As SolidWorks Labs, the launch pad for the research and development arm of Dassault Systemès’SolidWorks, approaches its year anniversary, it attributes an increase in visitor growth to new applications, some of which will soon be graduating to full software development.
Labs has been a way for the research and development team at Solidworks to test out new products by letting users explore them. “It’s our way of putting out some new ideas that we’ve been working on for our users to take a look at and give us their feedback on,” says Brian Harrison, director of SolidWorks Labs.
SolidWorks Labs started off with four applications: Drawings Now (which now enables users to view CAD files on their iPhone), ZoomIn, DWGnavigator and COSMOSXpress. Labs now boasts ten applications and has had nearly 100,000 visitors since its beginning. Among the new applications are two based off of Yahoo Widgets, the WatchIt Widget and the Showcase Widget. The WatchIt Widget allows users to keep track of their files on their computer or over the network and know when changes have been made. “It’s a nice way to keep track of perhaps a folder or two that maybe you are sharing in a group environment, so you know when changes have been made,” says Harrison.
The Showcase Widget on the other hand, which is similar to ZoomIn, is a picture viewer where a user can drop CAD files into the widget and they will cycle through in a slide-show fashion. “ZoomIn is used to create presentations, and showcase is used to walk through and show the designs you’ve already created,” says Harrison. According to Harrison, SolidWorks will be taking certain elements from ZoomIn and incorporating them into a future product release.
DWGnavigator, which is a downloaded file management system for CAD files, may also soon graduate from Labs. This software allows users to save files from newer versions of AutoCAD to older formats for machines not yet equipped with the latest software.
Also new to Labs is an island on the popular digital universe Second Life that allows users an arena to view and explore their own and other designs. “Our educational users seem to have a pretty strong presence out there, so we’re putting things out there to show them what SolidWorks is and what we do,” says Harrison, “but also what other universities are doing with SolidWorks and trying to create more of a sense of community for them, a place to go.”
Other Labs applications include the Supplier Source, a Web application that helps users get what they need from suppliers, 3D Content Central Search, an add-on to a user’s Web browser that provides a 3D Content Central search bar and CB Model Pro, software featuring a pull-and-pinch method for building CAD files.
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