Students Use Solid Edge To Win Design Competitions – Part 1

About a month ago, the Indian external PR agency of Siemens PLM sent me a press release titled “Siemens PLM Software’s Solid Edge Sweeps Design Competitions” which explained how two students used Solid Edge to win design competitions in the US and Canada. I get a bunch of press releases every day, but only write about the few that interest me. This one interested me because there were students involved. I wanted to showcase their work on my blog and do my bit in trying to encourage other kids to get interested in Engineering. So I sent an email to the PR agency asking them to put me in touch with the these students or at least send me the CAD models or their screen shots that they created to win the contests. I didn’t get a reply. And this is not the first time this has happened to me. If Siemens PLM simply wants to spam the press with press releases and not answer their questions, then there is excellent spamming software available to do that. And most of them is free. In my opinion, hiring an external PR agency to do that is just way too expensive.

Anyways, a few days ago, Karsten Newbury, the SVP and General Manager of Velocity Series at Siemens PLM, got into a conversation with me on Twitter about this which resulted in him putting me directly in touch with the two students. The design competitions were SkillsUSA and Skills Canada which are focused on trying to ensure that the US and Canada have a skilled force in the future. I spent some time exchanging a few emails with the two students to get a sense of what the competitions were all about.

In the subsequent parts of this series I will explain the two competitions and the kind of work that the students did.

Part 2 >>