SOLIDWORKS World – Day 2 – Part 2

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Wow… Today was a busy day for the DraftSight Team.  We had one General Session and six Technical Training Sessions today, but you already know that because you read this morning’s blog. You did read this morning’s blog, didn’t you?

We got to cover some pretty interesting topics today. One that really captured the attention was the 3D Scanning capabilities of the Lenovo Phab 2 and how that 3D data captured can be brought in to DraftSight and edited. Yes, you read that right, DraftSight can indeed edit 3D Dwg files!

The seven DraftSight sessions today were all very informative and seem to have went down well with users. We hope you enjoyed taking them as much as we enjoyed giving them.

It wasn’t all hard work though, we did get to see the SOLIDWORKS ROBO RUMBLE take place. If you’re not familiar with the concept, it’s robots, battling it out to be the champion of the ring!  This years champions, after 3 intense rounds, are Team Fast Electric. Congratulations to them!

We also got to hear Chris McQuin from Motiv Robotics / Motiv Space Systems talk about the Mars 2020 project and their part in it. More about that later in the blog!

If you’ve been walking around SOLIDWORKS World, you can’t have failed to notice the big robotic beast in the corner. It’s the worlds first Offroad Mech Racer!

It’s a pretty impressive feat of engineering, designed in, yes you guessed it, SOLIDWORKS by Jonathan Tippet and his team at Prosthesis.

Just some specs on the Mech Racer. It is 100% Human Controlled, 100% Electric Powered, uses 500lbs of Lithium Batteries and delivers 200 Horsepower to 2 legs at a time! It is, for all intents and purposes, a mechanical beast! I suppose you’d like to see it in all its glory… Well check it out!

You can check Mech Racing out on Twitter. Jonathan is also involved with the eatART foundation. They use art to educate people about the role energy plays in their lives and to raise questions about the social and environmental impact of energy use. You can check out the eatART site here.

I mentioned above that Chris McQuin spoke at the General Session this morning about Mars 2020. He told me that Motiv Robotics / Motiv Space Systems are designing the robotic arm for the project. Obviously they use SOLIDWORKS in the design process!

They also had RoboSimian on display. RoboSimian was developed in conjunction with JPL for a DARPA project. Chris told me that the legs have 7 Degrees of Freedom (redundant degree of freedom), meaning that it can mimic the actions of a human arm!

For more information on Motiv Robotics check them out on the web.

So, that was Day 2. Tomorrow is the last day of SOLIDWORKS World 2017. Don’t forget to call by the DraftSight Booth (419) and ask for a DraftSight  Backpack!  Quantities are limited, so be sure you get here early!

MJ Smyth

MJ Smyth

The first time I used CAD, it was on a DOS PC with an 8088 processor, 640K of memory and a Hercules Mono Graphics Card... That, well that was a long long time ago. I switched to DraftSight the day it was released and haven't looked back!
MJ Smyth

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