Back at the beginning of this decade, SOLIDWORKS Beta season was a time for internal competition at the Ridge. The winner for the 2010 SOLIDWORKS Corporate Beta Rendering contest was our own Scott Woods, with this image:
The following year, Daryl Speed won the top prize in the SOLIDWORKS corporate beta rendering contest with this picture:
(You may recognize this from Daryl’s photo-rendering blog!)
But in the first couple of years, grand prize wins were also backed by many weekly wins for Scott, Daryl, and me:
Daryl Speed’s Photo Rendering
My beta renderings of years past
You think I might be jealous, what with having more weekly wins but never getting the grand prize, but I think it drove me that much harder to do a better job. I did learn a lot from the other guys as well, from looking at their compositions and having long discussions on technique and tricks. (Also, I entered parts and assemblies in the SOLIDWORKS Corporate Beta Modeling contest and wound up with more cash in the end!) But times have changed and cash prizes from SOLIDWORKS are a thing of the past.
While cash prizes may be in the past, there are still SOLIDWORKS Beta contests every year, and Hawk Ridge continues to participate. Just this year we had Scott Woods and Charley Saint on the big board at SOLIDWORKS World for 2014 Beta Contest victories. I don’t think we’ve ever captured the spirit of rivalry we had earlier, where we drove each other to be the best, but it’s still quite a lot of fun. This healthy competition in the long run led me and my coworkers to understand new features better and use the product more effectively.
Since SOLIDWORKS stopped giving out cash, we’ve kept the green motivator going by sponsoring internal Hawk Ridge Beta contests. We do this to push our ever growing pool of engineers to participate in the SOLIDWORKS Beta program. It gives them a chance to load the upcoming version and really kick the tires on it – and ultimately, to become better users of the software.
Some contests have fared better than others over the years, but we always try to get everyone involved. This year I got the task of trying to revive the spirit of Beta Contests past. So what do engineers like? Gadgets? Toys? Vehicles? I had already come up with this as a basis for our online curriculum: engineers love a little engine, especially if you strap wheels to it…
I need to update this data set from time to time to keep our content from becoming stagnant anyhow, why not kill two birds with one stone? I’ll release the basics of the model as something for our guys to go nuts with without telling them what they need to do.
Any designer worth his salt will instantly feel like changing the shell, or the wheels, or… you’re a designer. You know.
I put the thinking cap on and figured out what resources I had to get something worth watching. That’s when I remembered our Calgary team, Irwin Huisma and Ben Taylor. They’re both really nice guys, funny, and willing to ham it up with little or no encouragement. With a corny script, a green screen, and Ben’s very own giant disco wig I was able to cobble together the start of my ad campaign…
If you’re current on subscription service, you can get on the SOLIDWORKS 2015 Beta action, too. Beta should be open by the end of June, but you’ll need to sign up soon. Visit the SOLIDWORKS 2015 Beta site for more information.
Happy testing!