Hi, I’m Matt, and I work over at SolidWorks. I’m the company Social Media Manager, which is a fancy way of saying it’s my job to get people at SolidWorks talking on Twitter, posting blog entries, and telling our product guys what’s happening on the Internets. I’ll be showing up here every now and then talking about SolidWorks and various related topics.

If you’re familiar with SolidWorks, chances are you know that SolidWorks World is starting next week. They tell me that this year’s wlil be the best ever, and we even have Sir Richard Branson coming to speak at the opening session on Monday. I’m hoping he parachutes in.

If you’re *not* familiar with SolidWorks World, it’s been best described to me as MacWorld for CAD geeks. Maybe that’s going a little far, but you get the idea. Thousands of CAD users will descend on Orlando, Florida for four days of learning, networking, sharing, and probably more than a little socializing.

Starting on Monday, I’ll be posting videos from the morning general sessions, as well as four of the most popular breakout sessions. We can’t show you CEO Jeff Ray’s talk with Sir Richard Branson, and I’d probably get in trouble if I posted the What’s New segment on Wednesday, but you’ll get pretty much everything else. And as for the breakouts…well…you’ll just have to check back and see. I’m going to get everything up just as fast as I can (gotta add a few hours for editing and uploading), so you should be able to actually see things that happened Monday on Monday.

I’m not the only one who’ll be posting updates though. Here’s a quick recap of some other things you should definitely check out:

• The Community News section of the SolidWorks World website will be rolling up every blog post that mentions SolidWorks World and every tweet with the #SWW09 hashtag.
• Lou Gallo over at SolidWorks Heard has set up a live coverage section on his site, using the Cover It Live app some of the guys used in Barcelona. Definitely worth checking out for up-to-the-second commentary.
• We’ve set up a Flickr group that everyone can post photos to. If you’re taking pictures, tag ‘em and post ‘em.

So be sure to bookmark the SolidWorks blog or add it to your RSS reader and get ready for the SolidWorks World goodness. And if there’s anything you’d like to see, let me know. My schedule is already pretty full, but I’ll see what I can do.

Hello! First of all, thanks for your comments on my previous post!

I spoke earlier this week about the transition from product centric to experience centric design. Let me now address the tools and technologies part. I think gaming technologies can be used in PLM.

The example of the Gran Turismo 5 Prologue screenshot confirms that the caviar for real-time 3D rendering quality is today (and will be tomorrow) found in video games.

But more importantly, this rendering quality has to be combined with a very high-level of interactivity. Many things indeed happen in a video game: fast camera changes, visual effects, large environments, etc. All these actions run on consumer equipment, like a PC, or, now, much more often on a gaming console.

So for PLM fans who would like to move to the next generation of what I would call “product experience based design”, I would strongly suggest using real gaming technologies in compliment to your traditional PLM software, with even an emphasis on those that support game platforms such as the Wii, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

There are plenty of gaming technologies out there. Which ones should you trust?

The answer may be: the real gaming technologies, the ones you really want to use, are the ones that have undergone the challenging test of being used on today’s consoles. But why?

Let me explain. If you’re using gaming technology that was optimized for the console, you’ll most likely get more optimization for your PC. Building a game on and for a console requires the very highest level of work in terms of performance optimization. Game developers know their constraints (the console) and work hard to create amazing experiences despite them. As opposed to a game console, a PC by definition is rather unlimited in possibilities, as you can “cheat” by adding a more powerful graphics card, a more power CPU, more memory etc.

Having said that, game development is still a very young industry compared to more traditional industries, and it is difficult to find a gaming technology usable by people who are not game development experts. In addition, most technologies, as well as being hard to use, don’t allow a very fast prototyping and iteration process, which is essential to both PLM and gaming.

What do you think?

Virgile

Hello!

First of all, I’d like to say I’m happy to start blogging here.

I’m writing today and in the next coming days about what tangible products and video games have in common.

To be sure we’re all on the same page, let’s go through a very quick definition exercise first. (These are at least my working definitions for this blog series):

• PLM is historically about developing better products. How do we accelerate their time to market, plan for their manufacturing, determine what kind of factory is needed to make them (human resources etc.), and what materials are actually needed to build the products, as well as the simulation of these materials?
• Video game development is historically about providing the best possible entertainment experience, not being worried about how realistic it was. Over the last 15 years, we’ve seen a democratization of high quality 3D through consumer video cards, with today video games that look almost as realistic as a photo.

Promoting fun and the experience:
In order to illustrate the way we look at products, I’ve selected two TV ads from Peugeot. The first one is from the 80s, the second from early 2008 (French version only, sorry).

Peugeot 205 ad:
With this one, you clearly see a product centric communication. People are just turning their heads 180°, impressed when they see it.

Peugeot 207 ad:

On this more recent ad, the communication is definitely experience centric. Yes, the car looks good, everybody expects that. What really matters here is that it’s fun to drive.

A few years back, designing and promoting a car was about the car itself: good looking, attractive, sexy, whatever. If you look at today’s advertising, the industry has widely evolved towards the experience (all ads) and the fun (most ads). This clearly states that the car itself is obviously important, but how you may feel or enjoy driving it is what makes the real difference.

In order to imagine and create the cars, car manufacturers therefore need to simulate these experiences: how does it feel to get into the car when you’re 2 meters tall? What about if you’re only 1.5 meters tall? How is it to drive it under the rain at dark? Do you feel safe or at risk? These are only a few examples, the other ones are easy to guess… but all of them ideally would require analysis very early in the design process of the “perfect car”, depending on its targeted customers and distribution regions.

In my next post, I’ll be talking about the tools and technologies that are needed to adapt from a product centric development to an experience centric approach.

Virgile

P.S. The image at the start of this blogpost is a good example of how realistic today’s video games can look. Thanks to Sony for this stunning screenshot. The screenshot was taken from the game Gran Turismo 5 Prologue and developed by Polyphony Digital (one of Sony’s internal studios). You can find more of them on ign.com.