It’s been a while, but better late than never. After a 2-year hiatus, 3D ClassNews is back with loads to share… 2011 bore witness to major growth in 3D ClassWorks. From the doubling in core staff strength, to greater and stronger business partnerships, there’s no better time to get-in on the action than now. We’ve had 6 months of settling-in to our brand new premises in TeleTech Park (Science Park II). With it, we’ve acquired our very own dedicated Training Room which has played host to several key SolidWorks Training & Certification Courses and the Singapore leg of the SolidWorks Skills Competition 2011. In this issue of 3D ClassNews, we’ll explore the theme of ‘Going Green’ with SolidWorks Sustainability. We’ll show you how to incorporate environmental impact considerations into your designs by walking you through a sample SolidWorks SustainabilityXpress analysis. We’ll also shed some light on our newest offering—‘Destination Zero Carbon’ (DZC)—and we’ll take you behind the scenes of our DZC (Junior Category) Inter-School Finals held on 1-3 Nov 2011 at the Clean Energy Expo.

Destination Zero Carbon (DZC) - Junior Category is a clean energy education programme and a race confederation built around the excitement of a drag-race competition. Let DZC expose your students to the phenomenon of global warming and its negative impacts through structured questioning and a high measure of hands-on activities. Students will be introduced to the intricacies of hydrogen fuel cell technology and its relevance as an alternative and sustainable clean fuel source to fossil fuel.

The environment as we know it is changing, largely for the worse—or so we’re told. We hear terms like ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’ being mooted in policy debates, finding its way into mainstream school curricula, and floating about those we consider to be the environmental ‘sympathisers’ amongst us. But whether or not we choose to ignore it, the concept of sustainability is in fact gaining ground. This should come as no surprise, as all across the fields of agriculture to the fields of academia, significant loss of biodiversity from human activities gone unchecked is affecting us in ways we have yet to fully perceive, much less quantify or appreciate. So before this elusive concept of sustainability threatens to engulf us all unawares, let’s give the ideal its due consideration.

SolidWorks Sustainability Xpress is a platform integrated into every seat of the SolidWorks 2010 software, at no extra charge! Like all SolidWorks products, SolidWorks Sustainability Xpress makes a complex process easy to understand and use. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) becomes another fast, yet critical step in product development, giving you the information you need to make environmentally friendly engineering decisions. Sustainable design is now SolidWorks simple!