SolidWorks 2008 – New Orleans, Louisiana USA
A number of the Innova Systems team visited the annual SolidWorks User Conference in New Orleans on the 4 - 7 of February 2007. It is a fantastic opportunity to mix with a community of 3,500 other customers and Resellers from around the world to share experiences and learn more about the exciting developments planned for SolidWorks 2008 to be released in around the August 2008 time frame.
SolidWorks continues to help designers and engineers to Design better products and there is no better way to see how this is happening with real examples of truly innovative products.
The first is a new company called Sawstop – www.sawstop.com which has created a table saw that will stop within 5 milliseconds if the blade comes in contact with flesh. The blade carries a light electrical charge that is interrupted by flesh, causing a brake to stop the blade within a distance of two blade teeth. This is a fascinating and clever solution to a persistent problem of serious injury. SolidWorks CEO John McEleney, himself a Mechanical Engineer and Certified SolidWorks Professional used it as an example of innovative product development coming from the willingness to wrestle with the “absurdly ideal.” First he sawed a board, then did it again but placed a hot dog in the saw path on top of the board. When the blade touched the hot dog, it stopped instantly. The nick in the hot dog was minimal.
Two other products were presented during a main stage presentation, with the resulting solutions created by SolidWorks users. The notion, “wouldn't it be nice if an ambulance could always follow you around in case you have a heart attack” led to the development of the AED Plus from Zoll Medical http://www.zoll.com/product.aspx?id=75
The AED Plus is an automated external defibrillator that fits in a backpack and offers automated CPR advice during use. Right now the AED Plus costs £500, but Zoll is looking to the day when they can drive the price down to £50 and make portable defibrillators as ubiquitous as fire extinguishers.
Ice Cream on demand from MooBella – www.moobella.com. It seems that most ice cream consumed is months old before it reaches the bowl, due to the complex product creation and delivery chain. So some guys with industry experience posited the idea of offering the consumer fresh hard ice cream on demand. The result is a machine the size of two refrigerators that creates a variety of hard ice cream flavours in a vending environment. Tomek tried it and said “It was the best ice Cream he had ever had”
How does the use of “no fingers” table saws change the cost of industrial insurance? Speaking of insurance, what will medical insurance companies save every year when the Zoll Medical AED Plus costs £50? What will be the benefit to society when fewer people die yearly as a result of increased AED use? Widespread use of MooBella machines will eliminate the need for hundreds or perhaps thousands of expensive refrigeration trucks, each constantly maintaining cargo at -20 degrees F—a substantial contribution to the elimination of greenhouse gases.
SolidWorks 2008SolidWorks demonstrated features from the upcoming release of SolidWorks 2008. Among the new features:
• The ability to edit a model while in photorealistic or even hyper-realistic mode
• Live sectioning and “PressPull” model manipulation
• A revised user interface, with an emphasis on anticipating the user's needs
• FastPreview, which allows the user to select how parts of a large assembly initially display
• Hole Alignment Analysis, which can scan an assembly and identify overlapping or misaligned holes.
• New corner and fillet tools, including fillet prediction and the ability to select corner blending options as suggested by the software.
• Fast 3D part annotation in DimXpert, which can reference user standards.
• Dynamic assembly motion, physical simulation, and COSMOS motion analysis have been unified into a single seamless interface.
• DriveWorksXpress, a new tool for basic engineering knowledge management that seeks to make it easier to find and reuse parts from previous projects.
• FloXpress, a wizard-based tool for basic fluid flow analysis that displays results as slice planes or flow trajectories.
• Enhancements to part search, including the ability to drag-and-drop specific parts from an existing model for re-use without affecting the Design Library.
• FloXpress is a new wizard-based tool for basic fluid flow analysis.
 SolidWorks Labs
Following a trend that includes both Google, SolidWorks has launched a “Labs” web site that allows user access to new technologies and products not ready for commercial release. SolidWorks Labs is currently stocked with four such works in progress:
• Drawings Now, an online 2D file viewer that supports DWG, DXF, and native drawing files
• COSMOSXpress Now, a streamlined web-based version of COSMOSXpress for quick static analysis of 3D solid models; results are supplied via an eDrawings file
• ZoomIn, a downloadable model presentation tool, perhaps destined to apply SolidWorks technology into the next generation of eDrawings;
• DWGnavigator, a downloadable tool with a Windows Vista interface for finding, viewing, and archiving DWG files.
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