Another Solidworks World #sww17 hosted in LA this year is now in the books. This year, for me, it was a little different. It was the first time in my career that I represented myself at a conference and it was also the first time that I was asked to speak representing myself and my experience.
That in of itself is a bit humbling. I was nervous not about my material and content, but I was very anxious to speak in front of my peers. There are so many great minds in the community that every time I go to this event I meet some people doing things that I would have thought impossible last year.
This year was no different. Some of the presentations were crazy good. Ed Eaton from The Dimonte Group presented on Scan to 3D and scan data in general and it was a reverse engineering clinic that I thoroughly enjoyed and needed to see to brush up on my mesh manipulation in Solidworks. I was able to run the Solidworks CAM hands on session on Tuesday morning and that was extremely interesting.
This is Solidworks “better late than never” entrance to the machining arena. It uses the CAM engine from CamWorks™ as the back end and the user interface definitely shows through. It has a promising workflow with post support coming later in quarter 3. The 2.5 axis version will be a fully functioning free add-in for customers on subscription.
The biggest advantage in this CAM package is that it is rules based similar to the Driveworks™ platform. If you give a set of values to machine between it will pick up digital data from Tolerencing Schemes to machine parts more effectively and efficiently.
Thanks to the Solidworks crew and every one of my colleagues and friends from over the years for making my time in Los Angeles a memorable one. See you next year!
Be a maker,
Todd