DriveWorks World 2024: Event Round Up
A record number of attendees joined us for DriveWorks World 2024 last week when we hosted three days of technical learning and knowledge-sharing for DriveWorks users, resellers and partners.
The engagement and interaction from the DriveWorks community played a huge part in making the event such a success. It was amazing to have such positive responses to all of the sessions.
We really do appreciate the support and extend our sincere thanks to everyone for their contribution to making DriveWorks World 2024 a huge success.
Here’s a round up of some of the sessions from DriveWorks World 2024.
Reseller Preview Day Highlights
We started DriveWorks World 2024 with our reseller preview event where we were joined virtually by DriveWorks resellers from all over the world.We were thrilled that this year we had so many DriveWorks resellers join us from so many different countries.
Maria Sarkar, DriveWorks Vice President, and Mark Sarkar, Commercial Director, hosted a lineup of different sessions designed to put our resellers in the best position to support their DriveWorks prospects and customers.
We wanted the day to be as informative and insightful as possible for everyone in our reseller community so there were sessions for all reseller teams technical, order-admin, sales, and marketing.
The event concluded with the DriveWorks Reseller Awards. The awards are a great way for us to acknowledge and celebrate the achievements of our reseller community. Congratulations to all of the winners! You can find out more about our 2023 reseller awards winners and news about our new 2024 awards program in our recent blog.
DriveWorks World 2024 Day 1 Highlights
Hundreds of DriveWorks users joined us virtually from locations all over the world for Day 1 of DriveWorks World 2024.
Broadcasting live, with sessions hosted by our team of DriveWorks experts, we shared updates, insights and customer stories. And of course, the eagerly anticipated reveal of some of the new features coming in DriveWorks 22.
Here’s some highlights from Day 1. You can learn more in our Day 1 round up blog.
How DriveWorks Model Generation Works
DriveWorks Technical Manager, Dave Meecham, started the session by talking through Queued & OnDemand model generation and the difference between them.
He went on to cover how to release and generate your models and the generation process in more detail. DriveWorks Model Insight lets you see exactly what actions DriveWorks is taking during Model Generation. He explained how its great for deeper understanding of Model Generation, diagnosing unexpected generation results and analyzing Generation Task loops.
DriveWorks Challenge #5 Live
New for DriveWorks World 2024, Heather Hasz, DriveWorks Brand & Community Ambassador, and Paul Gimbel, DriveWorks Sherpa, hosted DriveWorks Challenge #5 live. They recapped the current challenge and shared some of the submissions that weve already had in. It was a great way to share more information about the challenge and to show everyone how easy it is to get involved.
We rejoined Heather and Paul on Day 2 to get an update on the challenge submissions and find out who the overall challenge winners were.
Setting Up The CPQ Solution You Already Have
DriveWorks CPQ Product Manager, Tom Wormald hosted a session on setting up the CPQ solution you already have. He talked about how we have made the CPQ DriveApp customizable so you can add your own functionality easily and the templates that are available to do this and what steps you need to work through to start implementing CPQ. To demonstrate how quickly you can implement DriveWorks CPQ, while Tom was presenting, one of the DriveWorks technical experts, Nathan Woodward, worked on a CPQ implementation from scratch, showing just how fast it can be done.
New for 22 Feature Q & A DriveApps
DriveApps provide out of the box functionality to accelerate your DriveWorks implementation. The Dashboard DriveApp gives you a pre-made dashboard inside DriveWorks Administrator, which you can then customize with your own data.
In DriveWorks 22, weve added a new styling option a Menu Dashboard. Selecting this styling replaces the square tile view and presents your dashboard data in a side navigation panel instead. This provides an alternative way to view and navigate between your dashboards.
Customer Story How DriveWorks gave Wozair a fresh start
Wozair are based in the South of England and specialize in the design, manufacture, and installation of heavy-duty heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) products. Members of the DriveWorks team took a trip down to their offices earlier this year to find out about how they use DriveWorks. They opened their presentation by crediting DriveWorks technology with giving them a fresh start. Implementing DriveWorks has enabled them to automate and speed up their design process, reduce their risk of human error, and get information from their design team to their manufacturing team much quicker.
They explained how using DriveWorks Model Insight helps them to implement projects faster and how the implementation of DriveWorks technology has enabled them to maintain a consistent design philosophy. Material traceability is key for Wozairs nuclear accreditations and this is easily facilitated using DriveWorks technology.
DriveWorks World 2024 Day 2 Highlights
DriveWorks World 2024 Day 2 was another fantastic day packed with technical sessions, interactive polls, customer stories and exciting announcements about DriveWorks 22. It was fantastic to have such an engaged DriveWorks community join us again for the second day.
Heres a selection of some of the sessions that we hosted on Day 2. You can learn more in our Day 2 round up blog.
Troubleshooting Tips & Tricks
A panel of DriveWorks technical experts discussed their experiences and shared the tips and tricks they use to troubleshoot DriveWorks. Write it down was a popular piece of advice this makes it easy to pass information to your support channel, and will also give you an idea of where you have already checked, enabling you to focus your search and make you more methodical.
They also looked at the tools available in DriveWorks to help with your troubleshooting.
How DriveWorks Integrates with Other Company Systems
DriveWorks Product Manager-Integration, Adam Baker shared how DriveWorks integrates with other systems accounting, ERP and CRM software packages, and showed the tools available inside DriveWorks to set up integrations with your other company systems.
He walked us through some working examples of integrations with QuickBooks, Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce. He shared how we use the Microsoft Dynamics integration at DriveWorks HQ to generate our quotes, linking the quote to the sales opportunity to convert raw data into actionable information enabling us to make more informed decisions.
The Evolution of DriveWorks 3D Technology
Dave Meecham, DriveWorks Technical Manager, and Amar Panesar, DriveWorks Applications Engineer, hosted a session on the development of DriveWorks 3D technology. They started their session with a look at why we created our 3D technology and the key features that have been added with each release.
They then ran through a project created in DriveWorks 16 and applied some of the 3D features added in subsequent releases to demonstrate the evolution of the technology.
How the New Forms Technology Opens Up New Possibilities for Your Implementation
Rob Hayward, DriveWorks Senior Technical Marketing & UX Specialist, and Eve Glover, DriveWorks Technical Specialist demonstrated how you can use the new forms technology to improve the look and feel of your forms.
They ran through how to create user-friendly and consistent forms and the implications for your future implementations.
Customer Story SharkCrates
Austin Beck of SharkCrates shared a presentation on how DriveWorks technology has enabled them to reduce human error, save time and keep pace with their innovation. SharkCrates are based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and produce affordable wood shipping crates on demand.
Austin shared how before implementing DriveWorks they had challenges with the amount of time it was taking to generate quotes and other internal items. DriveWorks technology has enabled them to streamline their internal process and reduce their quote cycle times.
What’s New in DriveWorks 22
In 4 separate sessions across Day 1 & Day 2 we unveiled our latest software release, DriveWorks 22.
This new release brings new features and functionality in the following areas:
Usability & UX, Design Automation & PDM, New Form Controls & Enhanced Form Control Properties, DriveWorks 3D and DriveWorks CPQ.
Were also continuing to enhance our existing design automation functionality with new advanced feature parameters and additionalSOLIDWORKS PDMfunctionality.
At the very end of DriveWorks World 2024, CEO, Glen Smith, CTO, Philip Stears and Technical Engagement Manager, Oliver Basma-Lord shared their closing technical remarks. During this session, they announced that DriveWorks 22 was now avaiable for DriveWorks Resellers to download. They invited Jake Lawley, Systems Team Manager, to join them, and Jake explained how we use DriveWorks to generate and send license certificates to our resellers, he then pressed the button live on air, and the licenses were sent to all resellers!
DriveWorks 22 will be available for customers to download later this month.
Below weve explained some of the new functionality so you can start to think about how you can use them to enhance your own implementations.
Brand New Form Controls & Enhanced Form Control Properties
Additional functionality for improved user experience.
New form control properties enabling you to style controls for a completely modern look.
Usability & UX
Making DriveWorks even easier to implement.
Focused visual updates and enhancements adding further functionality across DriveWorks, including white-label project templates and enhanced table visualization.
DriveWorks 3D
Configure custom products in 3D on any device.
Improvements to make interactive 3D visualizations realistic and performant, including extrusion entity allowing geometries to be generated from a set of given paths.
CPQ
Additional functionality to enhance DriveWorks CPQ solutions.
Enhanced DriveApp Dashboard user interface and and multi-level scrollable menu with CSS styling.
Your Feedback on DriveWorks World 2024
This is just a small selection of all the amazing feedback that we received from DriveWorks World 2024 attendees. It really does have such a positive impact and is hugely motivational to get this level of engagement and so many positive responses. Thank you to everyone who took the time to share their feedback.
Keep an eye on your inbox for an email with a link to our feedback survey. If you can spare a few minutes to complete it we’d be very grateful.
DriveWorks World 2024 Event App Open Until 10th May
The event app for this years DriveWorks World will remain open until 10th May. So you have plenty of time to access all of the on-demand recordings of the live stream sessions and take advantage of the technical learning library with 100+ learning sessions.
Dont forget that via the event app you can also schedule a post-DriveWorks World one-to-one meeting with a member of the DriveWorks team to discuss specific topics.
DriveWorks World 2025 – Save The Date
DriveWorks World 2025 will start on 8th April with a reseller preview event and continue on 9th and 10th April for all DriveWorks users and resellers.
You can register your interest for DriveWorks World 2025 in this year’s event app.
