Blog SOLIDWORKS World 2016 New Product Announcements
SOLIDWORKS World 2016 New Product Announcements
A few weeks ago, I was able to attend and present at SOLIDWORKS World 2016 which was held in Dallas, TX. Among 6,000 other attendees, we witnessed hundreds of learning sessions and saw some great products that were designed with SOLIDWORKS and its partner of products. A couple of new product offerings that caught my eye were the new SOLIDWORKS Make and SOLIDWORKS Apps for Kids.
First, here is a brief description of what SOLIDWORKS Make is all about.
SOLIDWORKS Make is a cloud-based 3D product personalization process that can be embedded into your own online store page. It lets your customers engage with an easy-to-use interface to personalize and order one-of-a-kind creations of your product offerings.
Here is a link to their product video showcasing this new technology by allowing a customer to manipulate and create custom eyewear:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfy5EFRGZwo
This looks like a great product bridging the gap between engineering and production with the end user or consumer.
Next is the new offering called SOLIDWORKS Apps for Kids.
This is a new collection of apps for kids to help get them excited about Science Technology, Engineering and Math or otherwise known as STEM. This new collection of apps includes many cool tools to help capture the kids' imagination early by 6th or 7th grade in hopes that this will encourage them to focus on this career path. According to the US Department of Commerce, STEM occupations are growing at 17% while others are growing at 9.8%.
Here is a link to this new site which should be starting a Beta program this spring with hopes of a release to coincide with the SOLIDWORKS Education Edition Academic Year 2016-2017 later this spring.
http://appsforkids.solidworks.com/
Among the new apps being offered for kids are:
- Capture It; allowing ideas to be captured in the form of pictures, video and sounds
- Shape It; allows them to create 3D shapes of anything you can imagine
- Style It; allows kids to paint, color and style their Shape It designs with stickers and scenes
- Mech It; allows kids to construct fun mechanisms to make things move or to draw cool art
- Show It; allows you to show your creations and tell your story
- Print It; allows you to print your 3D creations
There are many more product announcements that were presented to the attendees but these were a couple that I am anxious to see. If you haven't had a chance to attend a SOLIDWORKS World, I urge you to try and make next year's event which will be held in Los Angeles in Feb. 2017. Hope to see you there!
Brian Reel
CATI Field Technical Services Manager