Our Time at Virtual 3DEXPERIENCE World 2021
Our Time at Virtual 3DEXPERIENCE World 2021
For the past 19 years the team at DriveWorks have attended SOLIDWORKS World.
Last year we were excited to join World as it entered a new era – 3DEXPERIENCE World.
Our team headed to Nashville for a week of learning and networking with their 3DEXPERIENCEÂ Platform Explorer Associate ribbons proudly on display!
This year 3DEXPERIENCE World was reimagined as an all-virtual event open to anyone around the world, for free!
The three-day event was filled with inspiring keynote presentations, educational breakout sessions and virtual networking!
With more than 35,000 attendees, this has been the biggest World ever!
The 3DEXPERIENCE Virtual Event PlatformÂ
This year’s 3DEXPERIENCE Playground featured several zones.
The EDU Zone showed how high school and university engineering students are using SOLIDWORKS and the 3DEXPERIENCEÂ platform to build the products of the future.
The 3DEXPERIENCE Lab Zone highlighted how SOLIDWORKS open innovation lab is nurturing disruptive projects that will have a positive impact on society and create a better, more sustainable world.
This year the 3DEXPERIENCE World Shop Floor focused on sharing great stories from a number of companies that are keeping manufacturing alive in the heart of the U.S. and teaching those skills to new audiences.Â
And not to forget Model Mania, a favourite for many attendees at World. This year Model Mania was split into three different challenges – SOLIDWORKS Challenge, 3DEXPERIENCE Challenge and a 3DEXPERIENCE Student Challenge.
The Sponsor Zone & DriveWorks Booth
The Sponsor Hub created an area where attendees could learn more about SOLIDWORKS innovative partner products and services.
The DriveWorks booth was located in the Sponsor Zone, where our team of DriveWorks Experts and CSWP’s were ready on our ‘live’ booth to chat, answer questions and also giving demos of our award-winning software live in action!
Thanks to everyone who virtually visited us at the booth, if you missed it, there’s still time to register and access all the great DriveWorks resources that are available there!
General SessionsÂ
Day One
Day One we heard from Bernard Charlès, Gian Paolo Bassi and several customers sharing how SOLIDWORKS and the 3DEXPERIENCE Works portfolio helped to increase their organisations’ flexibility and agility, to enable more effective collaboration, and connect their supply networks.
We heard from inspiring Keynote Speaker, Duncan Wardle, the former Head of Innovation and Creativity at Disney. Duncan gave an energetic and engaging presentation on how Disney build on the human imagination to create new ways of innovating, collaborating, and connecting with customers.
We also heard about the newly announced 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS for Makers Program and saw the first episode of this year’s “What’s New” demo skit.
Day Two
On Day Two, we learned a lot about the transformation from product to experiences.
The R&D team shared the vision for the 3DEXPERIENCE® Works portfolio that augments and enhances your existing solution.
We learned how you can connect the people, applications and real-time data from every aspect of your business to improve productivity, increase collaboration, and accelerate innovation.
The Keynote for Day Two was Frank Stephenson, from Frank Stephenson Design, a designer who earned acclaim as lead designer and design director at major carmakers. He discussed how to reduce development cycles, how he uses new and evolving design tools, and the need to maintain the “human link” when designing products.
Day Three
Suchit Jain, Vice President, Strategy, Community & Business Development for Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS, kicked off the session “Connections to Relationships.” Suchit confirmed what many already know – that SOLIDWORKS is still everywhere.
We heard from Matt Carney and Tej Matel, two customers who shared their stories of using the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform to help tackle the COVID-19 pandemic.
We also heard from Marie Planchard, Director of Education and Early Engagement, who interviewed two well-known SOLIDWORKS engineers, who took very different paths on their engineering journeys. Eric Beatty, SWUGN Leader and Paul Ventimiglia, who is a fixture on the BattleBots TV show and mentors one of the competing FIRST Robotics teams.
SOLIDWORKS is Everywhere
More than six million designers, engineers, students, entrepreneurs, makers and innovators are designing and creating many of the things we see around us every day.
-Suchit Jain, Vice President, Strategy, Community & Business Development for Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS
Sessions at 3DEXPERIENCE World 2021
With over 175 sessions across the event, there was definitely something for everyone.
Training at 3DEXPERIENCE World was held in virtual lecture-style breakouts, demos, product briefings, panel discussions, and roundtables on a wide variety of topics, taught by industry experts.
There were also 40+ MeetUp sessions as part of the event. This was an opportunity for attendees to network with peers, learn how similar challenges have been solved, and ask questions of SOLIDWORKS experts and executives, thought leaders, makers and influencers.
Located in the 3DExperience Lab, we heard from Enrico Bassi, Fab Lab Manager, Opendot speaking about GLIFO. A 3D printed custom aid that helps children with disabilities achieve autonomy in writing and drawing. Using DriveWorks, GLIFO has developed its online configurator to automatise the design customisation workflow. Catch up with the presentation from Enrico here.
DriveWorks On-Demand Sessions
At World there were two DriveWorks on-demand sessions available.
The first presentation was delivered by our CEO, Glen Smith, on DriveWorks Configure & Automate. The second was presented by DriveWorks CPQ – Product Manager, Tom presenting on How to Save Time with DriveWorksXpress.
All on-demand sessions were available throughout the event and can still be accessed now on the 3DEXPERIENCE Event Platform if you missed them!
Configure & Automate
Save Time with DriveWorksXpress
Community
Every year, we celebrate a SOLIDWORKS User Group leader who stands out from the crowd for going above and beyond with their support for the SWUGN community.
This year we were proud to announce Eric Beatty, Seattle Area SOLIDWORKS Power User Group as our 6th annual DriveWorks award winner for SOLIDWORKS User Group Leader of the Year!
We were also extremely proud to be awarded the SWUGN Partner of the Year Award.
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.
We can’t wait to be a part of lots of great SWUG meetings again this year whether they be virtual or in person!
During the meeting, David Antanavige was awarded the Wayne Tiffany – User Group Leader of the Year award, Pittsburgh SWUG won User Group of the Year, Joe Lance received the Michelle Pillers – Community Award, CATI was awarded Reseller of the Year and Alin Vargatu received Reseller AE of the Year – congratulations everyone!
Check Out Our SWUGN T-Shirts
Each year at World, SOLIDWORKS User Group leaders head over to our booth to collect their exclusive DriveWorks SWUGN t-shirt.
Heather, who is involved in running the SWUGN sponsorship program at DriveWorks, hands the t-shirts out, grabs a photo with the group leader and discusses how we can sponsor their upcoming meetings.
Every year we design a new t-shirt, and despite this year being a virtual event, we wanted to make sure SWUGN leaders still had the chance to get their hands on a 2021 DriveWorks SWUGN sponsor t-shirt!
Before and during 3DEXPEREINCE World, Heather sent out our t-shirts and it was great to see members of the community proudly showing them off during the event!
If you are a SWUGN leader and missed the chance to get hold of one at 3DEXPERIENCE World – we are still sending them out!
Please get in touch with Heather Hasz or email us at info@driveworks.co.uk.
Highlights from 3DEXPERIENCE World 2021
Don’t forget to tune into SOLIDWORKS Live for a post-show recap event, ‘Highlights from 3DEXPERIENCE World 2021′ on February 18th at 11AM EST.
With so much going on at this year’s conference, it’ll be good to check out the recap and see what you may have missed.
SOLIDWORKS will cover the Model Mania winners, talk about what the virtual experience meant and felt like for the SOLIDWORKS community and share takeaways from keynote speakers.
See You Next Year!
The last General Session of 3DEXPERIENCE World 2021 closed with a final address from Gian Paolo Bassi.
The session finished with the announcement that next year, 3DEXPERIENCE World will be held in Atlanta, Georgia!
Of course, we will be back for 3DEXPERIENCE World 2022 and we hope to see you there!
