Part of SolidCAM`s growth strategy is the strengthening of its European operations by the appointment of Wolfgang Mueller as “Vice President Sales Europe” as of June, 1, 2006. Wolfgang Mueller, who has over 20 years experience in the manufacturing software industry with companies like UGS and Cimatron, states:" I look forward to work for the SolidCAM community, which has an enormous growth potential also due its gold partnership with SolidWorks."

From 20 to 24 June 2006, the METAV show took place in Duesseldorf/Germany. METAV is a leading International trade fair for manufacturing technology and automation, where the complete range of machine tools, precision tools, automation components, as well as software and systems is presented.

Together with its partners DPS, SolidPro and SPI, SolidCAM exhibited in a large booth in Hall 10. The version SolidCAM2006 R10.1., and the new HSM functions, which will be incorporated in the upcoming Release SolidCAM2007 R11, attracted the interest of the visitors. Gerhard Laegeler, Manager of SolidCAM GmbH, stated: “We had to “compete”, not only against other CAD/CAM vendors, but in the afternoon also against the TV transmissions of the football world championships! Still we are very happy with the new leads we received”.

Also on METAV show, some SolidCAM machine tool partners demonstrated new CNC machines together with SolidCAM`s 5 axis simultaneous machining capabilities. In Hall 15, the polish machine manufacturer AVIA presented a new 5-axis machine, cutting a bowl in football design which has been programmed with SolidCAM (see foto). In Hall 16, Kitamura Machinery showed its new machining centers from Horizontals to Verticals, including 5-Axis configurations. Kitamura was supported by SolidCAM`s partner DPS, which machined a football worldcup life on the booth.

RENATE, a national center in Norway founded by The Ministry of Education and Research, has purchased last year up to 30,000 licenses of SolidWorks® Education Edition software to teach more than 60,000 junior high school and high school students engineering fundamentals and reinvigorate the country's manufacturing industry. A total of approximately 1,300 schools across Norway will begin to teach 3D CAD to students aged 14 to 18. In a second step, RENATE has now also selected SolidCAM as one of two options to become the integrated CAM-Engine combined with SolidWorks. This will give now Norwegian students the opportunity to learn the maching of real parts.