline approaching, and a few days before traveling to Nashville for the conference, one of our team members worked feverishly on the coverings. The night before landing, they had been completed and we could put together our presentation for the audience and judges (See Image 9).

Image 9. Rendering of completed prosthetic hand with finger coverings, thumb and palm assembled.

The Prototype

We knew we were going to do a formal presentation to explain our design and the thought process that had gone into it, but what is better than having a working prototype to demonstrate your design?

One of our team members put a lot of effort into 3D printing our prototype over the last several days before flying to Nashville—and it was a thing of beauty. With the compliant mechanism fingers and thumb, and a very basic palm, we were able to have a working hand that could do many of the day-to-day activities that were required for the competition (See Image 10).

Image 10. Working prosthetic compliant mechanism prototype.

Conclusion

Even though Team Prosthetic ARMada did not come in first place, this was a fantastic opportunity to help give back to the world in a small way. Every person on each team showed great passion and ingenuity in how they tackled the problems presented. After the competition, the winning team has been moving forward with their design and manufacturing, working with the foundation. And, who knows, maybe one day we will be seeing Team Prosthetic ARMada’s design as a next-next generation prosthetic?

To learn more about SOLIDWORKS simulation for product development in health care, check out the whitepaper Simulating for Better Health.

Image 11. All teams for the 3DEXPERIENCE for Good Hackathon.

At the North point of the Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE platform Compass is where social and collaborative apps are located. At the core of these apps is 3DSwYm.

“3DSwYm reveals the power of communities and conversations to share and innovate throughout internal and/or external ecosystems. It leads your company to be more agile and innovative by providing intuitive content creation tools and social interaction,” per Dassault Systèmes.

Before we jump into the 3DSwYm deep end (see what we did there?), let’s go through some terminology. Dassault Systèmes uses “SwYm” to refer to sites built using 3DSwYm technology, and “SwYmers” (pronounced “swimmers”) to refer to the people who use those sites. SwYm itself stands for Say What You Mean.

So join us, fellow SwYmers, in exploring the 3DSwYm community.

Communities, found in the top bar.

The first concept to understand is that 3DSwYm is available as a web app that can be accessed from the North point of 3DEXPERIENCE platform Compass, a widget that is part of a dashboard, then through the top bar of a dashboard by selecting Communities.

The next concept is that of Roles. 3DSwym Roles define your rights to create, read, update and delete content that is located on the communities you belong to. For those who want to have a better understanding of the permissions associated with various Roles, I have included below the Roles and access rights as defined within 3DEXPERIENCE User Assistance. User Assistance is online help for the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform, and can be accessed by clicking on the question mark on the 3DEXPERIENCE top bar.

3DEXPERIENCE User Assistance can be accessed by clicking on the question mark on the 3DEXPERIENCE top bar.

Legend for 3DEXPERIENCE User Assistance.

The explanation of the User Assistance acronyms and footnotes are:

• Y/N: Bold is the default behavior.
• CRUD: Create, Read, Update and Delete any content. An underscore (_) is used instead if the given right is not available.
• *: Update and delete their own content.
• R or CRUD*: Read any content and depending on the owner’s choice, Create, Update and Delete their own content.
• A platform administrator can: Edit or delete any content if the moderation mode has been activated, and edit or delete any comment.
• ⁽¹⁾ A contributor can create a media only in the context of a rich text message and cannot change the display on the “What’s New” option of this media.
• ⁽²⁾ The status of an idea can only be changed by an owner.
• ⁽³⁾ If an answer has been validated, only community owners can update it. Everyone can rate an answer except the member that answered the question.

Wiki commands specific rights.

The specific rights acronyms and footnotes are:

• ⁽¹⁾ Community owners always have access to private pages.
• ⁽²⁾ Wiki page privacy can be switched only if the parent page is public.
• ⁽³⁾ Lock applies only to the page title and content, not to the tree structure: The “Lock this page and all sub-pages” command will be effective at the time of the action so any newly created page will not be locked. A locked page can be moved within the tree.
• ⁽⁴⁾ MM stands for Moderation Mode.
• ⁽⁵⁾ When working on a private page, it applies only to contributors and authors declared as authorized users on this private page.

WeDo (like “to do”) specific rights.

For the WeDo specific rights, explanation as follows:

• ^* Update and delete their own content only if a member of the community.
• ^** Assignee can read/assign/change status only if a member of the community.

Additionally, as an administrator, you have access to the Communities Control Center, where you manage your communities.

My Communities.

The 3DSwym interface can consist of up to three panels. This can vary depending on what is selected and how you have the panels configured. The left panel gives you access to Communities and Conversations, each with its own tab. With the Communities tab selected, the communities you belong to are displayed under My Communities. You can define your favorite communities by dragging a community from My Communities to Favorite Communities.

My Communities.

Just below the Communities tab you can:

Search from your list of communities (My Communities).

Filter for only new content.

List My Communities, which will list the communities you belong to as well as public communities. You can also discover private communities, which you can join.

Selecting What’s New will launch the What’s New feed, where you can view the posts added by members of your communities. You can also post to your communities from this location.

Posts can be viewed chronologically for each community by selecting that community. While a community is selected, any post you add will be posted only to that community.

Community Posts.

Selecting a Community will provide you with several tools to access community information. This information is displayed on the far-right panel and includes community details, community members and a timeline of your communities’ posts.

The far right of the Community Panel.

Tools

Referring to the above image, along the top of the far-right panel, the following tools are available:

Filters your posts by their contents.

Filter your content by media.

Filter your content by WeDos.

Filter your content by ideas.

Filter your content by questions.

Filter your content by wiki pages.

Filter your content by surveys.

Community Features

To the right of the above tools is the Community Features pull-down. The pull-down allows you to:

Unfollow a community.

Leave a community.

Subscribe to new content.

View and edit your contributions to the selected community.

Subscribe to an RSS feed related to your communities.

Share with your communities.

On the left panel, the Conversations tab offers similar tools to the Communities tab. The Conversations tab contains conversations between two or more individuals, while the Communities tab contains content relating to the communities you belong to.

Similar to communities, you can search and filter conversations. By pressing “+” you can start a new conversation. Also, like communities, you can add conversations to your favorites.

The middle panel will display the conversations you had with the selected user. The two icons on the right change the way your conversations are displayed.

Content displays your conversation as a list of messages, posts, media or WeDos, while Timeline displays your conversations  chronologically. In both, you can add messages.

Note: Displaying as content or timeline is also available in communities

Adding a message to conversation.

Filters for contents and timelines.

As with communities, while the conversations tab is selected, there is a toolbar on the far-right panel that gives you control of your content. Referring to the image above, from left to right, these tools filter by posts, media and WeDos.

Audio and video calls and community features

To the right of the previously mentioned toolbar, there are tools for audio and video conferencing.

After starting Audio call, you can:

• Maximize to maximize the audio call window.
• Mute microphone or unmute.
• Hide camera to stop broadcasting the video streaming.
• Show camera to restart the streaming.
• Hang up to end the audio call.

Similarly, after starting a video call, you can:

• Maximize to maximize the video call window.
• Mute microphone or unmute.
• Hide camera to stop broadcasting the video streaming.
• Show camera to restart the video streaming.
• Hang up to end the video call.

The pull-down to the right of this toolbar gives you access to community features.

Set a topic, lets you edit the current conversation topic.

Transform into community. If you are platform administrator, you to can transform the conversation into a private community.

Subscribe to new content. Sends you a notification when new content is added to the selected conversation.

My contributions allows you to view and edit your contributions.

Similarly, to contributions, selecting WeDos will allow to view and edit your WeDos

Below these two toolbars, you can view the members of the selected conversation and the contents/timeline of the conversation. Selecting contents/timeline in the right panel has the same effect as selecting either of the two icons situated at the top-right of the middle panel (where you view your conversations) and changes how the conversation is displayed.

Members and Contents.

This article is part of a series, and provides a brief overview of the 3DSwym platform that intends to provide a basic understanding of the functionality found in the Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

To learn more about SOLIDWORKS, check out the whitepaper Developing Better Products in the Cloud.

About the Author

Joe Medeiros is a Senior Applications Engineer at Javelin Technologies, a premier SOLIDWORKS reseller, servicing customers throughout Canada and offering SOLIDWORKS customers expertise in implementing and using SOLIDWORKS solutions.

Joe has been involved in many aspects of the SOLIDWORKS product family since 1996. As an award-winning blogger, he regularly writes about SOLIDWORKS.

Thankfully, summer is here—and as promised, so are these buzz-worthy, game-changing offers.

This marks the first time that the SOLIDWORKS we all know and love has been fully integrated with the cloud-based 3DEXPERIENCE platform. To take it a step further, these offers are priced at nearly the same price-point as SOLIDWORKS desktop alone, but with much more added value. But what do these new offers actually mean to you, and why would you want to disrupt your happy SOLIDWORKS desktop world to take advantage of them? Is moving to the cloud all it’s cracked up to be for product design and development?

You might be thinking, “You can pry SOLIDWORKS from my cold, dead hands,” but you don’t need to worry. All three offers come with SOLIDWORKS desktop. With that established, we can take a look at four very good reasons to take advantage of the 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS offers.

1. Eliminate Data Management Headaches

It can be annoyingly difficult to keep track of CAD data. Whether you store your data locally, on a server or both, you have no doubt wasted precious time searching for some elusive piece of CAD data at some point. Have you ever spent more time searching for a part than it would have taken to simply redraw it altogether? I know I have.

Do you use complicated naming conventions to manage your revisions? You have to really trust your team members to be on the ball at all times if this is your definition of version control. And, how do you really know you’re working on the latest version of a file? Have you ever had someone save on top of a part or assembly you’ve worked tirelessly on—only to wipe out all of these changes? With no real tracking in place, you have no way of knowing who made what changes to which file and when.

The pain is real. No matter how carefully you plan out your company’s data management standards, somebody will go rogue. Not you, of course. In addition, no matter how safe and secure you think your data is, it is only as secure as the USB drive on your computer.

Enter product data management on the cloud with ENOVIAworks.

When many of us think of Product Data Management (PDM), we think of monolithic applications, IT nightmares, expensive servers, long and complicated ramp-ups and big budgets. When you move your data to the cloud, you eliminate all your worst fears and expenses as data management is seamlessly integrated into your SOLIDWORKS product.

Revision control is automated, and searching is thorough, speedy and easy. You can find comfort in knowing you are always working on the most recent file, and you can roll back the history to view any changed parts or assemblies. There is very little ramp-up time required, with no additional hardware or IT costs.

Most importantly, your data is safe and secure, and easy to share, with anyone, anytime and on any device. That is the power of the cloud. The 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS offers include simple yet powerful PDM that is built right in; you would barely know it’s there, except that you’ll find yourself reaching for the Tylenol much less often.

2. Improve Your CAD Management Life

If you are a CAD Manager, you might have a love/hate relationship with SOLIDWORKS releases. You probably love having access to the cool new features, but hate the installation process, especially if you are responsible for multiple CAD stations. Do you have a hodgepodge of releases in your company? How frustrating is it to make sure your files are compatible as each department beats to their own SOLIDWORKS release adoption drum?

Then there’s license tracking; if you are the unfortunate one tasked with keeping track of who has what, it can be quite daunting. Ever have a CAD user want to use their SOLIDWORKS license at home, but forgot to borrow it before leaving the office?

The 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS offers are a CAD Manager’s best friend. After adopting one of the offers, you’ll see that updates are lighter weight and practically automatic—much like phone apps. You’ll receive various updates throughout the year, possibly with some great new feature, instead of one big heavy update. This also means that everyone on 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS will be on the same release.

Also, it is beyond simple to manage licenses, add and subtract where needed, at any point in a project. With Named Users, you can access your SOLIDWORKS license from anywhere since it is tied to the person and not to a network license. More Tylenol saved.

3. Improves Overall and Everyday Product Design and Development Process

Is your team high-functioning? Do you solve design problems and challenges in silos or as a fully collaborative team? When you get to work, do you go straight to your email? Does your entire team know where they are on the timeline, what milestones have been reached and what issues have occurred along the way? Would you like to engage in a visual conversation with your client to ensure you are delivering a product that meets their needs? 

The 3DEXPERIENCE platform can turn your team into master collaborators with very little effort. Rather than launching your email, launch the platform to find assigned project tasks, change orders and to check out the project timeline. You’ll be launching SOLIDWORKS from inside of the platform, so it is a logical place to start.

You can also engage your client on the platform, interacting with your SOLIDWORKS models for real-time feedback, ensuring greater customer satisfaction. Marketing can have transparent access to the model without bothering Engineering, and many functions can be performed concurrently rather than sequentially. Plus, your team will be unified and high-functioning without ever needing to be in the same office (if desired).

For more information on the value of collaboration in product design and development, check out my recent article. And, let me also say that while there are many different collaboration products out there, nobody understands the product design and development process like Dassault Systèmes; it’s what they’ve been focusing on for decades.

4. Try Out Other Cool Stuff (You Might Just Get Attached)

The 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS offers also come with a great online CAD program with 3D Creator. Again, I know you love your SOLIDWORKS, but if you’ve ever wanted to model away from your desktop—perhaps on a tablet—then you should definitely check out this program. Built on the CATIA engine, it is powered yet easy to use. You’ll even find some similarities with your beloved SOLIDWORKS to ensure speedy ramp-up, and it’s there at no additional cost—so why not try it?

3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS Professional also comes with a friendly sub-D surface modeler called 3D Sculptor. This makes it easy to create those smooth industrial shapes which are not so easy in SOLIDWORKS. If this is something you do on a regular basis, you should definitely take a look.

3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS Premium comes with all of the above and includes powerful Simulation tools so you can truly test the integrity of your designs.

The three 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS offers all include great value; simply select the one that suits your needs. Imagine your life with less headaches and tedium and better decisions and products. Contact your local SOLIDWORKS reseller for a demo so you can see it in action for yourself or get more info here.

Learn more about SOLIDWORKS in the whitepaper Design Through Analysis: Simulation-Driven Product Development Pays Business Dividends in Transition to Smart Manufacturing.

Yet are you and your coworkers truly collaborating during the design process? Or are the individual players off doing their part (perhaps literally) and only coming together as a team when problems arise? I joke that as mechanical designers and engineers, often our assemblies work together more cohesively than our teams do! As I write this, I hope you and your team don’t fall into this category.

For those of you who view collaboration as one of those feel-good HR experiments, let’s take a look at some strong reasons for investing in and optimizing collaboration (yes, even if you work at a small company).

Is this what collaboration during COVID-19 has to look like? Technical collaboration can do better.

1. Collaboration Fosters Innovation, Leading to Better Solutions

Startups are all about collaboration, working to constantly innovate and improve their designs. They know the importance of working with customers to incorporate feedback, thus ensuring they bring great products to market. Startups are also lean, making sure their design and manufacturing processes are sustainable. Startups (good ones) are hungry for collaboration to ensure success.

Mature companies tend to get into the rut of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Success breeds complacency, however, leading to less desire to innovate. As a result, the “path well-traveled” continues to be the norm. When true collaboration enters the mix and people work together to vet options, processes and challenges, they often come up with innovative solutions that lead to amazing results. Guess what? The more people working on a problem, the greater the chances they will find the best solution possible! The old adage “two heads are better than one” is the cornerstone of collaboration. Think to yourself, would you rather be stuck in an escape room by yourself or with seven other people?

2. Collaboration Unites the Technical and Non-Technical

When Product Design or Engineering departments only collaborate with their technical counterparts, they are in for a world of hurt. Marketing will constantly be coming to you for explanations and graphics—or worse yet, they will deliver completely inaccurate messaging. Sales will improperly represent the product capabilities. PR won’t have the right answers past the basic FAQ documents.

The list goes on and on.

When you work in a truly collaborative environment like the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, you can easily expose the product design process to all the desired stakeholders. You would be amazed at what a difference this makes in overall project awareness. And furthermore, there is huge value in a marketing team that truly understands your products and process. You will be delighted to be free of all those needless questions to answer (though you might be lonely).

3. Collaboration Saves You Time (and Money!)

You might think that the time and effort involved with coordinating the collaboration process slows you down. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

With increased pressures to cut costs, compress product development cycles and solve design problems rapidly, there is no better time to bring the team (and extended team) together to discuss and inspire solutions. New ideas and cost-saving processes can be explored and discussed. The manufacturing team can alert the design team earlier in the planning phase if there are potential design flaws and risks to be mitigated. We all know that changes made early in the process are much less expensive than those made later on down the line.

4. Collaboration Unifies and Leads to a Happier (and More Educated) Workplace

This reason might be the feel-good part – but it’s also a big plus for your company. Collaboration helps people learn more about other teams and people they wouldn’t typically interact with. They gain valuable insight into the overall project and develop more knowledge regarding the various stakeholder roles. And guess what? When you fully understand how the other teams work, you start to make adjustments, modify your deliverables, improve your communication, have more empathy, etc. All parties become more unified and motivated – as well as driven by a sense of collective ownership.

During this time of social distancing with so many still relegated to working remotely, “real” collaboration might seem somewhat daunting. We can’t just walk over to someone’s desk to discuss a change order or to get someone’s quick opinion on a weldment. But haven’t we already become somewhat adept at online meetings? And, of course, there is email—if you’ve got the time and don’t mind the extremely linear approach.

The first email, by the way, was sent in 1971—nearly 50 years ago. It continues to be the most prevalent means of office communication. Do we really believe that there isn’t a better solution for collaboration than 50-year-old technology? And am I the only person who wonders who that first email went to? Who would have been there to receive it?

Of course, there are dozens of alternative online collaboration solutions available today, but none of them understand the Product Design and Manufacturing process quite as well as the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform. Dassault Systèmes, provider of the SOLIDWORKS software you know and love, has created this easy-to-use, one-stop-shop for all of your collaboration needs. It includes secure, transparent and powerful data management tools without the IT headaches or expensive server requirements.

How about a project management system that caters to product development? You can easily assign tasks, designate key milestones and post your SOLIDWORKS model data into the project timeline. Imagine getting to work (after your coffee, of course), turning on your computer, logging on to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform and clearly seeing your task assignments without having to dig through your emails. With a simple click you’ve launched SOLIDWORKS from the platform, always knowing you’re working on the most up-to-date file. All stakeholders can rely on a single source of truth—and that is priceless!

The 3DEXPERIENCE platform allows any team, big or small, to easily collaborate anytime, anywhere and on any device. Projects don’t need to be linear with one team waiting for an official hand-off. Instead, team members can complete and update their portions of the project concurrently, thus saving a substantial amount of overall time. In addition, any invited team members can transparently see into the product development timeline and get up-to-the minute reports.

Do you think your company is too small to invest in a collaboration tool? The 3DEXPERIENCE platform enables you to also collaborate and share your SOLIDWORKS models with your clients, the shop floor—maybe even a service department. I see collaboration tools such as the 3DEXPERIENCE platform as great equalizers, enabling small companies to compete with the big leagues, while large companies can become more inspired and agile.

Our office world is changing—make no mistake about that. Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, companies all over the world are realizing that their employees can successfully work remotely and still be highly productive. The future of physical offices isn’t as bright as it once was; for one thing, real estate is expensive, and makes for a nice line item to remove from the books. More and more engineers and designers will see themselves working from home, and will want to make sure they have the best collaborative, design-centric tool for the job—the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

While it may be possible to come up with a brilliant idea by yourself, getting it perfected from inspiration to implementation as a team of one is highly unlikely and not recommended. Embracing collaboration will become increasingly more important in our ever-changing world and selecting the right collaboration tool is just as important as selecting the right CAD tool.

To learn more about 3DEXPERIENCE in product development and cloud collaboration, check out the whitepaper Developing Better Products in the Cloud.

A dashboard is a collection of widgets, and widgets are links to platform apps, community content and web content. The dashboard a community member has access to can be one that is related to their roles, dashboards that were created specifically for them and dashboards that the community member created for themselves.

Regardless of which dashboard a member uses, they all have common elements.

Common elements of dashboards.

1. The Compass

The compass is a means of launching related apps.

• North – Social and collaborative (sharing)
• East – Information intelligence (metrics and data)
• South – Simulation (analysis)
• West – 3D Modeling (CAD)

2. Top Bar

Search: Lets you search across the 3DEXPERIENCE platform or within the current tab. Search results can be refined using 6WTags.

6WTags: Click the tag icon next to the search box to reveal the 6WTags. 6WTags lets you capture the semantics on any content.

Me: Lets you access some basics about your profile.

Notifications: Opens the 3DNotification Center on the right pane of your dashboard to display the notifications pushed by some Apps and services of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

Add: Lets you create and organize your dashboards.

Share: Lets you share tabs or dashboards with other users or user groups.

Content: Opens 3DDrive in a pane on the right of your dashboard to securely mashup, store, access and share files online from any device and anywhere.

Communities: Opens 3DSwym in a pane on the right of your dashboard to access the power of communities within a dashboard.

Help lets you access the following:

• Get Started: Displays the coachmark, a conceptual design window that provides a basic overview of the 3DEXPERIENCE.
• User’s Communities: Opens the community where you can find answers from members.
• On the cloud only: Get Support: Opens the 3DEXPERIENCE platform on cloud support page.
• 3DEXPERIENCE User Assistance: Online help and User Guide.

(Note: Description of the top bar commands was derived from 3DExperience User Assistance)

3. Tabs

Tabs are used to organize content.

4. Action Bar

Along the bottom is the action bar. The action bar is populated with the actions available for a selected app.

App action bar.

Apps come in two flavors: native apps and web-based apps. Native apps are installed on your devices, such as a computer, tablet or mobile phone. The installation for the native apps can be done directly from the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. An example of a native app would be the SOLIDWORKS Connector. Clicking on the SOLIDWORKS Connector will launch SOLIDWORKS on the computer where the Connector was installed, providing that SOLIDWORKS is also installed on that computer.

Web-Based Apps live on the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform and are launched and employed on the platform. An example of a Web App would be xShape.

As mentioned earlier, the dashboards you have available to you can be defined by the role(s) you are assigned. A role is a collection of apps that are related to defined fields of expertise. Examples of roles include 3D Component Designer, 3D Creator or 3D Sculpture. Example of apps related to these roles are xDesign for the 3D Creator role or xShape for 3D Sculpture.

My Roles.

Selecting a role will display the apps related to that role. For example, the 3D Sculptor role will give you access to the below apps.

Apps for 3D Sculptor role.

The roles and apps you have access to are displayed on a panel on the left side of the dashboard. This panel can be shown or hidden by clicking on the 3DEXPERIENCE compass, located at the top-left of the dashboard.

3DEXPERIENCE compass.

Below the 3DEXPERIENCE compass, you can change how your apps are displayed.

App display options.

You can also switch between your apps (Me), your company’s apps, and apps from the world.

App Type Selection.

With ‘Me’ and ‘As a System of Operations’ selected, you will see all the roles assigned to you. As mentioned previously, selecting a role will display the apps associated with that role. Below My Roles is a listing of ‘My Favorite Apps’ and below that ‘My Apps’. In My Apps, you will see all the apps you have access to based on your roles.

You can create a shortlist of Apps by dragging the app from My Apps to My Favorite Apps. Apps under My Favorite Apps can be dragged and dropped to reorder them, and apps can be removed from My Favorite Apps by dragging them to the Trash can at the top-right corner of My Favorite Apps.

Removing apps from my favorite apps.

Selecting content from the top bar will give you access to your files, as well as files shared with you. You all also have access to storage such as Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive.

Content.

Clicking on the grey area to the right will allow you to upload files.

Uploading Files.

Selecting communities on the Top bar will allow you to view and post to your 3DSwym Communities. 3DSwym Communities is displayed on the right-hand of the dashboard.

3DSwym Communities.

Dashboards can be used for defined roles—for example, 3D Component Designer—or for specific apps, such as SOLIDWORKS xDesign.

SOLIDWORKS xDesign dashboard.

Each dashboard will consist of widgets. A widget is a link for displaying a feed, a status, a graph or running an app. Selecting an app, such as 3DDrive, will display a dashboard containing widgets specific to your 3DDrive.

Widgets for 3DDrive.

Dashboards can be created for a role or an app, but regardless of your roles, you will have a default dashboard called My First Dashboard. This dashboard consists of two tabs. The Getting Started tab provides a quick overview of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, while the Learn the Experience tab provides some basic tutorials.

Getting started on My First Dashboard.

On top of dashboards available for roles and apps, and the default My First Dashboard, custom dashboards can be created. To create a custom dashboard, click on the plus sign icon located on the top bar and select Dashboard.

Adding a dashboard.

Dashboards can be created from templates, or you can choose to start with an empty dashboard.

Choosing how to create a dashboard.

An empty dashboard will consist of the top bar and a single tab called New Tab. You will likely want to rename the tab to something that is more meaningful. This is done by right-clicking on the pull-down beside the tab and choosing Rename.

Rename tab.

Additional tabs can be added by clicking on the plus sign, to the right of the last Tab. Tabs are an efficient way of organizing your Widgets.

Apps can be added to a dashboard by dragging it from My Apps into the dashboard. If the dashboard contains multiple tabs, the Widget is added to the active Tab. The active Tab is denoted by a blue underline.

Adding apps to a dashboard.

Keep in mind that much of this Content, whether it be apps or feeds, can be accessed from the top bar.

Every dashboard can have a ‘Story’. Stories help others navigate your dashboard by allowing you to add descriptions for the dashboard, each tab and every widget of your choice. A dashboard can have multiple stories, so each story needs to be named. Once a story has been created, it can be played by selecting the story from the dashboard pull-down. The story will also play when someone accesses your dashboard for the first time.

Playing a story.

When playing the story, anyone using your dashboard can go through the description for every tab and widget that contains a description and become familiar with navigating your dashboard.

Navigating story.

As well as adding or playing a story, the dashboard allows you to share your dashboard.

Sharing dashboard.

You can also edit or delete your dashboard. Duplicating your dashboard allows you to use a current dashboard as a template for a new dashboard. Manage Dashboards will bring up a window that displays all your dashboards. Here you can assign members, change the dashboard settings and perform many of the operations you had access through the dashboard pull-down. You can also switch between dashboards to edit them.

Manage Dashboard menu.

The dashboards available to you can be accessed by clicking on the dashboard list to the left of the 3DEXPERIENCE compass.

Dashboard List.

The dashboard list contains tools to search for dashboards, add dashboards, access the Manage Dashboards panel and recycle any deleted dashboards. You can add your most used dashboards to your favorite dashboard list by dragging and dropping the dashboard from your the ‘My Dashboard’ list. Dashboards can be removed from your favorite dashboard list in the same manner. Selecting a dashboard will make it the active dashboard.

Dashboard list.

Dashboards are key to navigating the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. In this article, we looked at the structure of dashboards and how we can interact with them. Configuring and using dashboards effectively will improve the usability of the platform.

Learn more about SOLIDWORKS with the whitepaper Developing Better Products in the Cloud.

About the Author

Joe Medeiros as a Senior Applications Engineer at Javelin Technologies, a premier SOLIDWORKS reseller, servicing customers throughout Canada, offers SOLIDWORKS customers expertise in implementing and using SOLIDWORKS solutions.

Joe has been involved in many aspects of the SOLIDWORKS product family since 1996, and as an award-winning blogger, he regularly writes about SOLIDWORKS solutions.

Below, I will walk through the basics of what the platform is, how it is structured, introduce you to the interface and show you how you can access apps such as xDesign and xShape.

When discussing the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, I focus on four areas to help new users understand how they can and should interact with this cloud-based tool:

1. Tenants
2. Roles
3. Dashboards
4. Apps (Applications, which also can be called Widgets)

To begin on 3DEXPERIENCE, users will need to be granted access to a Tenant and assigned a Role by an administrator. Users can think of a Tenant as the portal for your entire organization.

As an administrator of a Tenant, you can access all content and control all permissions. Inside of each Tenant exist various Roles which are specified to match employee functions. Users can be a member of multiple Tenants, and inside of each Tenant users may have one or many Roles. You can think of a Role as a group of permissions and application access that is specified to the user.

Currently there are hundreds of different Roles, and more will be created as more customers create Roles specific to their business. Most users will operate with non-company specific Roles.

For example, if you are a mechanical designer like me, you may be granted the 3D Creator Role. Inside of this Role, we find tools very similar to the SOLIDWORKS applications we are used to, such as the App xDesign. If you function as an Industrial Designer, you may prefer access to the 3D Creator Role. This will grant access to Apps such as xShape, the sub-divisional modeler. This access will also be dependent on company or group of users.

Figure 1. Roles in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

Once users have created a login and been granted a certain set of Roles, they will want to begin creating and collaborating. This will mean logging in and beginning to work on a custom or user-provided Dashboard.

The 3DEXPERIENCE Dashboard acts as your interface with the platform. Like many other parts of the Dashboard, it is also an App. Users can create custom Dashboards, or be provided access to another user’s Dashboard. Regardless of the content, Dashboards are all controlled and edited the same way.

Let’s take a look at the overall layout of a typical Dashboard.

Figure 2. A typical dashboard in 3DEXPERIENCE.

When looking at the Dashboard, users will find some classic icons they recognize right away, and some new ones specific to 3DEXPERIENCE. Starting at the top right of the screen, users will find icons for the following:

• “Me” - All the information related to your account
• “Notifications” – Alerts you of changes in your SWYM Communities and Collaborative Spaces
• “Add” - Allows the creation of more content
• “Share” – Share and publish content
• “Content” – Access all your content and drives
• “Communities” – Access content from the SWYM Communities
• “Help” - User assistance, support, and user communities

Figure 3. Dashboard icons.

As the user moves across the top of the screen, they will also find the Search toolbar. This gives the user the ability to search inside of each Tenant separately for specific content. If you continue across the top of the browser, you will next find the “Dashboard Menu.” This dropdown gives you the ability to Share, Edit, Duplicate, Manage and Delete the Dashboard selected.

Figure 4. Menu bar across the top of the screen in 3DEXPERIENCE.

To select which Dashboard in which users are operating, click on the “Dashboard List” icon. This will display a task pane on the left with all the Dashboards to which the users currently have access. If you look at my “Dashboard List” you will notice that I have the ability to edit some Dashboards, while others are locked by the users/admins who created them.

Figure 5. Dashboard list.

To change between the Dashboards, simply select them from the list and they will be displayed as you or the controlling user left them.

The final and most important part of the Dashboard is the 3D Experience Compass, located in the top left corner. By selecting the Compass, 3DEXPERIENCE users can access their Roles, Apps and Solutions portfolio. From the task pane on the left, drag and drop the app of your choosing into the Dashboard to customize your workspace. This app can be resized to fit with other apps or added to additional tabs across the top.

Apps such as xDesign and xShape are applications that can serve a variety of functions. xDesign is a 3D CAD modeling app inspired by SOLIDWORKS, but taken to the next level with functions such as Design Guidance. xShape is a sub-divisional modeler used to make complex shapes and Industrial designs.

These examples are simply the tip of the iceberg. There are many other Apps such as 3Dspace and 3DDrive which are used to store and share your design files inside 3DEXPERIENCE. 3DDrive specifically can connect to existing cloud storage services such as Dropbox and Google Drive. Like Roles, there are hundreds of apps like those shown below.

Figure 6. Apps available in 3DEXPERIENCE.

Now that we have discussed these critical elements, it is time to put each of the pieces together. The diagram below shows the overall structure, with each area broken out (Roles, Dashboards and Apps), and how they all come together to create the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform.

Inside of each Tenant there are various Roles. These Roles have custom and standardized Dashboards, which house apps such as xDesign and xShape, each of which store files in the 3DSpace and 3DDrive apps.

Figure 7.  Tenants, Roles, Dashboards and Apps in 3DEXPERIENCE.

And Why Do We Care About This?

Many users work in a set workflow with known CAD software, and can find a way to complete their work. To change over to a new platform can be difficult, and there is always a learning curve.

As a mechanical designer and CAD engineer, I do not accept the status quo as good enough. Over time, we have all seen the trend to consolidate responsibilities in companies, as well as the new challenges that collaborating on a global or local scale can bring. Everyone is expected to do more with less time, and downtime can be devastating.

Remember when your CAD software crashed, and you lost your work? Or when you overwrote the CAD files on your working directory. With 3DEXPERIENCE, your CAD designs are constantly saved, leading to little or no downtime.

Remember when you needed to update your system? Even a smooth update takes a lot of planning and after-hours work. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform updates itself and simply sends you an email when it is done.

Have you been a victim of ransomware locking you out of a server? With 3DEXPERIENCE, your data is secured on a dedicated server with limited access and under Dassault Systèmes’ protection.

Have you ever needed to work on a design, but another user was editing it? This is impossible with typical CAD software such as SOLIDWORKS—but possible with the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

Would you like to free up hardware budget spent on upgrading workstations year after year—or use those funds for other areas in your organization?

While simply working with your current known CAD software will get a lot done, if you are looking to increase your productivity, decrease your administrative time, secure your data and have the ability to access it from around the world, then it is time for you to join the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, be more productive—and have some fun!

I know for many CAD users, the onslaught of new products can be difficult to sift through and decipher. Thankfully the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform comes from Dassault Systèmes, who has been making the CAD products you know and love for years and can bridge the gap into the future of collaboration and data management.

With this information, you can begin your journey into 3DEXPERIENCE. For more information, visit https://www.3ds.com/about-3ds/3dexperience-platform/.

Learn more about SOLIDWORKS with the whitepaper Gain Competitive Advantage with Product Data Management.