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Key takeaways:
- Beginning May 2021 students can obtain 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS for $60/year including SOLIDWORKS Premium and SOLIDWORKS 3D Creator. Students will also be provided membership in a cloud job listing community sponsored by Dassault Systèmes.
- Similarly beginning in the second half of 2021, Makers can purchase 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS for $9.99/month or $99/year. The solution includes SOLIDWORKS Premium, SOLIDWORKS 3D Creator, and SOLIDWORKS 3D Sculptor. They also gain membership in a cloud Makers community.
- Mr. Bernard Charlès indicated that over 60% of Pharma companies are using Dassault Systèmes’ Medidata for critical clinical trials.
Dassault Systèmes hosted their virtual conference, 3DEXPERIENCE WORLD, February 8-11, 2021 for designers, engineers, manufacturers, entrepreneurs, and business leaders.[1] Ever since Dassault Systèmes adopted a “platform” strategy they have joined it together with SOLIDWORKS promoting the collaborative 3D experience. Since 2020, the SOLIDWORKS World conference has been called 3DEXPERIENCE WORLD.
In addition to the daily General Sessions, the event presented over 320 break-out sessions centered on products and a multitude of topics covering various technologies, such as the cloud and simulation, as well as numerous “how to” scenarios.
Day 1: Opening General Session
Mr. Gian Paolo Bassi, SOLIDWORKS CEO, opened the virtual event with a flurry of impressive, high-tech, computer-generated imagery as is often seen at such events. The theme was “The Freedom to Create.” Mr. Bassi emphasized the Dassault Systèmes mantra of “From Product to Platform” explaining that the 3DEXPERIENCE platform connects people, applications, and information in a single cloud environment. He tied it to the corporate vision of leading an industry renaissance uniting “Product, Life, and Nature.” With that message, he introduced Mr. Bernard Charlès, Vice Chairman of the Board & CEO, Dassault Systèmes.
Mr. Charlès immediately took the opportunity to tout that one year ago he invested $6 billion to revolutionize the way clinical trials are run by acquiring Medidata and to affect the way pharma companies run trials in this year of the pandemic. He explained that by leveraging the collaborative 3DEXPERIENCE platform companies were able to reduce the time to analyze the virus and test vaccines.
Mr. Bassi again took center stage to announce an important opportunity for students and makers to obtain SOLIDWORKS. Beginning in May 2021, students can obtain 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS for $60/year. The package includes SOLIDWORKS Premium and SOLIDWORKS 3D Creator. In addition, students will be provided membership in a cloud job listing community sponsored by Dassault Systèmes. Beginning in the second half of 2021, Makers can purchase 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS for $9.99/month or $99/year. Their offering includes SOLIDWORKS Premium, SOLIDWORKS 3D Creator, and SOLIDWORKS 3D Sculptor. Additionally, they gain membership in a cloud Makers community to share experiences and opportunities. CIMdata views these offerings as excellent opportunities for students and Makers to gain access to a successful, commercial CAD tool suite for their work.
Client testimonies completed the General Session with speakers from IKEA describing their product assembly documentation, and OffWorld AI (Figure 1) promoting their automated robots for heavy construction such as mining. Mr. Duncan Wardle, Former Head of Innovation & Creativity, Disney concluded the session with a spirited discussion of how to inspire creativity.
Figure 1—OffWorld AI Robots
(Courtesy of OffWorld AI)
Day 2: General Session
Ms. Florence Hu-Aubigny, Executive Vice-President Research & Development, Dassault Systèmes opened the second day’s General Session. Ms. Hu-Aubigny’s presentation focused on the Dassault Systèmes theme “From Product to Experience.” She spoke of how the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform delivers memorable experiences of a product using the product’s digital twin—its virtual counterpart. By adding product behaviors using theoretical, mathematical, and physical models the user is able to visualize, simulate, and optimize in a multi-discipline world. CIMdata supports her statement that “In order to perfectly match the real world, the virtual world has to be continuously improved and calibrated by learning from the real world.” CIMdata understands this to be a strong underpinning for the need of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to have the physical world feed the virtual.
Figure 2—Skinny Guy Camper
(Courtesy of Skinny Guy Campers )
Ms. Hu-Aubigny handed the podium over to Mr. Manish Kumar, SOLIDWORKS Research & Development Vice President, Dassault Systèmes who presented a number of clients’ successes in using SOLIDWORKS 3DEXPERIENCE. Included was Mr. Jason Bontrager, Founder and CEO, of startup Skinny Guy Campers and Mr. Rob Miles, the company’s Engineering Design & Technical Documentation Lead. See Figure 2.
Mr. Miles discussed how the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform helped unite their geographically dispersed workforce by providing cloud access to their SOLIDWORKS design models. Additionally, Mr. Will O'Halloran, Co-Founder, Square Robot, spoke of their intention to become the leader of above-ground storage tank inspection. They design, build, and operate autonomous robots that can inspect an oil storage tank while it is still filled with oil, dramatically changing the way industry currently operates. They rely on SOLIDWORKS 3DEXPERIENCE to store and manage revision-controlled CAD data in the cloud.
The day’s session concluded with a presentation from Mr. Frank Stephenson, Design Director, Frank Stephenson Design. Mr. Stephenson brings three decades of experience in automotive design at companies such as McLaren, Ferrari, and Maserati. The premise of his talk was to highlight three aspects of design:
- The growing need to reduce delivery timescales.
- Creating new and evolving current design tools.
- Improving the warmth of connection between designer, product, and client.
CIMdata sees these as important lessons both solution providers and the users of those solution should keep in mind as design evolves.
Day 3: General Session
The third and final day of the conference centered on the topic of “From Connections to Relationships.” Mr. Suchit Jain, Vice President of Strategy & Business Development, Dassault Systèmes, took center stage. He emphasized how advanced technologies, such as robotics, Internet of Things, electrical vehicles, artificial intelligence, additive manufacturing, and virtual reality, coupled with cloud technology were digitalizing experiences. He positioned the 3DEXPERIENCE platform as supporting these efforts. He spent the remaining portion of the session introducing a range of SOLIDWORKS users and the paths they were taking with their products. CIMdata believes these examples of clients using SOLIDWORKS 3DEXPERIENCE were a strong testimony to the capabilities of the solution.
Summary
Once again Dassault Systèmes and their colleagues at SOLIDWORKS staged an impressive conference with 3DEXPERIENCE WORLD 2021. CIMdata concurs, even as a virtual event, that the many general session speakers and breakout sessions offered SOLIDWORKS users both educational and inspiring experiences worthy of the goals of their 3DEXPERIENCE Platform.
