Goodbye Solidworks World

No more Solidworks World for Solidworks users. This week in Dallas, at the last Solidworks World, I got my backpack at the Partner Pavilion and, as you can see, next year there will be instead a "3DExperience World".

I can see why they didn't hand them out at registration. It would have been confusing.

You might think this is some sort of rebranding. At past conventions I got the idea that's what it was, just a different name for the same thing. This year Dassault made their vision clear to me, or at least I think I am finally getting it. It's not a new name for the same thing. It's a different program. They do not plan to make xDesign as capable as Solidworks. It's something else, on a different platform. No threat to Solidworks, except the loss of a convention.

At lunch on day 3, Aaron Kelly, Product Management and Marketing Executive, very nicely stopped by our table and we talked about the whole thing. I appreciate the effort to connect, but I am not pleased with his message. When I said I wondered if there would be fewer people going to the convention next year, he said he thought there would be more people, and they'd be different people.

Different people? Oh, I see. It's not about me anymore.

He doesn't mean that Solidworks will be excluded. We are still invited to the party. They will have a room for us in the basement. That's pretty much how it was this year. Top ten ideas were presented in the convention basement.

Gian Paolo Bassi loves my passion. I am pretty sure he says that every convention. But my passion is Solidworks, not 3DExperience.

What's your passion?

Dwight