Having been President and CEO of Dassault Systèmes (parent company of SolidWorks) since September of 1995, Bernard Charlès has seen better than most how much the 3D software—and software in general—landscape has changed in the last twenty years. From the transition of industrial designers increasingly adopting CAD engineering tools into their workflows to the concept of Cloud computing and mobile devices, the world of 3D software is always re-shaping itself to meet the social and performance needs of today’s demanding product designer. We had the chance to sit down with Bernard at last week’s SolidWorks World to hear more about his thoughts on the move into Mechanical Conceptual as well as how a childhood in the French countryside helped shape the ‘always-inspired’ Bernard that we all know of today.
Having been founded by aerospace engineer Greg Mark, MarkForged (or MarkForg3d) is already making waves since their debut at last week’s SolidWorks World in San Diego. Their flagship product—the Mark One 3D Printer—was on display in the Partner Pavilion and was perhaps the only product demonstration booth that had a crowd gathered day-in and day-out throughout the entire week. It’s hard to argue why: Mark and company have taken the otherwise laborious and tedious process of fabricating with carbon fiber and streamlined it into a rapid prototyping package. Somewhere in the haze of a post-lunch coffee and cookie break, Mark and Gian Paolo Bassi of SolidWorks gave us a little rundown on what the Mark One 3D printer is all about.
BOOM. Today it happens. What is ‘it’ praytell? Today is the day we as EVD Media slap the back fat of the internet, look it square in the eyes and grow just a wee bit larger. Today we announce that mCADForums.com is now part of the CAD slammin’, design havin’ EVD Media communi-tay. That’s right folks, we’re adding forums to the mix, a place of discussion, enlightenment, encouragement and the occasionally mis-use of smileys. mCADForums is all that and more with a long history in this wonderful CAD industry. And from here on out, it’s only going to get better.
This week’s Spotify-powered SolidSmack Radio Playlist brings an entirely new face-smack of great music to help propel you through those laborious, tedious design tasks for the next few days. This week our Trip Hop-inspired playlist starts with ‘La Femme D’argent’ from Air and then works its way through some Morcheeba, Fenomenon, Aphex Twin, Little Dragon and others before wrapping up with Black Jesus from 9 Lazy 9.
If the comments board on the recent Mechanical Conceptual SolidSmack post is any indication, SolidWorks has a lot of passionate users that want to stick with the brand…but feel uncertain about the pricey new 3D Experience structure. While SolidSmack will most certainly be the first to report back to you with any updates on the manner, here’s something else that was working its way around the San Diego convention center at last week’s SolidWorks World: an update preview to the popular eDrawings Augmented Reality app that brings the popular real-world viewing capabilities of the existing app to a new sharing platform that allows teams to collaborate world-wide on models in real-time.