SolidWorks V6?:

This podcast is a round-table with Ricky Jordan about the SolidWorks Cloud-fed CAD technology preview shown in the general session at day 1 at SolidWorks World 2010. Topics covered:

- Technology overview

- Highlights

- Features

- Pros/Cons of a cloud-fed CAD Platform

- Co-Existance of the desktop and cloud platforms of SolidWorks

- SolidWorks' response on SolidWorks Blog

- Thoughts about SolidWorks/Dassault Systemes

- Possible pricing/configuration options

The technology preview at SolidWorks World 2010 has spurred quite a bi-polar response from many users in conversation, on the blogs, and in the forums.  The thought of our CAD tool and the data we generate being hosted is something many of us have not had to face so that proposition's uncertainty is a bit scary.

At this point there are definitely more unknowns about the future product from SolidWorks than there are knowns so anything else is simply speculation.  I believe the next 18 months is going to be a wild ride and hope to see more aspects of this offering as the details get nailed down by SolidWorks.  As Al Dean has said over at the Develop 3D blog, I don't believe the day of a CATIAWorks is going to happen tomorrow but the line is going to become more blurred for sure! ~Lou

Remember to check out the SolidWorks: Heard! Blog and to follow me on Twitter, Facebook and THE HEaRD!

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SolidWorks on the Mac Revived:

This podcast covers some of the news out of SolidWorks World 2010 that were surrounded around SolidWorks running naively on the Mac. Topics covered:

- Introduction

- Overview of the "Mac Native" technology preview of SolidWorks V6 "Cloud CAD"

- History of Windows on a Mac

- Options to run Windows on a Mac (Bootcamp vs Parallels/VMWare)

- Tuning and RealView

- SolidWorks official stance on Mac

- Why do it?

This is the third show covering the options available to run SolidWorks on a Mac.  Due to popular demand and changes in the details around this topic, I decided to "revive" and address these changes especially since the news out of SolidWorks World 2010 about the SolidWorks "Cloud CAD" technology preview.  Once SolidWorks had an iMac on stage I think many thought a native application was going to be announced and I was happy to see them looking beyond the desktop!

Since episode 186 posted, Apple has introduced new hardware and OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard, Microsoft has launched Windows Vista and Windows 7, along with a few updates to virtual machine options in Parallels and VMWare Fusion. I wanted to also point people looking for the instructions to tune your 2nd Generation Mac (with GeForece 8600M GT) to run SolidWorks with RealView to the tuning instructions here: http://bit.ly/swh-mbpsoftmod

For those who are looking for tuning instructions for the unibody MacBook Pros (GeForce 9600M GT) you will ben on your own till I get my hands on one myself.  If you are able to use my 2nd generation instructions to get the tune to work, please leave a comment and instructions how you did it. It would be greatly appreciated since I am contacted a few times a month on that very question. ~Lou

Remember to check out the SolidWorks: Heard! Blog and to follow me on Twitter, Facebook and THE HEaRD!

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SolidWorks PDS:

This podcast covers the details revealed at SolidWorks World 2010 about the SolidWorks PLM tool called SolidWorks PDS. After spending some time looking through the notes and screenshots, more details have emerged.  Topics covered:

- SolidWorks PLM: Product Data Sharing overview

Features:

- Secure Workspaces (project folders)

- Visual Data Sharing (collaborative viewer and Treehouse-like interface)

- Commenting

- Versioning

Interfaces:

- SolidWorks Task Pane Interface

- Web Interface powered by Enovia V6 (via 3D Swymer)

- Mentioned mobile interface

- Overall thoughts

With the introduction of Internet-hosted (SaaS) SolidWorks on day 1 of SolidWorks World 2010 and the mention of more products to be introduced under the "SolidWorks PLM" brand, SolidWorks PDS was one whose debut will be in this year.  As mentioned in my blog post,  "SolidWorks PDS aims to address a group of users that fall into the category "Version-management challenged", which in my approximation would be about 70% or more of the user base."  PDS will enable users to share, collaborate and version manage their 3D data in a centralized location without the need for complex IT infrastructure.

Although this is not a replacement for a full featured PDM system, PDS does bring automatic version control, commenting and some collaborative aspects that could be used by any SolidWorks user.  Remote sharing and collaboration are something lacking in the current PDM solutions offered by SolidWorks so maybe PDS could become the collaborative branch of SolidWorks PDM packages down the road. Guess we will have to wait and see! ~Lou

Remember to check out the SolidWorks: Heard! Blog and to follow me on Twitter, Facebook and THE HEaRD!

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SolidWorks World Conference is never without excitement and new announcements.  The General Sessions are always used as the platform to announce exciting future offerings and spark conversation among attendees.  This year, SolidWorks ramped up the excitement by kicking off day one with the cloud-based, platform-agnostic SolidWorks version (unsure of the official name or release date), day two with James Cameron and day 3 with the sneak peak of SolidWorks 2011.  A final announcement of a new SolidWorks PLM tool called SolidWorks PDS which stands for Product Data Sharing was also debuted with a promise delivery around the time of the 2011 product line.

SolidWorks PDS aims to address a group of users that fall into the category "Version-management challenged", which in my approximation would be about 70% or more of the user base.  SolidWorks currently has two products in the PDM space, Workgroup and Enterprise PDM, that give small to large groups a good spread of document and process centric control of engineering project data.  I have talked about the importance of data management with parametric CAD before but there are still a very large number of users whose companies do not have a system in place that addresses the issues of references and associativity within the CAD data.

SolidWorks PDS is built on the Enovia V6 cloud framework and brings the benefits of centralized storage, workspace control, sharing access levels, as well as 3 main platforms (SolidWorks TaskPane, web-client, and mobile platforms). PDS utilizes the essential aspects of PDM, simplifing deployment by not requiring any IT infrastructure setup and focuses on automatic version control and data sharing.  Files are worked on locally and uploaded/shared to the cloud, enabling users to comment and share files as easy as sharing photos on FaceBook. Users would then have the power to create their own engineering communities, share data quickly and ensure that versions are maintained and backed up off site.

I see this as a tool for those users without a PDM system in place, however SolidWorks PDS might act as the collaboration mechanism for SolidWorks PDM packages in the future.  This might be the first step for SolidWorks enterinig back to the 3D TeamWorks days of hosted services (SaaS) and I believe the time is right. ~Lou