Recap: SOLIDWORKS World 2017, Los Angeles

The Ultimaker team just wrapped up SOLIDWORKS World 2017 in Los Angeles! This three-day global conference offered over 200 technical sessions to the more than 5,000 attendees to learn new skills, become re-energized and inspired about 3D design.

Ultimaker’s booth was in the Partner Pavilion, designed for participants to meet SOLIDWORKS Solution Partners and experts, preview new technologies, and get their hands on innovative products designed in SOLIDWORKS. This was Ultimaker’s second year at this event and we were excited to show off the Ultimaker 3 to the SOLIDWORKS community, demonstrating the full capabilities of our professional dual-extrusion 3D printer along with Ultimaker's powerful 3D printing software, Cura - all in addition to the pleasure of visiting with our community and seeing what everyone is up to, of course!  

We also showcased our line of engineering materials, displaying sample swatches of each in PLA, Nylon, CPE, TPU, PC, ABS and our dual-extrusion prints that use water-soluble PVA. And since Ultimaker 3D printers have an open filament system we also had a few specialty filaments displayed like Nylon-X. It is a Nylon reinforced with micro-carbon fibers. SOLIDWORKS expert Michael Curry joined us once again to share his experience and knowledge, and to reinforce the perfect marriage of hardware, software, and materials. He brought his expertise in 3D design and contract manufacturing, where using your resources quickly and wisely helps get a product to market faster. Be sure to follow his projects and print some of his classic designs.

Stealing the stage

This year, Michael and I gave a presentation and took part in a panel discussion. In our presentation “Design for Additive Manufacturing: SOLIDWORKS Tips and Tricks", we addressed the rapid evolution of the desktop 3D printer market and how Ultimaker has grown over the past five years to create one of the most high-quality, reliable, and professional 3D printers.

Michael gave an in-depth overview on how to optimize designs for additive manufacturing and to take advantage of things like water-soluble PVA support structures for complex designs and drastically reduce your part count. He showed a dual-material overmolding model that took advantage of the 3MF specification that is supported by SOLIDWORKS and Cura. The benefits are impressive! Instead of exporting two aligned models, importing them into Cura and then merging them together, you can simply export and import a 3MF file. If you're curious to learn more, you can check out our article here.

Memorable discussions

Matt Griffin, the Director of the Ultimaker N.A. Community team, created a handy resource for users of SOLIDWORKS and our hardware, software, and materials. You can find it here, we hope it helps with your designs. Michael took part in the Additive Manufacturing Panel Discussion where he talked about the problems with educating consumers about the reality of additive manufacturing, the future of CAD and the industry overall. Industry experts discussed how designers can embrace the latest technology to gain significant competitive advantages. Michael’s real-world experience brought a unique perspective from the professional desktop space.

Apps for Kids

With more than 2.7 million students globally using SOLIDWORKS in schools and universities for education and research, the well-established commitment to push for more exposure to kids at an earlier age is even stronger. That was proven with the announcement that the Apps for Kids beta program is now public. This online 3D modeling tool allows you to create, revise, and express your ideas with a simple, easy-to-use interface that has six fun bite-size applications. Go ahead and learn more and sign up here.

A big thank you to everyone who stopped by our booth! We always enjoy connecting with our users and welcome new people to join our community of 3D printing experts. We collect valuable insights from your first-hand experiences to improve our services and help you stay ahead of the competition with the best prototyping and manufacturing solutions on the market.

We look forward to SOLIDWORKS World 2018 and hope to see you there!