INDUSTRY

Umeå Institute of Design, part of the University of Umeå in Sweden, has standardized on 500 licenses of SolidWorks Education Edition 3D mechanical design software to help students more quickly gain proficiency with the tools they will use in their professional careers. Students will also be introduced to COSMOSWorks design analysis software, included in the SolidWorks software package. The Umeå Institute of Design is one of the top-ranking and most popular industrial design educational institutions in Sweden . It offers highly competitive, professional, and international industrial design educational programs in close cooperation with industry. External lecturers from the design profession and business community provide valuable links between classroom learning and the world of design practice. Umeå Institute of Design switched to SolidWorks to satisfy students' and faculty's need for a more easy-to-use design package. It also chose SolidWorks because of its extensive use by Swedish companies . “Why spend students' valuable learning time on a complicated tool they are unlikely to use after they graduate?” said Tomas Lindehell, a computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided industrial design (CAID) teacher and engineer. “Our goal is to get students up to speed in their design work quickly without investing too much time learning the software itself. We're confident students will learn faster and easier with SolidWorks. And most of our students start their careers in companies that have elected to use SolidWorks for many of the same reasons we have. Also, we do a lot of rapid prototyping, and SolidWorks is much easier to use in that process. Moreover, easy file transferring to and from Alias, Rhino, and other CAID packages made the choice of SolidWorks even easier. In other words, SolidWorks will save us time, and students will learn more on the software they'll use in their careers.” The 15-year-old institute follows other leading engineering/technical universities in Sweden that recently purchased SolidWorks, including the Royal Institute of Technology, Chalmers University , and Mälardalen University . Umeå Institute of Design serves approximately 100 industrial design students in a bachelor's degree program, three master's degree programs (transportation design, advanced product design, and interaction design), and doctorate studies. The master's degree programs, taught in English, are open for all nationalities. The industrial design courses are keyed to the planning and design of industrial products, product systems, and complete environments. Since the industrial designer must be well-acquainted with industrial working methods and with different fields, the focus is product design with emphasis on usage. Students in these programs work closely with industry, including major Scandinavian companies like ABB, Ericsson, Electrolux, IKEA, Nokia, Saab, Volvo Cars, and Volvo Trucks to carry out 30 to 40 major projects a year. The software purchase was a joint initiative with the Umeå University 's Institute of Technology , which enrolls 1,100 students who will also be able to use the software. Starting in August, the institute began using SolidWorks in all of its CAD programs. Bachelor's degree students will also be introduced to SolidWorks' COSMOSWorks design analysis software, which then will be used in projects or research as the possibility arises. “ The closer the partnership between a university and the manufacturing community the more valuable SolidWorks and COSMOSWorks are to emerging designers and engineers,” said Rosanne Kramer, director of worldwide education markets for SolidWorks Corporation. “SolidWorks puts students on the fast track with an intuitive interface, short learning curve, and a major presence in the companies likely to hire them.” Umeå Institute of Design works with authorized SolidWorks reseller MP Engineering AB for ongoing software training, implementation, and support.