3D printers to big dreamers - 5 thoughts from SOLIDWORKS World 2018

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The annual SOLIDWORKS World event landed in Los Angeles, California earlier this month and along with it, a mass of product updates and a call for an industrial renaissance. As the whooping and cheering commenced for the latest updates from the Dassault Systèmes' company – only at a software conference do you get this level of enthusiasm at 8am - so too did the excitement for new technologies from partners in the wider 3D ecosystem.  

Based solely on the number of press conferences I attended during day one, 3D printing was big news at SWW18 with the likes of Stratasys, 3D Systems and Desktop Metal, each bringing something new to the table. After three days, I left LA, head spinning with the possibilities of design and manufacture. Now the buzz has cooled down (as have I, after the novelty of sun in the middle of February), here are a few takeaways from the four-day software mecca. 

1) It's time to get real 

In one of the week's most lively presentations, Two Bit Circus, the self-described entertainment engineers (they're currently working on a micro amusement park in Downtown LA and once fashioned clouds that could rain tequila), spoke about increased immersion in entertainment. We've gone from passive modes such as film and books, to longing for more experiential forms of fun through augmented and virtual reality (AR & VR) and sometimes, just plain old reality - "experiences over things". As much as I normally dislike that notion as tends to be presented in a conversation about why millennials don't want to own a house because they would rather fill their existence with activities like indoor axe-throwing, in this case it makes sense. We can take this into the design world with more immersive experiences like VR and 3D printing, stepping into environments that haven't been physically created yet or handling a model that allows you to get a feel for a final product.

Grounded in this reality was SOLIDWORKS 3DEXPERIENCE Marketplace which Florence Hu-Aubigny, Senior VP 3DEXPERIENCE Platform R&D explained would be "the trusted place where makers and innovators will connect" along with the SOLIDWORKS 3DEXPERIENCE Social Collaboration Services, a social media style approach to project brainstorming, encouraging communication with real people. 

2) The gap between idea to end product is closing in 

In a roundtable discussion on IoT, Kishore Boyalakuntla, VP, Product Portfolio Management at SOLIDWORKS explained why we are in a "golden age" of product design where the barrier between idea and end customer is getting smaller. That's partly a result of increased communication between designer and user and the ability to quickly materialise ideas or prototypes. To complement this, SOLIDWORKS launched the aforementioned 3DEXPERIENCE Marketplace, an online resource for parts with bold ambitions to become "the Amazon for engineers" according to SOLIDWORKS CEO, Gian Paolo Bassi. The Marketplace will serve two primary functions; 'part supply' and 'make', which will enable users to go "from dream to doorstep" with 50 digital manufacturers offering more than 500 machines, and 30 million components from 600 suppliers already signed up to deliver archived or custom components through additive manufacturing, CNC machining, injection moulding and beyond. 

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Exhibit at the UK's definitive and most influential 3D printing and additive manufacturing event, TCT 3Sixty.

3) So too is the gap between CAD and 3D printing 

The industry is pretty much all in agreement that individual technologies are no good on their own, all signs point to collaboration and Bassi agrees, "successful 3D printing has to work hand-in-hand with successful design for 3D printing". That's why several 3D printing companies announced new software products that are going to assist SOLIDWORKS users in taking designs through to manufacture.  

It's a message 3D Systems CEO, Vyomesh Joshi has been declaring for some time and was reiterated during the launch of its 3DXpert software for SOLIDWORKS. It's not about 3D printing it's "all about the design" he explained, announcing the availability of the tool, which optimises CAD designs for 3D printing, for SOLIDWORKS' five million users.   

Desktop Metal is also linking the two together with its new Live Parts solution, a generative design tool that's currently being made available exclusively to SOLIDWORKS users.

In addition, Nano Dimension has teamed with SOLIDWORKS to allow users to seamlessly print electronics, whilst Rize introduced an add-in that will make it faster and easier for SOLIDWORKS users to print with its Rize One desktop printer, a machine that was itself developed in SOLIDWORKS. Plus, bolstering the launch of its new lower-cost colour 3D printers, HP unveiled a SOLIDWORKS collaboration to take advantage of its voxel-level capabilities, and Stratasys and Dassault partnered with Easton LaChappelle, to transform the development of prosthetic limbs. 

4) We can learn a lot from nature 

"We are moving from the age of the machine to the age of the organism," were words from the inimitable Neri Oxman during the day two keynote session. The MIT professor discussed the way in which design is being influenced by nature to change the way we build our world, from glass 3D printers to "fibre-bots" used to create organic structures.

Mother nature can teach us a lot about optimisation and Desktop Metal has harnessed this power in Live Parts. The software "grows" parts in a cloud-based environment made up of cells which react to forces in real time - similar to how a plant grows towards the sun. 

I spoke to Mark Rushworth, Product Portfolio Manger at SOLIDWORKS about the convergence of nature with design and he believes the link is largely down to material behaviour: "The majority of additive processes only use a single material and nature tends to only use single materials, nature is not very good at multiple materials. That's why it lends itself to additive because you can generate very complex structures in a single material and you tailor the structural properties of the design by using things like lattice structures, varying the thickness of material."

Generative design is helping us to leverage this by creating parts and products based on what we want them to do, rather than pre-conceived ideas, all the while saving weight, material and increasing strength. 

5) It's a renaissance, not a revolution 

A prominent take-home was the word "renaissance" over an industrial "revolution", putting humans at the centre. The people-centric idea celebrates the maker community and how technology can help to realise anyone's dreams. Idealistic? Yes (there was a brief video clip of a guy who claimed his dream was to become the Da Vinci of his time, which prompted a severe eye roll) but discussions and launches showed that we have the tools to make the case. 

Education will be important here in equipping future engineers with the right skills and changing the way we think about manufacturing. As Oxman noted, it's all fair and well designing something for the next two years but what about creating something for the next 2,000 years? SOLIDWORKS already has 275,000 certified users around the world and soon they will be able to add 3D printing to their skill set thanks to a new certification launching in April. Other new tools launched at SWW18 including SOLIDWORKS xDesign which delivers browser-based CAD on any device, and SOLIDWORKS Product Designer, are increasing capabilities in access and collaboration.

During SWW18 we saw a Denver-based company, Boom Aerospace working on a supersonic jet that's going to take people from London to New York in just 3.5 hours. All designed in SOLIDWORKS and looking to VR for assembly analysis. That same week, the world watched as Elon Musk's SpaceX sent a Tesla Roadster sports car into space onboard a test flight for its Falcon Heavy rocket. Both big dreamers. In the industrial renaissance, where product, nature and life, are beginning to work in harmony, Dassault Systèmes' CEO, Bernard Charlès says "it’s great to have big, big dreams”. When you look at the strides already taken in design and manufacture and what is yet to come, it's hard not to agree.