The world of design has changed in many ways since I joined SOLIDWORKS in 1997. Computer hardware becomes faster and more powerful every year, which is changing the way that our customers do their jobs. These days, engineers are required to wear many hats. When I visit customers, I often see situations where one person is doing work that would have been spread across an entire team twenty years ago, from designing and drafting to FEA and data management. It’s probably not a surprise to hear that these changes influence the development of SOLIDWORKS, and, in particular, this week’s release of SOLIDWORKS 2015.
From the start, SOLIDWORKS has been a user-driven product, and relies on feedback from a global community of more than two million users to shape the future of the tools they use. It’s true that some users are more vocal and honest than others, but understanding and responding to this feedback—both good and bad—is important. Listening to end users lets us understand how our products are being used; our product team has to be 100% certain that any new feature or enhancement provides real benefit to the SOLIDWORKS community before it goes into development. Our user-centric focus has not changed in SOLIDWORKS 2015, nor will it change in the future. In fact, SOLIDWORKS 2015 includes more than 200 new features and enhancements, and 90% of them are the direct result of requests and other feedback from end users.
Our first promise was to “put the power of 3D on every engineer’s desktop.” But that’s not a big enough challenge anymore. Our new promise is to continue developing 3D solutions that let you to meet modern engineering challenges head-on. It’s not enough to focus on making the software faster. We need to give you the tools that inspire you to design products that change the world. SOLIDWORKS 2015 is one step to fulfilling our commitment. As we continue to develop SOLIDWORKS to meet new and emerging needs, we’ll also look to expand the power of 3D and push its capabilities to the limit. Your success is our success.
I invite you to visit our launch website to explore the powerful new enhancements found in SOLIDWORKS 2015. I am certain that they will help improve your everyday productivity, optimize your work process, reduce operations costs, and let you solve more design challenges. Let’s go design!
