solidworks forums goodness coming to a browser near you

So today I was browsing around on Twitter and read that Chris Serran was sitting in on a webinar given by Greg Jankowski about a new and improved SolidWorks Forums site that will be launched sometime soon.

This is all it took to wet my appetite to see exactly what some of the SolidWorks employees have been working on lately to enhance the user experience of the forums.  Unfortunately I jumped in about 15 minutes after the start but was still able to catch some awesome enhancements that I am looking forward to seeing and using in the new forums.  I did notice some other bloggers also in the webinar and maybe they can drop some comments here about some of the things I missed.

When I hopped on the webinar train Greg was talking about some of the My Profile changes that you will see.  Some of the highlights were you will now be able to have “friends” inside the forums which will allow you to easily follow what some users are posting and also a “similar people” function which will automatically be populated with other forum members that are posting similar questions as you are.  This will definitely increase the ability to network with people that are working with similar tools that you are, which will be a huge benefit in case you run into something that stumps the living tar out of you.  You will also be able to subscribe to “groups” inside the forums.

Another thing that is being revamped is file uploading.  It used to be a tedious process of uploading files to your topic but now it takes a matter of seconds and about 2 clicks.  A very welcome and much needed change.  Other things that have been changed to the posting process is the ability to add a video, bookmark & tag topics along with the ability to easily mark the correct answer to your question.  The feature that I have been wanting for some time now will also finally be available, message threading.  It will now be easier to track a discussion in the forum as opposed to having just a running list of this and that and not having a clue as to what questions people are answering.

In the new forum there will be 3 levels of members (similar to what is there now).  The 3 levels will be member, contributor, and MVP.  You will be able to move through these levels by a point system.  It sounds as if points will be awarded for posting topics, responding to topics and having the correct answer.   Another new feature that I am looking forward to seeing develop is a blog section.  SolidWorks employees will be writing these blog posts about various topics like Jim Wilkinson in the UI arena and Greg Jankowski in the CAD Admin and Forums arena.

All in all I am really looking forward to seeing this new forum in action and actually being able to use it.  Now don’t fret, all of your current information will automatically get transferred to the new forum except for your signature.  So unless you spent 3 1/2 years making your signature for the current forum you will not lose anything major.  Supposedly there will be some sort of an announcement made some time early next week about the new and improved forums so definitely stay tuned.

If you would like to follow along with some of the conversation about this you can check out the thread in the current forums by clicking here.