Transforming their wheelchairs into awesomeness dreams

Ryan Weimer’s son Keaton was born with condition called Spinal Muscular Atrophy. Due to his diagnosis, Keaton uses a wheelchair in his daily life. In an effort to make his son feel special, Ryan started building Keaton over-the-top Halloween costumes that included his wheelchair and made him look and feel fantastic. Seeing how happy his son was and wanting to raise awareness for his condition, Ryan and his wife decided to start the non-profit organization Magic Wheelchair. The couple began recruiting build teams across the United States and beyond.

Now Magic wheelchair is giving kids in wheelchairs unforgettable experiences by creating custom costumes for them at no expense to their families.

BREAKTHROUGH IDEA

Connect builders with vendors and professional fabricators
Help vendors package starter kits and special offers for charity builds
Nurture a community of mentors and novice builders sharing best practices and content
The entertainment and special effects industries can have first-hand experiences with 3DEXPERIENCE as they do charity work and potentially bring the tools back into their existing professional workflow.
Inspire 3DEXPERIENCE Labs and regional Fab Labs
- DS employees can help design and build costumes for the children
- Each build done in a 3DEXPERIENCE Lab is an epic story of technology, artistry, community, humanity, and partnership.

Accomplishments:

Started with 8 costumes the first year (2015) and grew to more than 100 this year (2018), expanding to Europe and Canada in 2021.
Brought together a community of elite special effects artist, fabricators in Hollywood, artists, doctors, nurses, puppet designers, garage builders, hobbyists, makers, students, and professional engineers behind the same cause and same mission to unite and share knowledge, best practices, techniques, materials, and technologies to get the epic builds done.
Because of the great story of Magic Wheelchair, Ryan has networked with fabrication houses and special effects artists from across the United States and more recently across the world. This organization has attracted the talents with the likes of Adam Savage (from MythBusters) to Fon Davis (creator of many Star Wars Characters).

Comic Con 2018 - Behind the Scenes of the X-Wing Magic Wheelchair Reveal
They partnered with Stan Winston School of Character Arts where each build team has free access to the online course material from the school.
The Magic Wheelchair project is proudly accelerated by the 3DEXPERIENCE Lab and supported by Dassault Systèmes US Foundation.

POSITIVE IMPACT ON THE SOCIETY

GOAL 10: Reduced inequalities

Magic Wheelchair ensures inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Their vision is "to put a smile on the face of every child".

BENEFITS TO USE 3DEXPERIENCE PLATFORM ON CLOUD:

Provide 3DS applications for builders to use while planning, designing, and fabricating their costumes.
Create a platform community and roles to support the use of products like xDesign, xShape.
The build team contacted a SolidWorks customer who made the wheelchair that Jonah was using, Permobil. This customer was able to work with us to provide the CAD model native to our software. This saved a lot of time on our end during the modeling phase.
We used the 3DEXPERIENCE Dashboard to manage the creative ideation, team dynamics, content, tasks, schedule, and supplies throughout the build process.

COLLABORATIVE & COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE

The 3DS Magic Wheelchair Build Team has successfully built three costumes for children in wheelchairs as of 2021. DS employees volunteer their time and expertise in a variety of subjects: CAD, CNC milling, painting, mold making, graphic design, dress making, sewing, programming, electronics, and much more. The emotional paycheck they have and continue to receive for working on the projects is priceless. Using tools that connect this community of builders from all around the United States and help them do good is what “harmonizing product, nature, and life” is truly all about.

BRINGING DREAMS TO LIFE

After starting their relationship with Magic Wheelchair in 2018, the SolidWorks Magic Wheelchair build Team has worked tirelessly to create three incredible costumes for three amazing kiddos: a to-scale monster truck for Jonah, a futuristic motorcycle for Ben, and a castle fit for a princess for Freyja. As the years go on, the team continues to expand and the costumes get more extravagant, but the reaction from the children and their families never changes: they are always thrilled. The SolidWorks team is just as happy seeing the delight the costumes bring to the kids as they are to volunteer their time;