SOLIDWORKS in the Commonwealth

Today the “What’s New in SOLIDWORKS 2009” party arrived in Lexington.

Yesterday I asked a customer if I would see him today at this rollout. He stated that his company is still using SOLIDWORKS 2007 and his IS department has no short term plans to upgrade to 2009.

[My first reaction was anger. I hate it when IS departments determine what is best for other departments. Their job is supposed to support the company, but so often the tail wags the dog. <sigh> this is a blog for another day] I counted to ten. I admit I do see this customer’s point. However I contend it is still important to come see what is new in the software so you can plan; and look for a valuable new feature that would make the return on investment worth going to the CEO and tattling on the IS guys for not doing their job.

One other [perhaps more professional] reason: Any time you can watch a guy who is really good with SOLIDWORKS (as an example Randy Simmons; who did the rollout today) you need to take some time to watch. There are so many things in SOLIDWORKS, you always pick up something new. Here is an example: Randy was showing the new 2009 ability to put custom properties into equations. His example was he was taking the part’s mass and multiplying it by a constant “$/pound”. Thus the cost of the part updates automatically through equations. Several people in the room did not know that SOLIDWORKS could automatically tell you what the weight of a part is….and has been able to do this since the beginning. They had been doing this by hand! You may have already known this, but think of the time these guys saved just with a little aside like that. I know that everyone in the room picked up a little tip today – something to make them a better SOLIDWORKS user than their competition.

Vik Vedantham was wearing gray slacks with his “peach” 3DVision shirt –overall a great ensemble.

It is now Wednesday and still no groupies. Is it possible they don’t follow engineering functions?

Off to Louisville Kentucky.