An impressive turnout of 38 NASWUG members were treated to a special event tonight as Dana Parrish of SolidWorks Corporation made his second trip of the year to Huntsville to present at our user group meeting.  Any successful SolidWorks User Group has topics that are member driven.  The topic of this meeting was a result of several inquiries by NASWUG members to learn more about the COSMOS line of products and how the tools offered can improve their designs.  After giving a great presentation on COSMOSFloWorks earlier this year, Dana was nice enough to make another trip up to help our users learn more about COSMOSWorks.

The meeting started out tonight with an exciting announcement for NASWUG members.  SolidWorks is launching a Beta Program for the newly created Certified SolidWorks Associate (CSWA) exam.  Attendees tonight earned an opportunity to take the CSWA exam as part of the Beta experience for FREE!  This test is less strenuous as compared to the Certified SolidWorks Professional (CSWP) and will provide many members the opportunity to begin their journey towards certification in SolidWorks. To learn more about the CSWA, click on the link provided above.  After some other announcements, Dana was set to begin his presentation.  To me, demonstrations of analysis products are most effective when given using “real-world” examples.  This is exactly where the presentation started. Dana presented several design scenarios in which the audience was asked which design would yield the best results.  After all the “guesses” were made, the results were shown to the crowd along with descriptions and images showing just how those results were attained.  This really was a hit with the crowd! Also as part of the presentation, Dana showed off some of the enhancements to the COSMOS line of products in the 2008 release.  This was the first time that the new SolidWorks 2008 interface was shown publicly in Huntsville.  My favorite COSMOSWorks 2008 features shown were the new alternate mesher (This REALLY could save some time!), Design Insight Plots (Helps you remove materials without effecting structural integrity), and the improvements to Bolt Connectors!  You can read more about the enhancements by checking out the SolidWorks 2008 What’s New Guide or the COSMOSWorks What’s New rundown.   Dana did a great job with the presentation and answered many questions from the attendees in the Q&A session.  Thanks Dana!

I’m really proud of the turnout tonight, especially due to the fact that it was 106 degrees (F) in Huntsville today!  The long hot summer will be hopefully drawing to a close soon.  Next up for NASWUG members will be What’s New in SolidWorks 2008 presentations.  Thanks to all in attendance tonight!

Stay tuned…..MORE to come!