The 1st full day of SolidWorks WORLD 2011 is officially in the books and it was a great day!

The day started off with the General Session as it normally does.  Last year on Monday the big SolidWorks in the cloud announcement was made so there was some anticipation this year about what would be introduced.  Well, this year there were no BIG announcements like that but it was still an unforgettable General Session.

Jeff Ray started the General Session of by talking about some of the GREAT SolidWorks customers out there.  Many of you were enthralled with what was happening in Chile a few months back as 33 miners were safely rescued after being underground for 69 days.  SolidWorks customers played a major role in this rescue effort and they were recognized by Jeff yesterday morning.  Schramm, designed the drilling rig that drilled down to originally find the miners alive and also drilled the “Plan B” shaft during the rescue effort.  Another SolidWorks customer, Center Rock Inc., designed the drill bits that we used on the rescue shaft.  And a 3rd SolidWorks customer, Oakley, made special sunglasses for all of the miners rescued so that as soon as they got out of the capsule the sun light did not do harm to their eyes.  All of these companies and designers should be applauded but are often never thought of.

Jeff then thanked the crowd for a great 7 years as CEO of SolidWorks Corporation and then introduced Bertrand Sicot to the crowd as the new CEO.  Bertrand made some opening announcements and then jumped right into the SolidWorks V6 talk that was previewed last year.  Bertrand’s statement about what the future of SolidWorks looks like with this development work being done was “SolidWorks will ALWAYS offer a desktop application”.

Bernard Charles, from SolidWorks parent company Dassault Systemes then made his now annual appearance at SolidWorks WORLD and made probably the biggest announcement of Monday.  He, along with Jeremy Luchini, introduced the crowd to Post3D.  What is Post3D you ask?  Well, it looks like a virtual environment where you can join others in a virtual showroom to look at a design.  It looked very similar to the semi popular SecondLife virtual world.  Bernard said this is going to be the “new way to do business”.  I will have a more in depth post covering my thoughts on a program like this after the show.

Then came the highlight of the day (and probably the highlight of my SolidWorks WORLD career).  Apollo 13 HEROES Gene Kranz (Mission Control Director) and Jim Lovell (Astronaut) took the stage to tell of the story of that NASA mission that all of us are so familiar with.  I do not think that I would be out of line to say that all of the attendees were at the edge of their seat as this story was told.  What an unbelievable privilege it was to be in the same room as these 2 true American Heroes.

The rest of Monday consisted of meetings with exhibitors in the Partner Pavilion (which I will discuss in a later post) and also sitting in on some technical training sessions (which I will also discuss in later posts).  The day ended with a unbelievable fun night at the CSWP event that included great food, great music, and Nerf gun wars.

Stay tuned today for continued coverage from SolidWorks WORLD 2011.