We’ve seen some really sweet cars partially designed in SolidWorks, but the new Falen concept from Dowdeswell and Hardie has the unique pleasure of being designed completely in SolidWorks. The design team, nestled between the glens and highlands of Perthshire, Scotland, plans to debut The Falen at the Geneva Motor Show in March 2009. This…

Sometimes, flipping back and forth between a PDF or AutoCAD drawing is enough to make you start humming loudly and spinning in tight circles. That’s ok… when you don’t have to get a drawing out, but when you need to get some concepts going or figure out how things fit together, you can use some good ol’ images to speed up the process.

Here’s some super quick tips to get your from a PDF to a Solid and a method that’s sure to make it more fun.

Close your eyes. Imagine sending a plain ol’ PDF to someone. Ok, now imagine sending a 3D PDF… got that?

Now, picture being slapped out of your daze by the Adobe Acrobat development team and having the ability to send someone all your project files in a single PDF, upload, share and discuss it with others in real-time and create other documents in a Flash-based environment. Yeah, the shock is almost to much to take. Hold your excitement and check out the juicy details.

Look out people, there’s a new breed of CAD in town and it might make you slightly more social. Last week Dassualt Systèmes formally launched their V6 Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) platform that includes CATIA, ENOVIA, DELMIA, SUMULIA and 3DVIA.

If you don’t use CATIA, you probably don’t care too much. However, this release has huge implications for how CAD programs like SolidWorks, SpaceClaim and even the competing Siemens PLM and Synchronous Technology are going to develop over the coming years.