CADCAST

CADCAST is an interview show about CAD software as it is actually used, hosted by Nick Sweeney and centred on SOLIDWORKS and the wider Dassault family of tools. The structure holds steady from episode to episode. Sweeney opens by laying out the problem at hand and why it interests him, hands over to a guest, and signs off by naming who the listener just heard. The guests come from inside the software world: Paul Gimbel from DriveWorks, Lynn Allen as DraftSight global technology evangelist, James Reher as a senior application engineer, plus product specialists and colleagues. That access shapes the material. The DriveWorks conversation includes a configurator with a dual-purpose interface. It gives salespeople new to a product a guided route and lets veterans who already know the 26-digit code type it straight in. Adoption runs through several episodes. A SOLIDWORKS Electrical conversation looks at engineers who drew schematics in Visio, in other 2D tools or even in a SOLIDWORKS drawing. It also covers what 3D adds once wires take up physical space and have to bend around corners inside a machine. 'Got a Headache Yet?' covers the move from an old 2D system, or no CAD at all, into SOLIDWORKS, PDM and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. That includes the long-sought ability to put native files from different CAD systems together in one assembly. Lynn Allen's episode takes up a question the host says he thinks about a lot: why engineering seems to be a 2D world when people live in a 3D one. Performance talk starts with a check on expectations. As the host recalls it, one guest argued that a 10,000-part assembly should not be expected to open instantly, any more than a 10,000-page Word document would. 'We Aren't Gonna Rage Quit Our CAD' picks up from there with James Reher and turns to hardware: professional-series graphics cards, how they handle heat under long loads, and why the drivers matter most. The host is candid about what he does not know. He opens the DELMIA introduction by saying he never worked in manufacturing, then lets his guest, Mike, do the explaining. That conversation also drifts into how ideas surface when attention is elsewhere, on a drive home or just before sleep. The business side comes up too: in one introduction Sweeney addresses news that CATI had become part of the GoEngineer family, and admits he is unsure what it means for the podcast. The tone is conversational and loose, but the talk rarely strays far from the tools. Where to start depends on the headache. Slow assemblies point to the hardware conversation, curiosity about manufacturing software points to the DELMIA introduction, and anyone weighing a lighter drafting tool has the DraftSight episode. Either way, what a listener gets is working knowledge from people who configure, support and explain this software.