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DriveWorks at SOLIDWORKS World 2019

SOLIDWORKS World has come along way since Glen, our CEO, attended his first one in 2001. Back then many of the delegates were early adopters of 3D CAD and technical sessions focused on the basic functionality we all now take for granted.

Presentations in 2019 extended far beyond pure CAD, they included PDM,CAM, Electrical, Customization, Marketplace,Social Collaboration and much more. These topics reflect the bigger eco-system and wider 3D Experience thatSOLIDWORKS is a key part of. One major announcement on the first day, therefore, was that next year, the event becomes 3D Experience World 2020 and will be in Nashville.

Asa SOLIDWORKS Gold Partner, we’ve added so much functionality over the years too. Whilst we’re knownfor automating SOLIDWORKS, DriveWorks software is increasingly being used in other departments as well as engineering, for business process automation and as a sales configurator. We’re looking forward to 3D Experience World 2020!

Until then, here’s some of what we got up to at SOLIDWORKS World 2019.

Partner Pavilion

Our base during the day was our booth in the Partner Pavilion. So many people stopped by to see us which was fantastic and there was a real buzz throughout the hall with the extended Shop Floor exhibits, Education area, andnew immersive reality XRZone.

We had a showcase of our own with a preview of What’s New in our next major release DriveWorks 17. One of our most popular demos was our factory layout demo which uses some of the latest functionality coming in DriveWorks 17.

We showed howGillette are using DriveWorks to power RazorMaker, their online 3D configurator for 3D printed custom razor handles.Anyone can go on to the site to configure the color and design of their handle and then enter text to add their name for a truly personalized product. Using DriveWorks technology, the 3D model updates as changes are made and once an order is placed, all the required data is sent straight to the Formlabs 3D printer.

For our booth, we also shipped out our two “Same but Different”kiosks, designed by us in SOLIDWORKS and configured in DriveWorks using ourKiosk Configurator! The kiosks house computer screens and tablets that we use to demonstrate DriveWorks on.

Tracey B Wilson, SOLIDWORKS World 2019 emcee also came over to see us!

General Sessions

Each morning we joined the general sessions, keen to learn more about this year’s theme – Where Possibility Takes Form.

We were most inspired and excited by the R&D Futures sessions where we saw a preview of the cutting-edge technologies coming from the Dassault Syst竪mes and SOLIDWORKS R&D Labs.

During general sessions, we also enjoyed hearing from those who are key to the SOLIDWORKS community – the users. It’s always inspiring to hear the different ways people use SOLIDWORKS technology and hear from those who are most passionate – the SOLIDWORKS User Group Network.

Presentations

We also had the opportunity to present at SOLIDWORKS World. Heather Hasz from the DriveWorks team took to the Certified Partner Theatre to present about DriveWorks design automation and CPQ and how our customer, Shotton Lifts use their DriveWorks configurator to specify custom elevators, automating the generation of engineering drawings, professional sales documents, quotes and BOMs.

Tom and Oliver presented a hands-on DriveWorksXpress session, teaching attendees about the design automation tool they already have inside SOLIDWORKS, and how to take the free DriveWorksXpress Certification.

Awards

We are super proud to be voted SOLIDWORKS User Group Network Partner of the Year. We were presented with the award at the SWUGLe event, in recognition of the work we have done to support, attend and provide presentations for user group meetings since 2015.

We also gave out our own award, the DriveWorks SWUG Leader of the Year Award. This year awarded to Chris Scarlett of Yakima SWUG.

Community

One of the best things about SOLIDWORKS World, is being amongst a passionate community of engineers, designers, makers and innovators.

We kicked off our SOLIDWORKS World experience at the Partner Appreciation event, hosted by SOLIDWORKS and then Heather and Phil attended the CADMonkey Dinner.

On Monday evening,our own Certified SOLIDWORKS Certified Experts went to the exclusive CSWE event.

On Tuesday evening we all enjoyed a real Texan experience at Gilles for the offsite Customer event.

We also attended the SOLIDWORKS User Group Leader event (SWUGLe) where we caught up with the group leaders we work with throughout the year, and were presented with the SWUGN Partner of the Year Award!

Reseller Briefing

We rounded off our time at SOLIDWORKS World with a Briefing for DriveWorks Resellers before heading home.

Glen Smith, DriveWorks CEO, presented more of What’s New in DriveWorks 17 followed by a Q&A.

Partner Pavilion Videos

SOLIDWORKS and DriveWorks Reseller TriMech came over to our booth to find out more about what we were showing at SOLIDWORKS World 2019.

See You Next Year!

Making Your DriveWorks Solo Forms Dynamic and Intelligent

In DriveWorks Solo you can create interactive and dynamic Forms easily by linking Form Controls together using Control Properties.

By linking Control returns to other properties it is possible to change positions, visibility, values and selections within the DriveWorks Form and Project.

This allows you to show different options based on selections and rules to aid guided selling.

In this example we are driving the form to display an image if the length is 2500mm or higher. This informs the user that if their trailer is larger than 2499mm they require a twin axis.

In this example we are swapping the image for one with a green border to show that a spare wheel option has been selected.

On the right, you can see that if the length of the trailer exceeds 2499m we will display an image to show the trailer requires a twin axle and we drive the width minimum value to be increased from 1200mm to 1500m.

Linking Form Controls is a quick and easy way of improving user experience and providingguided selling.

This trailer example uses the Visibility, File Name, and the Default Value Properties to change the controls to be reactive to other values that are driven on the Form.

More advanced Projects may use multiple Forms with Decisions.

Decisions allow the Project creator to build Rules that will alter the navigation of the Project Specification when run.

For example, In this Trailer configurator, we could create a Checkbox Control that asks the user whether they want accessories or not.

We could then add a decision to our Form Navigation tab.

A rule would be added that states If the accessories Checkbox is ticked, the next form is accessories. Otherwise, dont show the accessories Form at all.

Learn More

Download the DriveWorks Solo Agricultural Trailer Configurator Sample project to explore how the Control Properties are linked. There’s also further useful information in the DriveWorks Solo Online Help File.

The SWUGN Partner of The Year Award

At SOLIDWORKS World 2019 in Dallas, DriveWorks have been presented with the SWUGN Partner of The Year Award.

The awards have been around since 2005 and last year we won the award as Co-Participating Partner of the Year, alongside Rapid.

We are so honoured and proud to receive this award again, thank you SWUGN!

With the support of our resellers, customers and partners, we have attended SWUG meetings, sponsored meetings and helped group leaders to find presenters with interesting presentations since 2015.

We love being a part of the SOLIDWORKS Community, SOLIDWORKS User Groups are awesome.

We cant wait to be a part of lots of great SWUG meetings again this year!

Customer Success Stories

DriveWorks is used by manufacturing companies from a range of industries.
DriveWorks is modular, scalable and incredibly versatile so our customers use DriveWorks in many different ways, customising their Design Automation and CPQ solutions to suit their needs.
We’re always interested to hear the different ways our customers use the software we’re proud of, we regularly post customer case studies on our blog. Here are a selection of quotes from some of those case studies…

An F.H Brundle residential balcony.

Thanks to DriveWorks, we provide quotes and drawings for each custom order, at no extra cost. Customers can get a quote anytime they want it, 24/7/365. With every order, customers receive everything they need. We are building customer loyalty, increasing sales and avoiding mistakes.

– Richard Twiddy, Design Office Manager, F.H.Brundle

For us, the most important thing about DriveWorks is the ability to create custom bespoke software utilising visual wizards rather than heavy coding. This allows our company to build and customize quickly and easily. We now have more time to focus on our workflow and business analytics

– Adam Baker, Operations and IT Manager, BKW Instruments

A Laing O'Rourke bridge

DriveWorks has allowed us to automate the routine processes that we undertake day in and day out, with traditional bridge design. This automatic creation of models and drawings rapidly improves the turnaround time to reach sign-off on designs and makes all downstream benefits possible

– Dr Scott McGovern, Digital Engineering Lead, Laing O’Rourke

For us, the most important thing about DriveWorks is that it helps us to drive consistency and maintain control of our engineering data.

Using DriveWorks, we’ve reduced the amount of time taken to complete forms from half a day to only 30 minutes.

– Martin Clenick, Engineering Manager, Shotton Group

Blue Giant hand pallet truck inside factory.

We use DriveWorks for quoting and approval drawings for almost 160 teams and 530 users. We also use DriveWorks for production part component generation for various product lines and a whole bunch of other great stuff!

– Christopher Zona, Manager – Systems Automation, Blue Giant

We value many things about DriveWorks.
Most importantly is the ability to take a design standard and use the configurator software to produce an error free streamlined custom
bearing design
.

Ray McDaniel, CAD Engineer, Oiles America Corporation

For us, the most important thing about DriveWorks is definitely the time saving benefits. We can accommodate much tighter delivery schedules and still havethe room to innovate and adapt to meet our customers requirements.

– Chris Kinder,
Design Department,
Pattern Forme Ltd

With DriveWorks Pro, we have been able to design our products with greater accuracy, consistency and productivity. Were pleased with our experience so far and were excited about where we can take this experience in the future.

– Design Team,
ZCL Composites
Inc.

Before using DriveWorks
we would create 20 quotes in a month, now we can do 20 in a day.
The process in the past was labour intensive as prices need to be calculated each time and
drawings all had to be prepared manually.

– David Martin, Managing Director, Elite Balustrades

In its current state, DriveWorks outputs 245 files, 60 of which are assemblies, 85 are drawings and the rest are parts files. With DriveWorks handling repetitive tasks, our engineers are freed up to focus on customized aspects of our designs, such as the internal cabinets of the vehicle.

Shawn Casebolt, Engineering Lead, PL Custom Body.

There was the need for a time saving process to reduce engineering time, so called Zero Effort Engineering (ZEE). When implementing DriveWorks Pro, our target for order-engineering was to go back from 2 hours to 15 minutes. This target has been achieved with DriveWorks.

– Rob Beffers, Manager Integrated Process Control, Rademaker BV

We implemented DriveWorks Pro and saw a 55-minute process go down to 30 minutes. The benefits of Design Automation are very, very real.

Dave Mandl, New Product Development Engineer,
S辿ura

At NGI, my main challenge is to create documents
for a lot of parts, and this has proven pretty
difficult to do
without DriveWorks
.

– Tomas Hecht Olsen,
R&D Manager,
NGI A/S

One consistent software package that simplifies quoting and ordering and is easy to use, for our in-house customer service and our external distributors.

– Terry McGowan, President and CEO at Thordon Bearings

We truly hope and believe DriveWorks will generate
an extremely short
pay-back
in getting
Clear Vision Cooling off the ground

– Jurnjan van den Bremer, Commercial Direction, Clear Vision Cooling

Try DriveWorks

DriveWorksXpress

If you’ve got SOLIDWORKS, you’ve already got DriveWorks! Our free design automation tool,DriveWorksXpress is included under the tools menu in every license of SOLIDWORKS. All you need to do is activate it.

DriveWorks Solo

Download a 30 day free trial of DriveWorks Solo to try out the full functionality for yourself. You’ll also get access to all of our handy online resources to help you get the most from your trial.

DriveWorks Pro

Have a go with our many online configurator examples to see how versatile and customizable DriveWorks Pro is. Enter your email address to get the full experience, receive quotes and view your designs in 3D.

Online 3D CPQ for SOLIDWORKS

DriveWorks configurator software is the ultimate choice in 3D CPQ for SOLIDWORKS.

The ability to configure, price and quote easily has become essential for manufacturing companies of all sizes, in all industries. Weve all seen, and probably used, some kind of sales configurator. Theyre now widely used by many recognized brands as a way of cost-effectively offering configurable products.

Configurable products are becoming the norm and many companies are seeking a configure, price and quote (CPQ) solution that can help them to meet the increasing demand for custom products and gain a competitive edge.

DriveWorks is a SOLIDWORKS Gold Partner Product and only works with SOLIDWORKS.
Since 2001, DriveWorks has worked alongside SOLIDWORKS to help companies improve their processes and win more orders.

How Your Customers Use DriveWorks as a CPQ Solution

How YourDistributors Use DriveWorks as a CPQ Solution

How YourSales Team Use DriveWorks as a CPQ Solution

How You Set Up
DriveWorks as a CPQ Solution

Take the Lead with DriveWorks CPQ

DriveWorks configurator software enables businesses to set up a configurable 3D CPQ solution that engineering and sales teams can use. DriveWorks allows manufacturing companies to gain all the benefits of digital selling.

CPQ solutions are built on rules, workflow, user interface and integration. These are the core technologies that have underpinned DriveWorks since the software was first introduced to the SOLIDWORKS market in 2001.

Over the years by looking at market trends, conducting research amongst manufacturing companies and asking for customer feedback, new features have been added and many enhancements made. With our goal of ease of use, we’ve created a specific CPQ template, built on DriveWorks functionality, to make it easy for manufacturing companies to reap the benefits of guided selling and CPQ quickly.

The DriveWorks CPQ Template provides a configurable dashboard that allows you to select which products can be configured, using your existing DriveWorks product configurators, what pricing to apply and what data to pass to and from any other company systems such as ERP and CRM.

Your DriveWorks and CPQ administrator can manage access and permissions to the CPQ front end and add product configurators at any time. That way you can customize the solution for inside sales, dealers, distributors and even customers. The CPQ administrator can apply real-time pricing updates to ensure accurate quotes are generated and that they reflect your businesses’ strategic and commercial goals. The CPQ dashboard can also be customized so the administrator can have specific views such as quoted items, pending orders and so on.

The four short videosabove explain and demonstrate DriveWorks CPQ from the point of view of a customer, distributor, sales representative and CPQ administrator.

Why DriveWorks CPQ?

Immersive 3D

Let your customers see their custom products in impressive 3D and view the effects of their design changes immediately.

Compelling Documents

Automatically send eye catching branded documents that are personalised to each customer and order.

Simple Templates

Get started really quickly by customising our templates to suit your needs with our intuitive Form Designer.

Seamless Links

An easy to use workflow means seamless links between teams& company systems such as CRM, ERP and SOLIDWORKS.

Time Saving Automation

Reduce repetitive tasks by automating customer responses and repetitive engineering tasks.

Modular & Flexible

Additional modules can be added as and when you need them to create a product configurator that suits your needs.

Try out one of the many CPQ configurator examples onDriveWorksLive.com.

Learn about DriveWorks at SOLIDWORKS World

There are over 250 technical sessions to choose from at SOLIDWORKS World 2019. With so many sessions to choose from its a good idea to plan your agenda before you arrive. The SOLIDWORKS World website makes it easy to build your agenda.

The technical sessions offer training and learning experiences to expand your skill set and increase your productivity.

If youre looking to improve your productivity, work smarter and improve customer experience, join the DriveWorks design automation and CPQ sessions.

DriveWorksXpress Design Automation for SOLIDWORKS

Hands-On Session

Monday, Feb 11th
2.45pm-3.45pm
Room D170

Presented by: Oliver Basma-Lord and Tom Wormald, Technical Specialists at DriveWorks.

Session Description: DriveWorksXpress速 is the Design Automation tool included in every license of SOLIDWORKS. It’s great for creating variations of products that are the same but different. This session teaches how to create a DriveWorksXpress configurator from scratch and about the DriveWorksXpress Certification.

Session Attendee Benefits: Attendees will learn how to create DriveWorksXpress forms linked to your models, automate SOLIDWORKS geometry and configure model variations based on your rules. They will see how automation can improve their work, create their own DriveWorksXpress configurator and learn how to get certified.

Add to Agenda

DriveWorks Ltd Presents: Configure and Automate

Certified Partner Theatre Presentation

Monday, Feb 11th
6.45pm-7.00pm
Certified Partner Theatre

Presented by:Heather Hasz, DriveWorks Community & Brand Ambassador.

DriveWorks rules-based software is proven for automating repetitive tasks, improving productivity and reducing errors. Learn how Shotton Lifts use their DriveWorks configurator to specify custom elevators, automating the generation of engineering drawings, professional sales documents, quotes and BOMs.

Certified Partner Theatre

DriveWorksXpress Essentials

Hands-On Lab

Tuesday, Feb 12th
10.30am-12.00pm
Room D170

Presented by:Ryan Dally and Derek Lawson, Computer Aided Technology,LLC.

Session Description: This hands-on session prepares students to automate their designs using DriveWorksXpress, which is included with every seat of SOLIDWORKS. Topics include: planning for automation, leveraging your existing models, and growing your automation.

Session Attendee Benefits: Attendees will be able to apply skills learned to automate designs in their company with DriveWorksXpress. They will receiveelectronic manuals and training files, as well as live step-by-step training.

Add to Agenda

Your Future: Automate to Accelerate

By Becoming a Certified DriveWorksXpress Associate

DriveWorksXpress is a free design automation tool included in every license of SOLIDWORKS.

More and more companies are adopting design automation techniques to save time, reduce repetitive engineering tasks and minimise costly errors. Design automation is becoming the norm and engineering professionals can gain the skills they need by completing the DriveWorksXpress Training & Certification.

SOLIDWORKS Gold Certified Partner

What?

The DriveWorksXpress Training and Certification is a free certification for all engineering and design professionals who have access to SOLIDWORKS.

Becoming a Certified DriveWorksXpress Associate gives you new skills to add to your r辿sum辿, opens doors in a competitive jobs market and differentiates you from your peers.

How?

You can become a Certified DriveWorksXpress Associate by completing 3 steps in just 3 hours:
Step 1:Download and complete the DriveWorksXpress Training Tutorial.
Step 2:Take a short online test to complete the certification.
Step 3:Join a global community of DriveWorks and SOLIDWORKS engineers.

Why?

Embrace Design Automation techniques to work smarter.
Gain an extra qualification to gain an edge on the competition and stand out from the crowd.
Join a community of professionals to improve your career prospects in a competitive jobs market.
Improve your employability with an extra qualification on your r辿sum辿.

DriveWorksWebinars

Learning Resources
We provide all the resources you need to easily complete the DriveWorksXpress Training and Certification and gain this valuable new skill to use in industry.

Completely Free
DriveWorksXpress is a free tool included in every educational and commercial license of SOLIDWORKS and the certification is free for anyone who has access to SOLIDWORKS.

Professional Certificate
On completion of the DriveWorksXpress Certification you’ll receive a professional certificate to add to your r辿sum辿 and prove your knowledge.