I seriously do not know where to start after my eyeballs have been water-boarded with sweet, nerd-core tech that was the SolidWorks World Day 1, General Session. With it being the single best session I can remember out of all I’ve been to, there’s plenty to talk about. However, the big news is this… SolidWorks on the Mac. And not only on the Mac… SolidWorks on Linux, Windows, Chrome OS or even Firefox…. but it doesn’t stop there.
You remember what I said in the previous post? Do ya?
I (want to) have the feeling that SolidWorks World 2010 sets the answers to those technological challenges in motion, if not completely pounding them into a attendee silencing jaw-drop at the final general session (and new product announcement) Wednesday morning.
Well, they didn’t wait till Wednesday morning. In the midst of the general session, Jeff Ray, CEO of Dassault SolidWorks, showed the audience a video of what the future of SolidWorks could be like. Big deal, right? Anyone can make a snazzy video. So, they shot buzz-covered speculation in the face and demonstrated it.
Joe Dunn, Mark Biosotti, and Mark Schneider came out on stage, and as Joe introduced their 3-year development project which was about to be shown, Schneider pulled the black sheet from a 24″ Apple Cinema Display on a MacBook Pro and Biosotti man a Wacom Cintiq touch device. Here are a few images of what everyone saw.
Through the demo, there was one key phrase that summed up a lot of the driving idea behind how all of the new UI and the new features are being shaped and more than anything, simplified.
“Any device. Anywhere.”
All of this was (seemingly) done via the cloud, an offsite server, completely independent from any mandate for a certain operating system… or a certain amount of bandwidth, for that matter. We’ve yet to see how that last bit plays out, but the promise is cloud-based apps ‘shipping’ (most likely meaning available for download or use) later this year.
Jaw-dropping indeed. And after being to several other industry events this year, it’s looking like SolidWorks has finally stepped up their game and put the paddles on the chest of the CAD industry, while at the same time soothing many a 3D-fiend’s terror in their quest of using SolidWorks natively on the Mac or any other platform. Your wait will soon be over – a complete platform independent, cloud-based 3D modeling system. SolidWorks.
Don’t forget. we’ll be covering the next two general sessions and other events on Twitter @SolidSmack.
Update: Here’s a video SolidWorks has posted that has Fielder Hiss and Austin O’Malley of SolidWorks explaining a little more about what they’re planning. there’s talk of mobile acess, the ‘cloud’ of course and also OTOY virtualization. (See more about OTOY here.)
