SolidWorks World 2011 (Day 3) – General Session

Day 3 of SolidWorks World 2011 started with Richard Doyle from SolidWorks giving away the SolidWorks User Group Network awards. The user group of the year award went to the Chicago user group. The user group leader award went to Ed Gebo of the Connecticut SolidWorks User Group and Wayne Tiffany received the Michelle Pillers SWUGN community award.

SolidWorks co-founder Jon Hirschtick called a few SolidWorks customers on stage and spoke to them about how they used SolidWorks. First he called Bill Townsend, Founder and CEO of Barret Technology, Inc., a manufacturer of robots and the first SolidWorks customer. This is the first SolidWorks order.

Next up was Rony Abovitz from Mako Surgical Corp., a company that develops robots that assist doctors in surgery, followed by Mike Pisani, Senior Vehicle Engineer and Head Builder Trainer of Local Motors, a pretty unique company involved with an almost ridiculous idea of manufacturing open source designed cars. I strongly urge you to visit www.local-motors.com and join the community. I already did.

Next Discovery TV’s “Bionic Builders” Casey Pieretti and Bill Spracher took the stage and showed some amazing stuff. Casey lost his leg when he was nineteen and is now a professional stuntman. He takes his crazy ideas to Bill, an engineer, who uses SolidWorks to make them a reality.

Yes, that is exactly what you think it is – a motorized scuba diving flipper. Some of Casey’s stunts involve getting his leg blown off. And that is precisely what happened on stage. Watch this.