Uncovering The Solidworks Beta Program

Because of endless end user license agreements, anyone participating in the Solidworks Beta program is pretty much prohibited from sharing any of the new features of the software until the first Pre-Release version is released.  Aside from the actual software side of the program is the discussion forums that serve as the meeting place for beta testers, support techs from Solidworks, VAR's, and anyone looking for more information about the beta program.

I recently had a pretty strange issue where I was basically unable to activate either of the two installs of beta that I was using (one on my desktop, one on my laptop).  I first posted my issue in one of the forums, and had some very good suggestions on how to fix it within a few hours.  After trying to work through the issue for a couple of days I received an email directly from Terry Mccabe at Solidworks who was going to make sure my issue was corrected.  After trying a couple of different things, Terry was able to get the issue resolved, and I am now fully activated on both computers (I promise the laptop install won't be used to give sneak peaks at a user group meeting)!  I greatly appreciate the attention my issue received, and the suggestions from the other users in the forum were a big help too.

I'm certain that having this venue to discuss things about Solidworks had a little something to do with the direct support I received, but if you browse through the forums you will see that I'm not all that special.  There are numerous threads in the forums where Solidworks employees have either started threads, or have become very involved in the discussion.  There are quite a few threads where Jim Wilkenson who is the head of the Solidworks User Interface has asked what users think about different features, or is asking for direct feedback on other areas.  Of course Jim isn't the only employee participating.  I have seen posts from the head of the sketching team respond to questions about the sketching interface, and have seen a few of the "COSMOS" guys chime in on relative questions.

Alot of attention has been drawn to software documentation, and users who feel it's lacking, or not sufficient.  There has been a discussion started by Solidworks asking what users expect in documentation.  No doubt this is the beginning of a drive to improve that area of the software.

Typically about half way through the beta program is when participation starts to drop off, but now is when it really starts to get fun.  As each version of beta is released, it becomes more and more stable, and the new features really start to shine.  In particular there is one new feature that a lot of users have 'magnified' to the point where the discussion surrounding how it should work has generated over 100 responses.  This is the Solidworks community directly affecting how this particular feature will eventually be implemented.

So if you haven't joined, there is still plenty of time to participate, at the very least I would recommend going to the forums and reading through the discussion forums to see if anything grabs your attention.