DriveWorks Drivers March 2024 Meeting Round Up

DriveWorks Drivers connects DriveWorks users from around the world, featuring guest speakers sharing experiences and encouraging questions and dialogue about the technology. Sharing technical know-how and practical experience informally with each other is something we know many people using DriveWorks like to do.

On March 14th, we hosted the first meeting of DriveWorks Drivers for 2024. DriveWorks Drivers was hosted via Microsoft Teams at 3pm (NZDT) and 3pm (GMT). Hosting at different times provides the opportunity for our global community to join at a time that suits them. 

Since starting DriveWorks Drivers in 2020, we have really seen the value of getting together quarterly to share knowledge from our own team as well as talk to DriveWorks users from all kinds of industries who are using DriveWorks software. 

We had about 85 people in attendance as we shared a short preview of DriveWorks World 2024 as well as news, and technical content. 

DriveWorks World 2024 Preview 

Our Marketing Manager, Jessica Taylor, joined to share information on our upcoming technical event – DriveWorks World. At DriveWorks World, we will be presenting a variety of technical sessions to help our customers learn and get the most from our software. Our CEO, Glen Smith, will be sharing What’s New in DriveWorks 22 and we’ll be joined by several DriveWorks customers sharing how they have built their implementations.

DriveWorks World will be held virtually on April 10th and 11th and registration is open!

DriveWorks and SOLIDWORKS PDM

At both sessions of DriveWorks Drivers, Ahmed Lasheen and Phil Gilbanks provided an overview of how DriveWorks and SOLIDWORKS PDM work together.

During both presentations, we looked at how the SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional Plugin can be configured and setup to work with your existing PDM vaults. We also looked through the different functionality that the plugin adds to your DriveWorks toolbox, such as the functions for PDM search and tasks for checking in and out files or folders. We also covered some general tips and tricks and general rules of thumb when setting up the plugin.

DriveWorks Challenge 

DriveWorks Challenge #4 gave our community a chance to play with the creation of dynamic 2D images with a project that was created using DriveWorks 21 lambda functions. We reviewed a wide variety of submissions from an interactive Etch-A-Sketch clone to motion simulations to interactive artwork, stained glass 2D previews, and a printed circuit board layout example. Congratulations to our winners, Zach Long from CHL Systems and Bill Murch from IDM Consulting with a special Honorable Mention for Dorian Koch from Simphonis.

We then revealed DriveWorks Challenge #5 which is open until April 11th for prize submissions, with the winners being announced live at DriveWorks World 2024. We’ll be showcasing some of the challenge #5 submissions at DriveWorks World, but if you’d prefer us not to share your submission then please just let us know.

Final Ascent – Simplify Your Rules 

In a specially requested Final Ascent Segment, we looked at how to increase the readability, maintainability, scalability, and performance of your rules within DriveWorks. And because rules are everywhere, a small boost in your DriveWorks Rules techniques can be a valuable asset. If you missed it, this Final Ascent segment is available to watch in the MyDriveWorks Learning Portal.

See You in June!

If you have an idea for a future DriveWorks Drivers meeting, drop us an email at drivers@driveworks.co.uk today!

Registration is now open to join us on Thursday, June 6th for our next meeting of DriveWorks Drivers which will be hosted at 1:30pm NZST and 3pm BST.