9. Extensive Support for Project Collaboration and Team Connectivity Image courtesy of Nidek Co. Ltd.
10.
11.
Editor's Notes
What’s New in SolidWorks 2012 Beta 2 PowerPoint – contents subject to change.
SolidWorks 2012 is the 20 th release of our flagship 3D CAD software. Every year, tens of thousands of new users join the SolidWorks community. In fact, this year the total number of commercial and education users surpassed 1.5 million. Each and every one of these users design different products in different industries, each using SolidWorks in a different way. What all these users have in common is the need to get their jobs done faster, improve design processes, and collaborate more effectively. The solutions delivered by SolidWorks are driven by the needs of you, the customer. Thousands of enhancement requests are received each year to help improve our products and to make them even more powerful and easier to use. Many of these enhancements suggest ways to automate common tasks, streamline design processes, or provide custom tools for specific industries, and many of these enhancements are added to SolidWorks with each release. Regular customer visits also provide insight into how our products are used and ways in which we can help improve your business. These visits lead to industry firsts – innovations that provide real process improvements and real business benefits. This is what drives SolidWorks and in turn, SolidWorks helps to drive your business. The expectations of the user community get higher with each and every release. We believe these expectations have been surpassed once again with this release. There are over 200 enhancements in SolidWorks 2012. Over 90% of these enhancements were requested directly by customers With SolidWorks 2012, you’ll experience faster design, a more continuous workflow, shorter development times, and more efficient collaboration. New automated functionality makes design go more smoothly with less work, and improved performance creates a more continuous workflow. New productivity features reduce cycle time and speed up product development, while extensive connectivity and collaboration support enables project teams to work from around the world.
Every release SolidWorks strives to deliver a rich customer experience. SolidWorks 2012 takes a deep look at those things you do repetitively day in and day out. Sometimes considered the unsung heroes, simple productivity tools are the things that create the unique easy to use experience you have come to expect over the years. SolidWorks has focused on many of these subtle, yet impactful things in 2012.
Streamlining your day to day tasks to ensure you spend less time on those things you do all the time allowing you to focus on your designs. Every SolidWorks customer strives to reduce lead times from concept through to manufacturing, assembly, testing, documentation, and delivery. SolidWorks continues to deliver new and innovative solutions to streamline production processes at every stage along the way. Let's take a look at some of these enhancements. With automatic centerline dimensioning in sketches, command search, tab to hide parts, and improvements for mates and editing dimensions over configurations, you will immediately see improvements in your day to day work. The lines and automatic balloon ordering take the effort out of generating high quality magnetic drawings. When you need to develop relations between dimensions, the new equation editor interface will make it easy and convenient to set up. There are even improvements for accounting for flow loads in simulation and the automatic bonding of models. DEMOS: 01 – User Interface; 02 – Sketching; 03 – Multi-Body Explode; 04 – Equation Editor; 05 – Drawings; (06 – Assemblies); (07 – eDrawings); (08 – Simulation); () = Optional demos for full day presentation
Improved performance and quality for a more continuous workflow
SolidWorks continues to raise the bar on performance and quality in 2012. As in the last two releases, significant time and effort has been spent on increasing stability and improving performance in key areas throughout the entire product line. This impacts every user so it has the highest priority in all our development efforts. Performance improvements in areas such as Flow Simulation (providing faster and more accurate solutions along with better usage of multiple CPU cores), importing geometry, toolbox, and the much-requested complete un-install, enable tasks to be completed faster and with fewer issues. As designs get more complex, more data is created and more computer resources are required to work on them, whilst maintaining productivity levels. Each release of SolidWorks introduces innovative new tools to reduce the amount of time you spend waiting for your computer to catch up. A new tool called Large Design Review makes working with massive assembly models effortless, whilst on parts, Feature freeze gives users control over rebuild time. DEMOS: 09 – Flow; 10 – Sustainability; 11 – Feature Freeze; 12 – Large Design Review; (13 – Import); (14 – Toolbox); (15 – Clean Uninstall); () = Optional demos for full day presentation
Enables fundamental changes to your product development process
SolidWorks 2012 includes some new and innovative tools to reduce your day to day workload. Mechanisms no longer need to be designed through a process of trial and error. With motion optimization, let SolidWorks find the best design based on criteria you specify such as available motor sizes, bearing loads, or stroke length. Determining manufacturing costs to meet budget requirements is a critical but time consuming task. SolidWorks Costing enables you to estimate costs from different suppliers and compare the relative costs of individual design elements with the click of a mouse, to ensure you produce products within budget. Simulation of thin structures and welded frames using beams has been significantly improved with more automated and accurate bonding and 3-D visualization of results. Customers dealing with sheet metal will love the improvements to forming tools and the improved accuracy of flange dimensioning that relates more closely to the way you measure parts on the shop floor. DEMOS: 16 – Motion; 17 – Costing; 18 – Sheet Metal; (19 – Beams); (20 – Routing); () = Optional demos for full day presentation
Extensive support for project collaboration and team connectivity
SolidWorks Enterprise PDM provides a familiar and intuitive way to manage your design data and allows you to collaborate closely with other project stakeholders. In 2012, the Windows Explorer interface is now even easier to customize and use, and the powerful search tool can now be accessed from anywhere. A new standard for interoperability between ECAD and MCAD systems enables enhanced collaboration between mechanical and electrical engineers. ProStep EDMD connects engineers working on electrical PCB designs, reducing errors and allowing the team to complete the design faster. 3DVIA Composer delivers a more like-like experience to your technical communication with advanced visual effects such as depth of field, glow, ambient occlusion, and part to part shadows. Publishing content to web pages is now even easier with included web templates. DEMOS: 21 – Enterprise PDM; 22 – CircuitWorks; 23 – 3DVIA Composer () = Optional demos for full day presentation
SolidWorks 2012 represents yet another ground-breaking release incorporating many enhancements from a diverse cross-section of users. SolidWorks 2012 is packed full of innovations to help you get your job done faster. From simple time-saving shortcuts, to complete process automation, improved performance and quality to reduce time and rework, and tools to help you collaborate and communicate more effectively. SolidWorks 2012 has something for everybody. We hope you will be pleased with the results. Thank You.