I love user group meetings. The part I love the most about the meetings is seeing the looks of discovery that people have when they learn something new about SolidWorks. Throughout my time as a user group leader and attendee at several user group events I have been fortunate enough to see this many times and it NEVER gets old.

Tonight we had our September 2006 NASWUG meeting in Huntsville, AL. Richard Doyle, who is the User Community coordinator for SolidWorks, was in town and gave his “What’s REALLY new in SolidWorks 2007” presentation. Tonight was the first time I had actually met Richard face to face. Over the past 2 years that I have been a user group leader, I have gotten to know Richard pretty well through our phone conversations and e-mails. Richard has played a very big part in the success of our user group. He is one of those guys who truly has a passion for SolidWorks. That passion and excitement was apparent throughout his presentation tonight and sparked countless positive comments from those in attendance. Richard’s presentation was unique in that it highlighted many small additions to SolidWorks 2007 that truly save time and make the overall experience for the user more enjoyable. Oh, and that look of discovery I referred to earlier…well let’s just say that I think everyone in attendance tonight left knowing something new about SolidWorks (including me) after seeing his presentation. Richard will be making his presentation available and I will be posting it in the coming weeks at our NASWUG website if you are interested.

For those of you who have been fortunate enough to have interaction with Richard whether you are a user group officer, user attending an event, newsgroup reader, or blogger, you pretty much already know what I am talking about. For those of you that haven’t, make sure you check the user group calendar and watch to see when he will be in your area. I promise you won’t be disappointed.