Sharing technical know-how and practical experience informally with each other is something we know many people using DriveWorks like to do. DriveWorks Drivers provides a platform for this, connecting DriveWorks users from around the world. The meetings feature guest speakers sharing their experiences and encouraging questions and dialogue about the technology.
On December 5th, we hosted our 4-year anniversary meeting of DriveWorks Drivers. The meeting ran virtually at 3pm BST and 3pm NZST. Hosting at different times has enabled our global community to join at a time that suits them.
Since starting DriveWorks Drivers in 2020, we have seen the real value of getting together quarterly to share knowledge from our own team as well as talk to DriveWorks users from different industries.
We had close to 150 people in attendance as we celebrated our 4 year anniversary – a record number of attendees. We shared the updated MyDriveWorks Portal, hosted a customer presentation, and took an in-depth look at sandbox environments in DriveWorks. During our meeting in the Asia-Pacific region, we welcomed the newest member of the DriveWorks Team, Mark Deng.
The new MyDriveWorks portal
As part of our commitment to provide our customers with the best technical resources, support, and account management, we recently made some updates to the MyDriveWorks Community. We shared these updates during the DriveWorks Drivers meeting, and gave attendees an insight into what’s new.
Included in the new MyDriveWorks Community is a dynamic home page providing a smart dashboard that shares active forum topics, DriveWorks news, events, and featured learning opportunities.
Coming soon, there will also be personalized learning paths, together with a dashboard to help manage DriveWorks accounts.
Celebrating 4 years of DriveWorks Drivers
Glen Smith shared a welcome greeting to the group, reflecting on the last 4 years of DriveWorks Drivers. What started as an alternative meeting during the pandemic, has turned into a growing online community of customers, resellers, and partners that share their journey and technical knowledge of DriveWorks.
Our informal virtual meet-ups enable you to engage with other DriveWorks users and DriveWorks team members in a relaxed, interactive setting.
Whether you’re an experienced user or just starting out, there’s something for everyone.
You can join the meetings in any way that suits you – share your experiences, take part in the chat, or just sit back, watch and learn.
We hope you’ll join us for the next 4 years!
Customer Presentation: Weiland Doors with GoEngineer
Hoss Hammond from Weiland Doors was joined by Joe Aisawa from DriveWorks reseller, GoEngineer, to share how Weiland use DriveWorks.
Implementing DriveWorks has enabled Weiland to reduce their SOLIDWORKS drawing times from 40 minutes down to 6 minutes. Hoss shared how Weiland’s “Keep It Super Simple” and start small approach, provided a better return on investment in a shorter period of time. They explained how the relationship that Weiland developed with GoEngineer enabled them to get into production faster.
They also shared their use of sandbox environments to provide a safe place for experimenting and developing techniques before incorporating them into their final development and production projects.
DriveWorks challenge
DriveWorks Challenge 7 prompted an amazing collection of 3D preview projects created by the DriveWorks community and team.
Congratulations to our winners, Oussama Arari, Weber Food Technology GmbH, Luke DickenJones, Software Developer at DriveWorks, and Wade Anderson, DriveWorks Partner – SOLVESHOP.
The winning submissions included an extended plastic brick catalog featuring configurable windows and doors, an animated creation of the Stanford Rabbit (a well-known 3D graphics test model), and a complete DIY stop-action animation studio. Other submissions featured mini-figures out for a stroll along the street, vehicles, mansions, an LED scrolling message board, and an homage to the 1980s video game Pac-Man. All of the submissions demonstrated impressive use of DriveWorks functionality and creativity. Thank you and well done to everyone who took part.
DriveWorks Challenge 8 is all about data tables. We want you to explore the data table as a tool to present information back to your users.
To get started, head to the MyDriveWorks Learning Portal, where you’ll find the full challenge brief and video. Deadline for prize submission is 28th February 2025, so you have plenty of time to learn anything that you might need to take the challenge. Don’t forget, even if the deadline has passed we are still very happy to review your submissions and give you personal feedback.
Final Ascent: Sandbox environments in DriveWorks
Following on from Hoss and Joe sharing the importance of sandbox groups in their presentation, Paul Gimbel took a deep dive into why and how to use sandbox groups.
From experimentation and testing to creating repositories of reusable components, Paul took a detailed look at the benefits of using sandbox environments in DriveWorks.
This Final Ascent segment has been recorded, and is available to watch back in the MyDriveWorks Learning Portal.
What attendees said…
“I attended yesterday’s meeting, and I found it insightful. I saw it’s based a few times a year, but a lot of tricks are given, so I’m looking forward to future DriveWorks Drivers!”
“This is a great approach guys! “The Final Ascent”, I’m gonna adopt it”
“Great presentation today and good points”
See you next year for more DriveWorks Drivers
Registration is now open to join us on Thursday, March 6th for our next meeting of DriveWorks Drivers which will be hosted at 1pm AEDT and 3pm GMT.
We host our DriveWorks Drivers meetings at two different times to reach more of our global community. Use this handy tool to convert the meeting times to your time zone and choose the best meeting time for you.