Highlights from the 3DEXPERIENCE World show floor

A tour of a tech playground

Companies that hope to benefit from and benefit SOLIDWORKS users — including SOLIDWORKS third-party applications suppliers, gold partners, and the big three workstation vendors — all crowded the 3DEXPERIENCE World show floor, what Dassault SysteÌ€mes calls the Playground.

WOODEXPERT makes its 1st appearance at 3DEXPERIENCE World

When furniture makers use purpose-built software like WOOD EXPERT, they can go from solid model to G-code to nesting (below) with a push of a button.

When furniture makers use purpose-built software like WOOD EXPERT, they can go from solid model to G-code to nesting (below) with a push of a button.

What hope does a Polish design-software company specific to furniture have of upsetting the market leader in furniture design? Plenty, I hear from Patryk Brzezawski, CAD/CAM specialist, part of the WOODEXPERT team at 3DEXPERIENCE World 2024.

Perhaps there’s room for a Polish solution for the US furniture industry. Furniture makers typically rely on 2D design tools and general-purpose CAM tools for their work. WOODEXPERT hopes to entice more cabinet makers and furniture makers to use its purpose-built CAM software. Using SOLIDWORKS with the WOODEXPERT add-on can significantly reduce  reliance on drawings and G-code to drive CNC machines.

Workstations from Lenovo on display

Lenovo's top of the line workstation is the ThinkStation PX. I want one!

Lenovo’s top of the line workstation is the ThinkStation PX. I want one!

Just when one might assume workstations are all created equal, a commodity that can be judged on price alone, Lenovo workstations come along. Lenovo works to distinguish its designs with design and appearance. Their striking black and red exteriors with handles and over-the-top grilles were designed by Aston Martin. It’s a computer worth showing off, instead of hiding under a desk.

Lenovo cares as much if not more about what happens inside the box. The company’s internal air baffles are legendary — known for whisking away the heat from CPUs. Airflow is dragged along channels between intake in the front (behind the Aston Martin grill), straight across the chassis and then out by almost silent fans. Lenovo chooses Nvidia graphic hardware for some workstations and AMD for others.

May I help you? Lenovo’s AI-based avatar.

May I help you? Lenovo’s AI-based avatar.

Lenovo is even employing AI. Mike Leach was on hand to show attendees Lenovo avatars that assist design engineers in buying the workstation that’s just right for them. The avatars guide users through what can be a complex workstation configuration process. A human-like sales interface will make all the difference, Lenovo figures. Where have we seen this? Oh, yeah. Minority Report. Set in the not-so-distant future is Tom Cruise’s character trying to sneak through a shopping mall only to be seen by a Gap-like store display that offers him clothing in just the right size.

Workstations from Dell on display

Most of Dell's workstation line up was on display at 3DEXPERIENCE World 2024.

Most of Dell’s workstation line up was on display at 3DEXPERIENCE World 2024.

The value leader among the big workstation vendors, Dell had several mobile workstations on display at 3DEXPERIENCE World. For all but the most demanding taskmasters, Dell suggests mobile workstations as the computer of choice for engineers. With it, users can operate multiple big screens in the office and still undock to take equipment home for unfinished business.

The Dell 5680 is the thin and light mobile workstation, said Trey North, who led attendees through the full line at the show. The biggest available has a 16-inch screen in a 15-inch form factor due to super thin bezel. The Precision 5480 is a 14-inch model in a 13-inch form factor.

Should a user not care for thinness or lightness, Dell offers the more pedestrian but still quite functional Precision 3580. It’s perfectly adequate for most of what SOLIDWORKS users do, said North.

At the top of the mobile-workstation food chain is the 16-inch model, a 180-W behemoth called the Precision 5860.

Electrification of India’s small vehicles

The low-tech world of India's 2 and 3-wheeled cargo carriers may be ripe for an update. Stock photos.

The low-tech world of India’s 2 and 3-wheeled cargo carriers may be ripe for an update. Stock photos.

A tour of tech includes a low tech presentation, ironically enough. On display at 3DEXPERIENCE World show floor was the tricycle-cart design of Tigoonia, an Indian venture whose name means three in Hindi. The company supplies electrified tricycle carts designed in SOLIDWORKS to the half-million pushcart vendors in India who currently rely on manually powered designs.

Qargos optimizes cargo space with this electric scooter.

Qargos optimizes cargo space with this electric scooter.

Another Indian design shown at 3DEXPERIENCE World was an electric scooter called Qargos pronounced like “cargo.” These scooters have a huge rectangular cargo space to carry goods and packages lower to the ground than loads carried perilously high on bicycles and scooters. It’s best suited for package and food-delivery services over the so called “last mile” (or last kilometer as the case may be) with greater efficiency and safety that current modes of transport that clog India’s streets.

DBOX at the 3DEXPERIENCE World Playground

DBOX — a contraction of drone in a box — is a Lithuanian startup led by CEO and cofounder Linas Gelazanskas of the Drone Team who has figured out how a drone, along with all its needs (including batteries and hangar) can be dropped or delivered to where it may be needed and controlled from a remote location. A DBOX can be controlled to open its doors to let its drone fly off on its missions, whatever it might be.

DBOX, as are the other projects on display at 3DEXPERIENCE World Playground, were designed using SOLIDWORKS, which Dassault Systèmes generously provides to startups that need mechanical design to launch their products.

It’s still about plastics, says Peter Rucinski

Peter Rucinskis is creatimg a plastics database.

Peter Rucinski is creating a plastic materials database.

A Dassault SysteÌ€mes event is an opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with the industry’s go-to on the subject of  all things plastics Peter Rucinski held court. Rucinski is a fount of knowledge on plastics simulation since his days with Moldflow, once Autodesk’s most expensive product. These days, he’s involved with a plastic material database — and a sitting duck for questions about AI rather than plastics.

Will the plastic database give me a suitable plastic for my design parameters? I asked him, not able to resist an AI reference.

I wish, said Rucinski wearily. It’s not the first time he’s had to fend off overblown expectations of AI. He turns the conversation towards sustainability. It’s hard to use “plastics” and “sustainability” in the same sentence, except as opposites, but Rucinski is convincing.

Plastics may be much maligned these days, but they could easily make a comeback, offered Rucinski, explaining: Plastics are made from petroleum, so if we could recycle more plastic, we’d have more petroleum for reuse. Makes sense to us. Recycling and reusing would equal less plastic production overall.

But most thermosets are essentially expensive landfill. They can’t recycle. These days, most just get buried. Even recyclable plastics can’t be recycled if they are contaminated, which is what the recycling industry calls plastics that have contacted oil, grease, or even food. With recyclers being so discriminating, only 10 to 20% of what one puts in recycling bins gets recycled. The mere taint of food on an otherwise recyclable plastic is enough to destine it to the landfill.

Can we return to a past where plastics were made from plants (cellulose)? Rucinski thinks not. Parts made from cellulose won’t be strong enough, or withstand high temperatures, or have other properties we value, he said.

Selection of the proper plastic is harder than one might think, says Rucinski. Case in point: International leader in plastic production BASF alone offers tens of thousands of plastics for disparate and specific uses.