Last Thursday across the lake in London, Concord-based SolidWorks rep’ed Massachusetts well by being recognized as a global leader in green innovation.

The company took home the 2010 Best New Green Product Innovation award, accredited by the UK Royal Soceity of the Arts, at the 5th annual GREEN AWARDS™. This year was the first year the GREEN AWARDS, an initiative launched in 2006 to recognize creative work in green marketing and communication, opened up to submissions outside of the UK — and SolidWorks’ Sustainability software stole the show.

SolidWorks’ Sustainability software works with the company’s 3D computer-aided design (CAD) software and allows engineers and product designers to assess the environmental impact of the products they are building. The intuitive software assesses things like carbon footprint, energy, air and water impact throughout the product design and development lifecycle – from resource and raw material procurement through manufacturing and assembly and all the way to consumer use. SolidWorks has over 400,000 customers, and their users (almost 1 million in number) can access a free version of the software, SustainabilityXpress.

SolidWorks Award
SolidWorks was presented with Best Green Product Innovation award from Microsoft's head of environmental sustainability at the GREEN AWARDS in London

The GREEN AWARDS judges nodded SolidWorks Sustainability as their favorite, and offered, “[SolidWorks Sustainability] software has the potential to revolutionize the way designers design their products. By integrating life cycle thinking into the design process, SolidWorks [Sustainability] helps designers to lower the environmental impact of their creation from the design stage.”

Check out a cool video demo of SolidWorks Sustainability here.

SolidWorks was founded in Concord, Mass. in 1993 and is cited with creating the first 3D, mechanical design software for the Windows platform. The company was acquired in 1997 by Dassault Systemes (Euronext:DASTY), headquartered in France. The stock transaction was valued at $310M, and brought the two global leaders in modeling solutions together. SolidWorks has since operated as an independent subsidiary of Dassault.

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SolidWorks accepted their award for Best Green Product Innovation from Microsoft''s head of environmental sustainability
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