Ya see that shiny new building in the image to the left? That’s the new Dassault Systèmes (DS) campus in Vélizy, France and home to the 2009 Dassault Developers Conference (DEVCON 2009).

So far, there’s little information escaping the glass edifice of the DS headquarters, except for the occasional tweet (#DSDEVCON09) and the typical press release that doesn’t get into the intense grittiness we enjoy. We’ve had mention of the following. Interested in one of them? Let me know and I’ll release the hounds to get all the info we can manage to fit into a family size can of green beans.

Can you feel it in your bones and tendons and fingers that just pressed the installation button for SolidWorks 2009 SP 4.0? I know you can. And if you’re one of the lucky companies that haven’t laid-off everyone, shut down and stopped your SolidWorks subscription service, you can download SolidWorks 2010 Beta right now.

You can get a little bit of an idea of what you’ll see in SolidWorks 2010 from the SolidWorks World 2010 Preview. Of course, the number one enhancement request last year was to “Increase program stability”. Will that somehow get worked in somehow?

What has Fur, Bumps, stereoscopic 3D support and reeks of SolidWorks Import possibilities? The brand new version of Luxology’s modeling/rendering/animation package, modo 401. Yes, all of that, in one integrated tool.

Since first being show early this year, many a rendering fanatic has been anticipating the new rendering capabilities, while deep in the lair of Luxology’s San Mateo Headquarters, they were cooking up modeling and import features that would give reality an intense beat down. There’s a lot to the software, so take a deep breath of volumetric lighting and prepare to be forcefully ray-traced.

I found it! Right here under this bowl of oats of all places. Now how does something that furry end up under a bowl of oats. I think we need to have a talk with the committee and subject them to these links. Industrial Decay – Who doesn’t love to see how things rot? Here’s…

Attack I say! Attack and plunder the riches… of … imported… geometry and… stuff. Ok, battle faces everyone, we’re on a warpath today, a warpath to create usable 3D geometric data from imported files.

It’s an interesting issue submitted by a user tired of recreating sheet metal part when he already has a 3D .IGES model, just so he can have a usable flat pattern. Normally, this is easy. You think, “Oh, a simple sheet metal bracket, just use an Insert Bend feature and grab a snack.” But what if it has features that can not be recognized in the process?

That, feature-based fans, is a whole different monster waiting to be slayed. Are you up for it? How would you suggest approaching this problem?