Wednesday’s general session is considered by many to be the most highly anticipated session of the conference.  This mostly stems from the fact that this is the day we all get a preview of the next version of SolidWorks.  This first post will hit the quick highlights.  Later I will post a Detailed Review which will go into much more depth.

Here are the quick highlights:

• Segway inventor Dean Kamen gave a speech discussion the FIRST Robotics competition.
• The Top Ten Enhancments were announced by some of the SolidWorks User Group Leaders.  The most requested enhancement was more support for dual monitors.
• The Design Contest Winners were announced.  Clearly the most amazing part of the announcements was a Rubics Cube model put together by a high school.  That school placed third in the Animation contest.

The SolidWorks 2009 features were shown off using a “therapy session” skit.  I’ll have much more on that later.  Here is a quick list of some of the enhancements shown for SolidWorks 2009.

• SpeedPak Technology to aide Large Assembly Performance.
• Slot tools in sketches.
• Instant Dimensioning of sketch entities as you draw them.
• Addition of a Stretch Entities command to the Sketch tools (VERY NICE!!)
• Negative dimensions in sketches.
• Ability to build sheetmetal part “on top” of a solid model!
• Plastics Design options that automatically take care of feature order in the tree as you add them.  One example would be to add a Cut-Extrude feature on a part and having SolidWorks automatically move the feature previous to a Shell operation along with applying the proper draft.  (More to come on this later.)
• Creation of Bill of Materials in the Assembly!
• Propagate Assembly Features down into part files.
• Sensors that can be placed in a model which warn the user of defined conditions.
• New Heads up display for sizing Toolbox parts
• Dynamically change Toolbox fastener lengths with Instant3D by dragging the length.
• Magnifying Glass to see details of a model view without zooming in.
• Click on the triad to orient the view.
• Measure tools wills show both inch and metric units.
• COSMOSWorks bolt sizing validation.
• Ribbon Cables in Electrical  Routing.
• More jog options in Drawings.
• Title Block Wizard in Drawings.

That is all for now.  I’ll post the Detailed Review soon!

Stay tuned….more to come!