The SOLIDWORKS Upgrade Zone

What you are about to read may surprise or even shock you. You are about to enter the SOLIDWORKS Upgrade Zone.

Take this man Jimmy. Jimmy is the top gun engineer at his company. Last night Jimmy’s IT department upgraded his SOLIDWORKS installation from SOLIDWORKS 2008 to 2009. Let’s watch to see how much faster Jimmy is with the new upgrade.

I see Jimmy is working with weldments, but not taking advantage of the new 2009 group feature. Interesting –I am sure it would have saved him quite a bit of time there. Let’s watch him as he works with sheet metal. Wow, he is still using the same techniques he learned when he took the sheet metal class four years ago! Now let’s watch as he works with some large assemblies, I am sure the new Speedpak technology will be a huge time saver! Wait! He isn’t even using it! Oh the calamity!

So here we are at the end of the day…let’s bring up the tote board to see how much time Jimmy saved with the upgrade! [Drum roll] Two minutes! Wait, only two minutes?! How could this be? Jimmy’s company has been paying maintenance for a full year to only gain two minutes? Granted that Engineering Data Specialist guy provides excellent support, but still -only two minutes? [Rod Sterling & Jerry Lee Lewis walk off the set shaking their heads.]

What you just saw here is going on all over the world right now. This is the time of year many companies upgrade their users to the new SOLIDWORKS version. Sadly, for many, that is where the upgrade ends. If the users are not given an opportunity to learn how to use the new version, they will continue to use SOLIDWORKS how they were originally taught.

An upgrade requires two steps. You need to upgrade the machine and the users. If you only upgrade one of the two your return on investment is not as good as it could be. Few users learn the new performance enhancements on their own.