SolidWorks:HEARD!

For the past three weeks I have been showing off all the new features in SolidWorks 2012 products to a bunch of users and it is always interesting what they really get excited about. Despite what gets the "orange star" in the What.s New PDF, users will let you know in their simple smirks or confident nods what is really an "enhancement" and what is demo candy. When I think back through the past 10 years and all the 200+ enhancement releases, there are always the handful of useful updates that can make a new release worthy enough to migrate to.

Many people in the CAD industry (corporate and resellers) start to believe that their CAD Product is some sort of religion or way of life but the reality is CAD is nothing more than a tool. As a long time user myself and maybe a crumugin of sorts due to the amount of time I have been in the channel, I look at the SolidWorks line of products the same as I did when I built homes for the family business, tools of my trade. Because of that, I often admire the competition when they do something better than SolidWorks does because, again, it is just a tool. When the tool gets out of the way and lets the real magic happen, that is an "enhancement"!

After rolling out 7 SolidWorks 2012 events, each 3 hours in length, I am convinced that SolidWorks 2012 is a release about the little things. After showing all the big market features like SolidWorks Costing and Large Design Review (LDR), which were well received, the most applause and smiles of "Finally!" came when a small tweak or adjustment to existing functionality was pointed out. Here is a small list of the "little things":

- Blank custom properties

- Unit switcher (bottom right in the status bar)

- Tab to hide (assemblies)

- Discard changes (when editing a part when the assembly is open)

- Sheet Metal exclude features (modified select tangency to select up to bend faces)

- Control A to select all parts in an assembly or all entities inn a sketch

- S key cursor focus for command search

- Delayed clocking on SmartMates

- Initiate SmartMates with ALT key anytime (not just on initial drag)

- Modify dimension name in Modify dialog

- Highlight dimension from part changes in drawings

- Insert center marks on view anytime, not just when adding the view

- Diamter dimension lock in sketches (dimensioning to centerline locks similar to ordinate dims)

- ESC key in dimensions undoes last selection instead of canceling the command

- Hole Wizard not adding a "default" hole where face was initially selected

~ the list goes on and on...

For me, the little things are those features that we touch everytime we fire up the software.  The little things are also the features that can bring the greatest frustration when they don't work the way we want so it is no surprise the excitement when they are improved.  Even though Equations in SolidWorks 2012 are my favorite new enhancement, many of the above list get touched more often and have a bigger impact on my daily usage. So the "little things" end up being the big things and ultimately become the decision maker/breaker when the question "Do I upgrade?" is asked. ~Lou

As I begin to dig deeper into the 20th release of SolidWorks, I am finding that the little enhancements seem to impact me as a user much more than any of "Major Enhancements".  Whether is it storing blank Custom Properties or not inserting a hole when launching the Hole Wizard, the little "tweaks" to existing functionality are the ones that make me smerk.

Equations, which by the way were ear-marked with the "Top Enhancement" orange star ,ended up being my personal favorite ehnacement to SolidWorks 2012 since building intelligence into models is something I do a lot.  SolidWorks 2011 started this trend with the addition of Global Equations and control of suppression states with the VB's IIF statement.  As the functionality has grown, there are far too many features for the current interface, especially for those of us that began adding a bunch of automation to our files.

SolidWorks 2012 has completely overhauled the interface, adding a number or organizational control such as filters, views and pre-populated lists in addition to new functionality.  Here are a the various view options with a few things pointed out:

On the functionality side, the new Equation Manager can determine the solve order to avoid those blasted "CIRCULAR REFERENCE" issues we get when tying ourselves in equation knots.  This reminds me of SWIFT (SolidWorks Intelligent Feature Technology), where the tool attempts to determine the best route to solve the issue for you.  Although this is not going to fix all your problems ("That was easy") but it might take some troubleshooting time out of the equation ;-).

Here are a few of my favorite additions, although I like them all, especially the new UI!: 

1 - Measure Option:

This new addition basically allows you to create on the fly criteria for evaluating your equations.  By using this new option, a distance on the active model can be used without having to pre-add a reference dimension in the model, making the process of adding automation fast.

2 - Browse and Open buttons linked external equation files.

Last year the abiliy to link files was very interesting to me, however it was not straight forward how to link and easily edit these files.  In 2012, checking "Link to external file", you are prompted with this message to use an existing file or create a new one.  Once linked it is simple to select a different file and also easy to edit the linked file.  By clicking on the Open icon, Notepad will lauch with the linked file loaded, allowing quick editing access. If you decide to add new columns, you can just reimport it, which will add the missing rows in the Equation interface.

This is a huge improvement to linked files and has lowered the barrior of entry for new users to take advantage of this cool feature.

3 - Automatic Rebuild:

This last pic might seem little but the ability to rebuild the list of equations as you make changes in the Equation editor is very convenient.  There is also a rebuild button located to the immediate right that will rebuild the file on demand.  This is especially handy if you make modifications to a linked file and want to see the values update in the Equation manager.

The What's New PDF outlines this revamp of Equations very well and provides a few examples to show all the new additions.  I recommend trying this new feature out when you get SolidWorks 2012 installed! ~Lou

Today DS SolidWorks lifted the SolidWorks 2011 Beta NDA and is allowing anyone to talk about what is in the next product to ship.  Having used SolidWorks for well over a decade now, I am finding myself more focused on how new functionality will be used practically instead of just in awe that a software tool can perform a task. Sometimes the fine tuning is more impressive to "Joe User" than a shiny capability that might be used a few times a year.

Like previous releases, I am planning on doing an audio version of the What's New PDF on the podcast but I wanted to highlight the features that I feel are going to be used by many users across the board.  SolidWorks 2011 is less flashy, in my opinion, than the previous few and seems to be focused on closing some long lasting SPRs tagged to the software.  All forensics aside, it seems that many of my reported SPRs had been showing a closed status, although my primary job is not support so I could be an outlier in that respect. 

5 Enhancements That Matter:

Search...No Really...Search:

I am the first one to admit that the current SolidWorks Search in the upper right of the software has been used ... is not used as much as it should.  I think many of us just got sick of the waiting and hoping it would return exactly what we were looking for.  When setup correctly, the model and file search does work but nobody uses it.

★ 2011 SolidWorks Search can search places we all search for answers like the HELP! (finally!), the SolidWorks Knowledge Base and the newly updated SolidWorks Community Forums. This is, of course, in addition to the model and file search that existed previously.  This is when I do searches for SolidWorks, not as much for finding models (enter PDM) but for information on solving problems.  The help, knowledge base and forums are all great resources and now searching them is right inside of SolidWorks.

Note: During Beta the Web Help is not available and has seemed to be moved out of the search box.  I am assuming this will be back in the search once Beta is over.  Search terms in Help, Knowledge Base and Forums will launch the embedded browser and pass the search terms to those sites' search boxes.

Assembly & Weld Feature Expansion:

Assembly features have a few added benefits in the 2011 release.  Other than simple cuts and holes, fillets and chamfers have expanded the features that can be added in content of an assembly.  This feature is especially useful for those who design weldments and need to prep intersecting members for welding.

Weldments, since their introduction, have been a great feature but when it comes to the welding of these members, the current implementation has been very limited for complex joints.  Since a majority of users want to have welds for detail purposes only, SolidWorks 2011 redesigned the weld bead functionality to be simplified and have no impact on the performance since all welds are now lightweight.

★ Not only has the interface been brought to parity for Parts and Assemblies but the weld feature now adds a graphical representation of a weld (as opposed to a physical solid body) and can apply it to gapped members.  This was a common support inquiry from users with weldments. Welds also have an updated interface inside the PropertyManager to select weld paths, override the weld symbols, and specify weld properties like material, process, mass per unit length, etc.

Note: Now that the welds are graphical, they do not add mass to the overall structure like they did in the past.  Legacy welds will be supported and editable but new welds will take on the new graphical form.

Equations...No Hear Me Out:

Equations are one of those areas of SolidWorks that everyone is aware of but really doesn't use to much frequency. Adding intelligence to models can be done with equations but 2011 adds a few features that redefine this capability.  

The first is the addition to controll suppression states of features and parts, utilizing Visual Basic's IIF function.  Now equations can be written as an expression and have a TRUE/FALSE response that is now evaluated.  Previously this would be done in a design table using Excel's equation functionality but now is wrapped up right inside of the SolidWorks equation editor.

★ The second is one of my favorites and could possibly feed my need for further "global" automation when it comes to SolidWorks.  I am referring to the new Global Variable feature for equations. Equations and variables can now be exported from an existing model and saved as a *.TXT file.  This file can also be created from scratch and then referenced by other models globally.  Once imported, the model can "link" to this exported text file and now changes in the text file will propagate to any model that references it!

★ To push this even further, global variables can also be configured by a Design Table as well so the power of Excel is still there.  Changes to these global variables via Design Tables are within the part only and will not be pushed to all that reference this external list.  I can imagine placing this on a DropBox or shared network drive, for an entire design team to reference.

Note: In testing this feature I noticed that performing a Pack and Go does in fact grab this referenced text file and includes it as part of the reference tree.

Fast 2D Simulation:

Image courtesy of SolidWorks What's New 2011I know this is not considered a core tool but testing during design is definitely trending up and making simulation studies take less time is always a plus if, in fact, the accuracy is still in play.

SolidWorks Simulation was again a serious focus for the 2011 release, adding a number of updates including changes to mesh, boundary conditions and UI. The most prominent change was the addition of a new study option type called 2D Simulation Study (within SolidWorks Simulation Professional).

★ This new study option applies to static, thermal and nonlinear studies giving a boost to run times and performance.  The option is typically used in applications that are calculating plane strain/stress as well as extruded and axisymmetric profiles. 

The example to the left is one that is axisymmetric and would typically be sectioned into a percentage of the cross-section (1/4 or more) to reduce the number of elements needed to be used in the analysis. Now this "sectioning" approach can be taken a step further, using just a 2D representation of the cut, allowing very complex scenarios to be solved in a fraction of the time.

2D studies like this are not new in the industry, but new to SolidWorks Simulation 2011 and the fact they can be applied to the everyday static study as well as the time consuming non-linear studies, more people will opt to using it.  

Note: Another added benefit of this study type is the results can be displayed in 2D as well as 3D or can be configured to display a section of the solid as pictured above.

Install & Administration:

The installation of SolidWorks has changed dramatically over the past 10 years and with it came much scrutiny especially with the SolidWorks Installation Manager (SWIM).  Although it was an attempt to make the growing complexity of installing SolidWorks easier, there were a number of factors that caused problems for a number of users.

SolidWorks 2010 improved things by reducing the download size of service packs by around 75% which previously were always over 1GB. I am assuming this will continue with 2011 but cannot verify that since beta is always a full download and install, not a patch.

On the activation front, SolidWorks 2011 supports multi-license activation/transfer and for those who have removed SolidWorks, forgetting to transfer your license back, only to install it again to transfer will be happy.  SolidWorks now will have a standalone download of the SW Activation Wizard that will be available from the Customer Portal to avoid this hassle.

★ Administrators responsible for deployment to many users will also be happy that images of SolidWorks can be built in a selected language (save size) and can build both 32 and 64 bit images on either operating system (previously building a 64 bit image required a 64 bit OS).  Not only building the images is operating system bit ignostic but managing the options via Options Editor is also supported.

Conclusion...ALREADY!

If you have survived this far down and made it through all the other posts on SolidWorks 2011, I am curious to what features you feel are important and useful (please leave a comment).  Many of us around the SolidWorks community get excited about new features, well because they are new, however the measure of a good release is stability and practical enhancements.  I hope see more releases like this in the future where SolidWorks fills the gaps and make the product as solid as possible.  In the end, SolidWorks is a tool and anything that gets in between the engineer and a tool = a replaced tool! ~Lou

At the end of June, Dassault Systemes launched the newest version of their document authoring tool, 3dvia Composer V6R2011.  This release continues the trend of V6R2010x by integrating more compatibility and uniformity from the SolidWorks' UI, as well as adding features to simplify the authoring process. 

Here are my top 5 enhancements in the 2011 version of 3dvia Composer:

1 - Assembly-level Color Mapping:

Parts imported from an assembly now inherit colors applied in SolidWorks, CATIA, and 3DXML to the part level. Colors applied at the highest assembly level in CAD will be imported into 3dvia Composer at correct part level yielding native-looking models.

SolidWorks 2010 / 3dvia Composer V6R2011 Color Mapping

2 - Multiple Actor Replacement:

Replacement and update of geometry within 3dvia Composer has always been a one to one function. 2011 now allows multi-selection of actors when performing an Update Geometry command.  This can be very useful if replacing fasteners and other groups of components when changes occur in the design phase.

3 - Per Actor Hatching:

Cutting planes, by default, would only add a uniform hatch at the plane of intersection and this can be modified now to customize the attribues per part.  Each part can now have a unique hatch angle, spacing, color and thickness, allowing sections to display more clarity between components.

4 - Interactive Storyboards:

This new addition simplified functionality from previous versions, taking a multiple step process into a simple right click or CTRL drag of an existing view.  This action creates an interactive document with clickable images in the view that modify the active viewing interface.  

3dvia Composer V6R2011 Interactive Storyboards w/ Magnet Lines

5 - Magnet Lines:

This is one of my favorite new features and I hope to see this someday in SolidWorks as well.  Magnet lines are a new collaborative actor that behave like a magnetized construction line.   You can either move the magnet line toword annotations/2D panels or move the entities to the line and they will snap to it like a magnet.  This makes movement and alignment simple, resulting in a polished layout.

The release is littered with little UI enhancements like tooltips in the mini right-click toolbars, updates to the gizmos (translation, rotation, explode, compass and view & animation modes) and uniform shortcut commands like using CTRL+A for select all.  DS seems to be on a 6 month release cycle with 3dvia Composer, releasing an "x" version in between the major "R" releases.  3dvia Composer V6R2011 refines the tool, making the experience, especially for SolidWorks users, familiar and streamlined.  ~Lou

With SolidWorks 2009 just around the corner, many users are wondering about the true performance gains that have been touted . Every year SolidWorks releases a new major release with 250 enhancements but what really makes users believe the release is worthy to upgrade to is mostly based on performance. Looking back through the years we used to purposely leave out details in our designs that were "unnecessary" or were just details that were not needed for production drawings. Today we not only place fasteners in our assemblies but want them to have threads and all the elaborate details that make an exact replica. These trends are why we as users push the envelope of performance every release and expect more in the future.

Performance has always been a theme for the SolidWorks R&D team, but this year the performance gains seem to be what are most noticeable in SolidWorks 2009. What SolidWorks has termed "Raw Performance Improvements" targeted assemblies ranging from 5,000 to 100,000 parts while performing various common tasks on these large data sets. Obviously advancements in 64 bit computing, mainly addressing larger quantities of RAM, have opened the doors for working with these data sets on a PC. Beyond hardware and operating systems there are still many ways software manufacturers can re-code how certain processes handle memory hungry procedures and make them more efficient. So let's take a look at the numbers for SolidWorks 2009:

• Assemblies - 2.6X faster than SolidWorks 2008
• Drawings - 6.2X faster than SolidWorks 2008
• Frequent Commands - 8X faster than SolidWorks 2008

"Frequent Commands" refers to common operations like editing the assembly and switching to a drawing, creating views with dimensions, saving and panning, etc. Overall most users will see approximately a 65% increase in performance with SolidWorks 2009 which is pretty significant.

Technology advancements like SpeedPak, simplified representations of an assembly, allow SolidWorks to reference critical interfaces without being required to load all the components into memory. This performance boost is then handed off from assemblies to drawings allowing many of the critical aspects like dimensions and views to be created without having to resolve any of the suppressed or "SpeedPaked" components. This reorganization of how SolidWorks utilizes the computer's resources has paid off in the performance department.

Consolidation of steps is also an area of focus for SolidWorks 2009 with the introduction of features like slot sketch, solid to sheet metal and weldment grouping, which allows a users to place multiple weldment profiles within a single command. None of these advancements allow SolidWorks 2009 to create anything unique compared to it's predecessor, however these capabilities remove the tedious steps in order to create these features. Along this same efficiency theme, Instant3D now reaches over to assemblies, allowing the user to modify parts utilizing the all familiar "drag to size" functionality introduced in the 2008 release.

Finally a very important area of focus is multi-threading. SolidWorks has been multi-threaded for years but not in the areas that have the greatest impact. Background processes like HLR, view rotation and even PhotoWorks, which renders as a threaded process have been around for at least of few releases. SolidWorks 2009 has put the focus on some of the most intense processes like running an analysis in SolidWorks Simulation and threaded that process so you can continue to work with SolidWorks while the study or studies are being solved. This alone can bring dramatic performance gains especially since most systems ship with dual or even quad core processors. Utilizing these extra processors is the future to performance gain in SolidWorks.

Overall, SoildWorks 2009 seems to have put it's money where it's mouth is with respect to performance and I hope this focus continues to future releases. Growing complexity in design is inevatable, which is why we will push SolidWork 2009 to the edge and 2010 will need to push the performance envelope once again. In talking with many beta testers, performance is reason many are thinking of upgrading to SolidWorks 2009 at SP0 instead of waiting till SP2 or later. ~Lou