SWWorld Day 1 Morning Session: Electric Cars, Levees, and a new U.I!!!

Day 1 started off like last year, it resembled a rock show! The
production that goes into the morning sessions is amazing to me.
Breakfast was served from 7am, and they opened the doors to the
general session area at about 8:15. At 8:30 the show began.

Jeff Ray started out the morning talking about what has happened to SW
since last years conference. SW has surpassed the $300 million sales
mark for the first time ever. They are now estimating that there are
over 600,000 users worldwide now! He also showed a study that was
conducted of online search engines. When you do a search for
companies looking for a 3D cad operator, 33% are looking for SW users,
the other 67% is being fought for by 7 companies, giving each of them
less than 10% average! So it looks as if us as SW users are becomming
more and more valuable!

The conference itself is boasting 150 break out training sessions, and
has an attendance of over 3500 people. They didnt make as big of a
deal out of attendance like they did last year, so I wonder if it
didnt meet their early expectations?

Jeff ray then introduce an Army Corps of Engineers Col that was in
charge of the rebuilding of the flood control system here in N.O.
after Katrina. While the topic seemend a bit more for public
relations, as opposed to dealing with SW directly, the Col did talk
about Design With Vision which is the theme for the week.

In keeping with the 'green earth' theme they then had an MIT student
on stage that spoke about their challenge to make eco friendly cars.
SW is sponsoring the program with free software, so they get another
pat on the back I guess. This presentation did allow for the
oppurtunity to have one of the vehicles driven up on stage, and who
better to do it, than John McEleny!

John spoke about the theme of the week, and showed us all some pretty
cool stuff. Most inpressive was certainly the saw that would cut
wood, but not your finger. I will try to get some info and post it
later. After that he introduced us to Solidworks Labs. Its some cool
new web based free stuff. Full info can be found at:
labs.solidworks.com (leave off the www, for some reason that was the
only way I was able to get to it).

After that, he gave us an early taste of whats new in 2008 and the
main part was definately the new User Interface. The interface looks
very nice. But more than just pretty stuff, he showed us the ability
to stretch lengths and widths of bodies, and how to change a extruded
round boss into a countersink!

A new large assembly tool now allows a use to open up a large
assembly, in much faster, less memory hogging fashion! Live Preview
allows for certain parts of an assembly to be opened, but still hav
full functionality before deciding to open the rest of the parts. As
part of the new User Interface, tabed browsing (ala firefox) will be
new. DFMXpress will be a new tool that will check a finished model
for machinability I.E. it will point out that sharp corner pockets
will be hard to machine on a conventional mill.

Overall it looks pretty good, and there is a lot of buzz around what
we will see on Wed morning. Johns words were "incredibly exciting".

After the morning session I was off to a hand-on session on configs
with Gopal Shenoy. Also in the room was the guy that wrote the
orginal config part of the software. Thats the best part of SW World,
the people that write the software, are here, and they love to talk
shop.

Anyhow, that the morning session for day 1 in New Orleans. Now its
off to three afternoon sessions, then the CSWP event tonight! I cant
wait to see what they have planned!

I also want to appoligize for any spelling errors, I would go back
thru and proof it, but the line here at the internet kiosk is growing
by the minute!

Stay tuned for SW World Day 1 wrap up!!

Mike

 

Thanks for the Update! Keep them coming.

Don

 

Ya know, maybe it's just me being too old to get excited
about a CAD program, but I'd read all this with more interest
if all the !!!!'s didn't make me feel like it's a line of crap
for kids. Not saying it is crap, just makes it sound like it.

That's interesting, not to mention significant, but if that's
the way it was presented they are concealing something!!
(Sorry, couldn't help myself. <G> Hope you're enjoying it.)

 

I was thinking there was some sort of spin on this method of presentation as
well. HMMMM?

And I will also mention that this is not good news for SWX users. Added use
does not mean they are valuable, but rather just a commodity.

 

I am also not surprised that attendance is down this year, bad choice
of venue.

 

If attendance was down I'd be surprised as it was SRO in the main
session this morning. I am really enjoying the vendor exhibits this
year. Perception can be the enemy of good decisions. In and around the
convention center it seems like the last time SWW was in NOLA. We
walked back eight blocks late this evening and didn't sense any
greater danger than previous trips here. It was a good decision. I
don't think anybody was in any more danger than any other venue and it
certainly had to be a big boost to downtown. There was another big
convention by Minolta going on at the same time.

I drove out to the 9th Ward this evening to see the real deal.
Although the buildings we passed on the way were run down, the
affected neighborhoods had been cleaned up and some people were
rebuilding. Certainly a lot more needs to be done, perhaps a plan
would help, but this is about as close to a clean slate as any old
city is going to see for rebuilding. There were a lot of police
visible on the street in this area and generally all around.

 

Mike, this is great info! thanks for investing the time and effort to put
all those details on the NG.

Cheers,
Gil

 

Commodity is right. That means as a SW user, we are worth more to
employers than ever before. I know the company I work for has been
trying to find another designer, but all the ones that work in SW are
happily employed. And the ones that are intrested, are asking for
wages that are about 30% more than whats currently being paid.

 

Oh, stop it. You're making me dizzy. Value is defined by
absolute numbers not percentages and AFAIK the ratios have
been stable for a few years.

Any real people to testify they are cashing in on this bonanza?

 

That is, until tomorrow. Tomorrow being the day that job seekers and new
grads alike realize the potential for having SWX skills. Then, the market
is flooded with them. All of a sudden, a CATIA or UG operator, perhaps even
Pro/E or SE is getting paid very well for having a proficiency with such a
non-descript software. You know that companies aren't willing to switch
from current CAD packages. Finding experts to fill those roles will keep
those skills valuable. Remember coders who could correct old banking
software's Y2K bug?

 

swizzle,

Those old coders either made a career in coding if they where good, or
they weren't, they got into IT. Besides the dip from the dot-com
crash, all of those people have always been in pretty good shape.
Even with jobs being shipped over seas, these guys are still pulling
in good money (even the IT ones). Here in Silicon Valley, I've never
even met an unemployed/non-self-employed programmer, ever.

Matt

 

It is difficult for people to find contractors (at a reasonable price)
so they are slowly doing their own rebuilding. On the block a cousin
of mine lives he is the only person rebuilding his home so far and the
next block over only two people are rebuilding thus far.

Supply and demand, short supply demands more $$$$.

Tom

 

I figure about 2/3 of the houses are gone in the devastated area. That
is not just rebuilding. The bigger issue is infrastructure. The roads
were in pretty bad shape before and now are really gone. Before
letting people rebuild, the whole thing should be redeveloped. Sewers,
water, drainage, electricity, telephone are all in need of
restoration. In the paper tonight there was an article about 2,000
families in Baton Rouge having 200 truant kids. Why not teach them the
skills they need and put them to work rebuilding their own homes
rather than pay to have them live 80 miles from home and do menial
jobs? This morning a minister of the Rwanan government made a big deal
out of training all of Rwanda with SW. Where was Ray Nagin with a
similar vision to retrain all these thousands of people?

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