Despite a lot of fun being had at the Dassault Systemes event Giddy Up at Gilley’s on day 2 of 3DEXPERIENCE World, users and speakers alike were ready to go at 8:30 AM for the hands-on session that our resident Large Assembly Wizard Alin Vargatu and I presented. This session was the Ultimate Guide to Optimizing Imported Geometry, and we showed users various ways that they can save on open times and operational times over the hour and a half of hands-on time with the software. Tips like this make up just one portion of our large assembly workshop and really help ease the pain of working with cumbersome step files.

A packed room for the hands-on session I co-presented with our resident Large Assembly Wizards, Alin Vargatu

Model Mania Results

After one more session, a demonstration of the loader from Aliens, and a quick lunch, the Model Mania contest results were announced in the 3D Playground. The whole team was elated when it was announced that our very own Matt Kokoski defended his title from last year’s competition successfully! The two-time back-to-back champion won a $500 Gift Card and, for the first year ever, the winners were also given a 3D printed copy of the model and revision they created, along with a laminated copy of the drawings themselves. Congratulations Matt!

Matt won the Reseller Model Mania Competition at 3DX World 2024 with a time of 16:15

Congrats Matt!

General Session and Announcements

The general session was filled with excitement and was centered on all of the amazing SOLIDWORKS users in the SWUG and Champions community. There was then an interview with F1 Legend Paddy Lowe, who discussed innovation in the sport, design philosophy, and his current ventures with sustainable fuels. Afterward, we continued to see some early enhancements for SOLIDWORKS 2025, my favorite being a “centered” option in the tab and slot tool, before the big announcement that 3DEXPERIENCE World will be in Houston, TX next year!

F1 Legend Paddy Lowe Speaking at 3DEXPERIENCE World 2024

Casino Night and Elite AE’s

The final event of the week will be casino night, and it will include recognition for the select Application Engineers from around the world who achieved their Elite Status this year. Sarah Taylor and I are the two from TriMech who fulfilled the requirements, including getting 30+ certifications and demonstrating community involvement.

This week has been an amazing opportunity to connect with clients, users, and TriMech and DS employees. The community has been stellar and it’s been so great not just to share favorite tips, tricks, and processes but to also learn so much! Looking forward to seeing everyone again in Houston in 2025!

Ray Morrogh, a TriMech Solutions Consultant, covers the enhancements this year that focused on an improved user experience in many ways, including UX updates, auto ballooning 2D cabinets, and filters in electrical 3D. The way changes can be implemented has also been improved with enhancements like removing manufacturer part data when deleting or replacing a component, changing the lengths of multiple rails and ducts simultaneously, and allowing for previews of changes when aligning 3D components

During this SOLIDWORKS Electrical On-Demand Webinar, you will learn:

• Auto ballooning in 2D cabinets
• Shortening lists using ranges
• UI/UX improvements
• Changes to Electrical 3D

How do I create a 3DEXPERIENCE Collaborative Space?

Creating spaces is simple in action but should be deliberate in thought. To create a collaborative space, open the 3DSpace widget and then on the drop down next to My Collaborative Spaces, simply click new collaborative space.

New Collaborative Space

You will then have some options when creating your space, and this is the component that requires careful consideration, as spaces can only be deleted when they are completely empty and visibility levels can only be promoted, not demoted (more on this later).

Create Collaborative Space

How many spaces should I create?

Your team structure may call for creating distinct spaces for different departments. For many teams, this may just be having your common space and then a separate design space. If you’re interested in having things be more siloed, it’s recommended to create more than once space and give access as you see fit. This could be different collaborative spaces for different teams or company locations, or if you create large and complex products, or different spaces for different products.  You can set the visibility permissions to protected or private as you see fit.

Who needs access to the data? What type of access do they need?

Once your space is created, the next step is to add users. Settings can be managed by default, and it is recommended to not allow new users to create a collaborative space. This can avoid clutter and confusion on the administrative side. Giving all users access to the common space is a good default, since if you use parts libraries, that data will be stored there by default. There are 3 levels of permissions that you can grant users: contributor, author, and leader.

Contributors

Contributors are permitted to open and view SOLIDWORKS content as read only and view the contents in any space they have access to. Key limitations are that they cannot revise or change maturity states or add documents.

Authors

Authors can reserve products and create new revisions, including of released products. They can also move physical products from Frozen to In Work if they are “responsible” for the object. Key limitations of the author role include: being unable to change a product to released or obsolete and are unable to reserve a product in the released state.

Leaders

Leaders can do everything that Authors can do but can change states of products to release without being responsible and can change the sate of a product to obsolete.

How visible should this vault be to those within my organization?

There are three types of spaces: public, protected, and private. Private is the most restricted and content within private spaces is only accessible to users that are members of the collaborative space. Protected spaces limit the visibility of content to those in the released or obsolete state. This content is visible to all organization users when in either of those states. Public spaces make all content visible to all users within the organization. It is critical to note here that spaces can be promoted to greater visibility, but they can never be demoted to lesser visibility. You can make a private space public but can never revert a public space to private.