Reflections on Develop3D Live 2014

15/05/2015

One hectic month later, we’ve finally found the time to reflect on our experiences at Develop3D Live 2014 back in April. It was Epitomy’s first time exhibiting at the show, after enjoying visiting for the past two years, and we couldn’t have imagined a more rewarding time.

Organized by X3D Media, the team behind the exceptional Develop3D Magazine, Develop3D Live is the UK’s leading conference celebrating technology for design, engineering, and manufacturing. The event has been held at the University of Warwick in Coventry for the past three years and is a must-visit for anyone involved in product design, 3D visualisation, advanced manufacturing and many other sectors.

This year’s event was the biggest yet, with over 60 exhibitors across four exhibition spaces, more than 30 quest speakers from world-leading design, engineering, and technology companies, and well over 1000 visitors. Having visited for all three years the event has been running, it’s amazing to see how much the conference has grown in such a short time.

For exhibitors, the event began the day before with stand set-up (hard but rewarding work even for companies with modest stands such as our own – it was impressive seeing the amount of work that went into constructing the big players’ displays) and an excellent networking event hosted at the Student Union’s Dirty Duck bar. Despite the open bar, everyone seemed fully recovered at breakfast the next day and infected by the excitement of the event.

Epitomy were representing the 3D Visualisation and Digital Collaboration products of two of our partners from the US, Lattice Technology and Tetra4D. Despite not having the eye-catching appeal of the 3D printing crowd, we had quite a successful time and attracted a good deal of interest from visitors as well as some speakers and exhibitors.

The only downside of attending as an exhibitor is not having much time to attend the excellent conferences and tour the other exhibitors’ offerings. Even with four members of staff in attendance we didn’t find much time for sightseeing between demonstrating to interested visitors to our stand.

The talks this year covered a wide range of themes, reflecting the increasing importance of 3D design and manufacturing techniques in product design, AEC, and mechanical engineering. The prevalence of cloud and social technologies, the rise of augmented reality and consumer 3D printing, and the convergence of ideas from more traditional manufacturing companies with the tech sector and other consumers and users of 3D data such as the gaming and film industries were big themes.

It was great to see the thriving state of the industry and to exhibit alongside stalwarts such as Autodesk, Siemens, and local resellers for PTC, Dassault and others. The event was a huge success and the teams from Develop3D and the University of Warwick both did a great job organizing it. We’re already looking forward to next year and hope to see you there.