SWW12 - The Year for Mobile?

Will SolidWorks World 2012 be the year for mobile?  I hope so!  Last year SolidWorks released an iPhone app that was especially built for SWW 2011 giving users the ability to browse sessions and get valuable info about speakers, partners, maps etc of the event.  After 10 years of thumbing through the little conference booklet and trying to determine where I was going next, this app made navigating the conference simple.  Having a lot of detail, especially of the partner pavillion, allowed me to get more out of SWW than previous years.

The issue that many had voiced about the app was the fact it was oniy on iOS (iPhone) at the time. Considering Android is taking the market by storm, it only makes sense that if SolidWorks is to offer such a great tool that it be available on the lion's share of devices. This year they launched a 2012 version of the app but this time it is available on both iOS and Android and the iOS version is a universal app, giving iPad users full use of the screen real estate.

After navigating around in the app I find that browsing sessions is so easy, especially researching and signing up right from within the app. You can log in with your registration account and see what is is coming up next in your agenda and figure out how to get there.

Seeing the CAD market get more focused on mobile, I hope this year SolidWorks follows suit and offers more mobile options for access and viewing our SolidWorks data.  Expanding this simple conference app made me do some searching on the stores for other SolidWorks apps and I came across another one that was promised a year ago for n!Fuze.  I re-registerd my n!Fuze membership and applied to get another trial because I have not used it since the official/non-official launchin late summer.  The app is simple and crashes a lot, probalby due to some overhauling that I would imagine they have been performing over the past few months.  

If you do any extensive searches on the Android market or the iOS App Store you will find a number of 3rd parties for SolidWorks data viewing, many of which are free to download but come with a in-app purchase of $$$ to get the translators you would want to view SolidWorks data.  Another one was charging a monthly fee to be able to view Solidworks data.  The best idea to date was to use the new Inforbix app but that needs to be crawled by their bots to be usable with your data.  

So what do I want to see?  I want eDrawings on my devices, giving me native viewing of SolidWorks data on the go.  If I get an email with a SolidWorks/eDrawing attachment, I want to view that data on my device.  I would also like to have a way to view this data in a collaborative mannor with other parties, similar to what you can do with AutoCAD data on their AutoCAD WS platform.

Bottom line, users want access to that data from any device they have with them.  Currently I have talked for years about how to bend what tools we have available today but this is a bit limited.  SolidWorks will need to get some headway with apps starting in 2012 or the market will respond and users/3rd parties will begin filling the void with solutions.  SolidWorks World is a perfect platform to launch products and I hope this will be one of the offers.  Only time will tell!  Hope to see you at World! ~Lou

It's About The Little Things..

For the past three weeks I have been showing off all the new features in SolidWorks 2012 products to a bunch of users and it is always interesting what they really get excited about. Despite what gets the "orange star" in the What.s New PDF, users will let you know in their simple smirks or confident nods what is really an "enhancement" and what is demo candy. When I think back through the past 10 years and all the 200+ enhancement releases, there are always the handful of useful updates that can make a new release worthy enough to migrate to.

Many people in the CAD industry (corporate and resellers) start to believe that their CAD Product is some sort of religion or way of life but the reality is CAD is nothing more than a tool. As a long time user myself and maybe a crumugin of sorts due to the amount of time I have been in the channel, I look at the SolidWorks line of products the same as I did when I built homes for the family business, tools of my trade. Because of that, I often admire the competition when they do something better than SolidWorks does because, again, it is just a tool. When the tool gets out of the way and lets the real magic happen, that is an "enhancement"!

After rolling out 7 SolidWorks 2012 events, each 3 hours in length, I am convinced that SolidWorks 2012 is a release about the little things. After showing all the big market features like SolidWorks Costing and Large Design Review (LDR), which were well received, the most applause and smiles of "Finally!" came when a small tweak or adjustment to existing functionality was pointed out. Here is a small list of the "little things":

- Blank custom properties

- Unit switcher (bottom right in the status bar)

- Tab to hide (assemblies)

- Discard changes (when editing a part when the assembly is open)

- Sheet Metal exclude features (modified select tangency to select up to bend faces)

- Control A to select all parts in an assembly or all entities inn a sketch

- S key cursor focus for command search

- Delayed clocking on SmartMates

- Initiate SmartMates with ALT key anytime (not just on initial drag)

- Modify dimension name in Modify dialog

- Highlight dimension from part changes in drawings

- Insert center marks on view anytime, not just when adding the view

- Diamter dimension lock in sketches (dimensioning to centerline locks similar to ordinate dims)

- ESC key in dimensions undoes last selection instead of canceling the command

- Hole Wizard not adding a "default" hole where face was initially selected

~ the list goes on and on...

For me, the little things are those features that we touch everytime we fire up the software.  The little things are also the features that can bring the greatest frustration when they don't work the way we want so it is no surprise the excitement when they are improved.  Even though Equations in SolidWorks 2012 are my favorite new enhancement, many of the above list get touched more often and have a bigger impact on my daily usage. So the "little things" end up being the big things and ultimately become the decision maker/breaker when the question "Do I upgrade?" is asked. ~Lou