“Every disruption creates new opportunities and right now we find ourselves in one of the greatest periods of change for industrial companies that I can recall.”
— Jim Hepplemann, opening keynote, "Path to the Future: Products in the Age of Transformation", LiveWorx 2023
Back in person after four years, PTC’s signature event, LiveWorx, opened with an impressive keynote and much to offer the 10,000-plus onsite and virtual attendees:
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a 70,000-square-foot showfloor;
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a menu of 320-plus sessions, trainings, and breakouts over four days;
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70 technology demonstrations; and
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one concert by a double-platinum-selling country music artist, Dierks Bentley.
(Couldn’t get to LiveWorx23? Check out LiveWorx on Demand.)
This was Onshape’s first LiveWorx since being acquired by PTC. David Kaztman, General Manager of the Velocity Group (which includes Onshape), joined CEO Jim Heppelmann on the keynote stage to talk about Agile Product Development in the fast-moving post-COVID world.
As a highlight and stand-out example, the keynote included Ocado Group, who uses Onshape, additive manufacturing, and Agile methodologies to transform their fleet of autonomous warehouse robots, which fulfill customer grocery orders. In a portion of his remarks, David highlighted the benefits of browser-based Onshape, including the convenience and power it offered product designers working at the intersection of innovation, customer demand, and speed.
And when attendees weren’t at sessions, they could explore Xtropolis, the expo hall, for demos, up-close views of products, and perhaps a spontaneous photo with a Janus motorcycle or a beverage served by drones. It seemed Onshape was everywhere, you could hear from customers in break-out sessions about designing products and bringing them to market — and then see the products in real life, like the Bobacino Automated Boba bar.
The Onshape Booth, the Place to Be for Innovation
One thing’s for sure, Onshape customers — and even Onshape employees — have a need for speed. Two popular exhibits were the Janus Halcyon 450 motorcycle, designed in Onshape, and three bikes from Trek, an Onshape Enterprise customer.
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Onshape’s Richard Doyle, ‘The User Group Guy’, sits astride The Halcyon 450 motorcycle from Janus in Onshape’s booth on the Xtropolis floor. |
Trek bikes in red and yellow (Madone SLR 7 SKU: 5278463), in black (Fuel EX 9.8 GX AXA SKU: 5276829), and in red (Project One Domane SLR 9 SKU: 5266248). |
The booth was also a gathering place for high-speed innovators themselves.
Nicolas Perrin, a self-confessed Formula 1 fan, wants to design the world’s fastest fully electric racing car. So he is. Below, he’s part of a group posing in front of a banner for Perrinn Project 424. The goal of his passion project is to build a worldwide network of technical, engineering, and professional contributors to design the car together — a global crowdsourcing possibility only made possible with cloud-native Onshape. They’re well through the digital phase of designing a fully electric racing car to set a new lap record on the legendary Nürburgring Nordschleife track.
In his presentation “Accelerating Digital Design via the Cloud”, Nicolas Perrin shared how Onshape enabled his complex distributed design project by bringing the right talent, at the right time, to work on different aspects of the vehicle.
He also gave those at his session a treat — a simulated ride around the track.
Additionally, the booth was full of conversations between curious attendees and innovators in Onshape’s R&D team.
At LiveWorx, we announced that CAM-in-the-cloud was on its way, making Onshape the first to unify CAD design with CAM engineering fully in the cloud — all with built-in versioning and data management.
To bring these capabilities to the product, PTC acquired a software company co-founded by the father-son team of Ryland and Michael Johnson. Michael, below and seated, was the software’s chief architect. Ryland stands behind him. Both have joined Onshape.
Onshape on Tap
The session program had plenty to keep the cloud-curious busy with presentations from Onshape customers, Onshape product developers, and the social breaks between. One persistent discussion theme was the importance of collaboration in today's environment of remote work, dispersed teams, and the digital workplace.
Just a few of the customer sessions attendees could sample…
Matthew Whelan of Ocado Technology stressed the importance of collaboration to their success as they prototyped a robot designed to pick grocery orders, a business with notoriously thin margins and picky customers. Colleagues were on other continents and time zones yet could work together with the latest version of the model, moving faster and more efficiently than they’d thought possible.
Adrian Velazquez of Dexcom recounted how they built the business case for the move to Onshape. He urged listeners to quantify impacts across teams when compiling data for leadership. One crash a day, for each engineer across ten teams, adds up to a persuasive number when put in terms of lost work, recreation of files, and damage to schedules.
Richard Worsham of Janus Motorcycles, which builds customized bikes, described how they designed the entire product in Onshape – instead of on the shop floor – and how vendor management for their 600-part product was easier in Onshape.
And a Sneak Peek!
Greg Brown, Vice President of Product, led this always-popular session usually seen at Onshape Live where he discussed future areas of development (all subject to change). He highlighted Generative Design, Product Structure View, custom libraries for Frame profiles, and much much more.
Following him was Vajrang Parvate, Senior Vice President of R&D, who pulled back the curtain to reveal how Agile sprints help Onshape’s development team deliver software updates – for big and small features – every three weeks.
Come Join Us Next Time
Fun, learning, unique experiences – LiveWorx has it all. This year, for example, included a concert with country music star, Dierks Bentley
And did we mention the food?
Food trucks at lunch, well-supplied happy hours, fortifying snack breaks, and gallons of coffee kept everyone refreshed and ready for the next conversation or experience. Plan to mark your calendar as soon as the next one is announced. Until then, enjoy a few sessions from LiveWorx 2023 with LiveWorx on Demand.