You may already know that you can have Workgroup PDM (WPDM) automatically create a PDF file when you check in your drawings.  But in case you don’t, there is an option in the SolidWorks Workgroup PDM VaultAdmin tool that will turn this feature on:

I had one of our users contact me recently inquiring if there was an easy way to pull the automatically generated PDF’s created when a drawing is checked into Workgroup PDM.  I knew of no way off the top of my head, but put the word out on Twitter, it shot all through my social networks, and I got several responses from Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.  (Let me just say that crowdsourcing is cool!)

Most of the responses mentioned what I thought would be required: a macro.  And being that I am not that well-versed yet in the API, I was hoping that something already existed.

But Rodney Hall responded with a suggestion to use the SolidWorks Task Scheduler.  So I fired up the task, “Export Workgroup PDM Files”, and the default was to export the PDF’s!  It even has an option to create PDF’s for drawings that do not have one:

Now, I have to sheepishly admit that I haven’t touched SolidWorks Task Scheduler in ages, because I haven’t seen a use for it in a long time.  Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose; but I will definitely keep it in mind from now on when something similar comes up!

If you’re not familiar with the Task Scheduler (or haven’t used it in a while), you should at least get in there and familiarize yourself with it.

Do you have any special tasks you use the SolidWorks Task Scheduler for?  Hit the comments and let us know!

If you haven’t heard by now (and if you haven’t, where have you been?), earlier this week Josh Mings posted an article about an announcement SolidWorks made to VAR’s: as of SolidWorks 2010 Service Pack 4, that they would begin aggressively enforcing their policy of not allowing users access to service packs if they are not on subscription maintenance.

To get more clarification on this issue, Devon Sowell has scheduled an interview with Rich Welch, SolidWorks Vice President of Customer Services, next Tuesday, April 13, 2010 covering “SolidWorks Subscription Maintenance, Service Packs, and Bug Fixes”.  Devon is currently soliciting questions that folks would like answers to in this interview.

I’ve been thinking about this ever since Josh’s post, and the biggest question I would like the answer to is why are they just now choosing to enforce this policy?

I’ve never understood this policy, and why it even exists when most (all?) other CAD vendors allow access to service packs/bug fixes for their purchased version.  I’ve always thought this was the hanging booger SolidWorks was walking around with while talking about being customer-driven. (How do you like that analogy?)  It definitely doesn’t make you look cool!

You know, they could have scored major brownie points with customers and press alike, and not come out with black eyes and bruises that they are going to get from this, if instead they had announced that they had changed the old policy to reflect a more judicious, customer-centric approach, allowing anyone access to all updates for the version they had purchased (or the last version they were on when their subscription lapsed)…

What do you think of this policy?

Image credit: inyobusiness

A recent comment on my post on my favorite improvements in SolidWorks 2010 reminded me of an issue I have with what was one of my most favorite improvements: Drawing Center Mark Improvements.

When this feature improvement was first announced and I saw it demoed, I was very excited. My workflow has always been to add center marks, and then dimension to them, as dimensioning to the holes would not allow the dimension witness lines to display correctly with the center marks in place. And I occasionally had issues when something happened that required the center marks be deleted and recreated, and then I would end up with dangling dimensions.

Finally, my issues were addressed with the drawing center mark improvements! Not…

Unfortunately, it turns out that the improvement only works on individual center marks, and not linear center marks, which is pretty much all that we use. So, while this is an improvement, it’s not really for me at all. It’s only half done.

I really hope that SolidWorks finishes this feature in 2011 (or a Service Pack would be even better). It would really make my workflow streamlined.

Like the comment I mentioned above states, it IS the small things that make a difference!

Photo credit: sybrenstuvel

Wednesday’s General Session opened with Fielder Hiss, VP of Product Management, taking the stage once again.  Fielder announced the launch of an online SolidWorks store, where one can purchase swag, such as shirts and caps, along with a few books.  The pickings are a little sparse right now, but hopefully more resources will be added soon.

TOP TEN ENHANCEMENT IDEAS

Bruce Holway, Director of Product Definition, was up next to announce this year’s top ten enhancement ideas.  Some recent examples of enhancement ideas that have been added recently are:

• Recreate all mates when mirroring components
• Ability to rename configurations while referenced
• Provide more options to create reference planes
• Faster rebuilds on complex models
• Excel behavior in tables
• Reference zero in parent view (when baseline dimensioning a detail view, for instance)

Ten members of the product definition team were brought up onto stage to name the enhancements.  The top ten enhancements are as follows:

10. Simplify Video Card Requirements
9. Exploded Views For Weldments
8. Option To Dangle Children Instead Of Deleting
7. Graphical Map Of References
6. Allow More Types Of Assembly Features
5. Better Utilize All Processor Cores
4. On The Fly Equations In Dialogue Boxes
3. File Compatibility Between Versions
2. Increase Stability

And the number one enhancement idea is:

1. SolidWorks Should Cleanly Uninstall Itself

MODEL MANIA 2010

Next up was Mark Schneider, Product Manager, to talk about the Model Mania 2010 contest.  Mark showed the drawings from the contest (sheet 1, sheet 2) and then a high-speed video showing the building of the model.  Mark mentioned several times about using Contour Selection to Boss/Cut Extrude.  This is something that I don’t do much of, but it really made a difference in the ease and speed with which the model was constructed.

He then announced the winners of the Model Mania 2010 contest.  The prizes were PNY NVIDIA Quadro FX graphics boards (a 4800 for 1st, a 3800 for 2nd, and an 1800 for 3rd)

On the customer side, the winners were:

1. Nick Vande Waerdt – Kooima Company (18:29)
2. Todd Newhouse – Cyan Optics
3. Michael Hess – mhda

On the reseller side, the winners were:

1. Jeremiah Davis – ModernTech Mechanical (18:03)
2. Jason Pancoast – CAPINC
3. Neil Custard – GoEngineer

SWUGN AWARDS

Richard Doyle took the stage next to talk user groups and to announce the SolidWorks User Group Network (SWUGN) Awards.  There are now 175 local SolidWorks User Group chapters in 23 countries.  More than 10,000 people attend SolidWorks user groups annually.  Richard announced that this year was the 10th anniversary of the SWUGN Committee, and then introduced the 2010/2011 SWUGN Committee.

Then Mark Peters, VP of Business Development at IMPACT Engineering Solutions (and one of the four original members of the first SWUGN Committee), joined Richard on stage to present the SWUGN awards:

• 2009 User Group of the Year – Cindy Berend of the New Hampshire SolidWorks User Group
• 2009 User Group Leader of the Year – Anne Yust of the Twin Cities Simulation User Group

The SWUGN Lifetime Achievement Award was awarded to Rodney Hall of the Catawba Valley SolidWorks User Group (right).

WHAT’S NEW IN 2011

Now we come to everyone’s favorite part, the sneak preview of the upcoming SolidWorks release!  This year, SolidWorks returned to their funny skits to show off some of the new features coming in SolidWorks 2011.  This year’s theme was “SUPER CAD SMACK DOWN”, a contest in which two opponents vied to be the best and fastest CAD jock.

Jeremy “Big Rig” Regenerus and Ian “The Sledge Hammer” Hogg faced off with Darren Henry and Neil Cooke calling the plays and Mark Schneider refereeing:

They said that the performance of SolidWorks has been improved, resulting in increased reliability and lower memory usage.  They showed an image of a machine with a 460MB savings in memory utilization in SolidWorks 2011 versus 2010.

The new features of SolidWorks 2011 that they highlighted were:

• Revolve Up To Surface – Allows selection of a surface to terminate a revolve feature.
• Defeature – Allows conversion of an assembly to a dumb (i.e., featureless) part file consisting of only the outside surfaces.  This will be very useful when sending files outside your company or sharing online.  It is a feature in the tree, which means that it is an editable item.  Also shown was an option to upload the resulting model to 3D ContentCentral.
• Custom RealView – More appearance options and settings are available, similar to what is currently offered in PhotoWorks.
• PhotoView 360 Integration – As you may have heard, PhotoWorks will cease to exist in SolidWorks 2011.  Taking it’s place is PhotoView 360, and there have been some big  improvements since it was introduced.  You can now open a PhotoView 360 preview window in SolidWorks, and it will give you a real-time rendering as you work in SolidWorks.  It is more integrated with SolidWorks, and you can also render motion.
• Planar Simulation – You can run a simulation on a 2D section of a model.  If the part is symmetric or round, for instance, you can then project the results onto the 3D model.
• Dimension Layout Improvements – There is now more intelligence when dimensions are inserted into a drawing from the model and when moving existing drawing dimensions.
• Dual Dimension Hole Tables – Hole tables in drawings now support dual dimensions.
• Enterprise PDM Design Checker Task – The SolidWorks Design Checker is now integrated into Enterprise PDM and can be called in a workflow transition.
• Lightweight Welds – Welds in an assembly can now be “virtual” parts residing in the assembly file.
• Weld Tables – A table of all the welds in a weldment can now be shown in drawings.
• Piping Enhancements – Piping Routing now features weld gaps that will automatically adjust pipe route lengths to account for welds.
• Walk Through – Allows you to do a walk or fly through, as well as add an image, such as a person or vehicle, to the screen.

The contest ended in a tie, so there was a tie-breaker held.  Jeremy nailed the win with the final new feature shown:

• Feature Lock – Allows all features preceding this command to be locked and not rebuilt.  Very nice to have on large, complicated parts!

CLOSING REMARKS

SolidWorks CEO Jeff Ray took the stage for the closing remarks.  He said that they will link SolidWorks to Enovia V6 in the cloud (I heard the term “SolidWorks V6” used several times).  They showed a demo of an online tool called “3DswYmer” that is the cloud interface to Enovia V6.

Jeff also announced two new products, SolidWorks PDM and SolidWorks Product Data Sharing.  The Enovia V6 backbone interface and SolidWorks Product Data Sharing will be shipping later this year.

Jeff said that SolidWorks will deliver more technology in the next 2-1/2 years than they have in the last 15!

SOLIDWORKS WORLD 2011

Next year, SolidWorks World 2011 will be held at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio, TX, on January 23-26, 2011.

SUMMARY

The closing slide of the General Session was a quote from Lauren Bacall:  “Standing still is the fastest way of moving backwards in a rapidly changing world.”  It is obvious that SolidWorks is not standing still, and is continuing to push the envelope.

So there you have it!  SolidWorks World 2010 has come to an end…  Be sure and check out my Flickr photostream for all the pictures I took from the conference.  I have pretty complete coverage of the Product Design Showcase from the Partner Pavilion, with pictures of just about every product that was on display and it’s information card.  I hope that in some little way I helped give those that were not able to make it to Anaheim some feeling for the excitement and energy that was SolidWorks World 2010!

(OK, so wow, I’m late!  Sorry for the delay in posting my Wednesday General Session wrap-up; I had computer issues while on the trip, and needed to wait to get some data off; also, it was hard to find time due to workload after getting back and family priorities.)

DISCLOSURE:  DS SolidWorks Corp paid for my conference fee, lodging, and some meals.

Jon Hirschtick shows off his yo-yo skills at the Tuesday night special event:

The yo-yo belongs to Joshua Updyke, an Associate Engineer for Xpresso.  (Ricky Jordan also had a try, and it turns out that he is quite adept with a yo-yo, too!)

James Cameron answers questions from the press corps after the SolidWorks World 2010 General Session on Tuesday, February 2, 2010.

DISCLOSURE:  DS SolidWorks Corp paid for my conference fee, lodging, and some meals.

Tuesday’s General Session opened with Fielder Hiss, VP of Product Management, taking the stage.  He introduced SolidWorks Certification Specialists Mike Puckett and Avelino Rochino to talk about the various certifications that SolidWorks offers.

They announced that with the certifications added on Sunday, that there were now over 25,000 users with Certified SolidWorks Associate (CSWA) or Certified SolidWorks Professional (CSWP) certifications.  They then called SolidWorks CEO Jeff Ray to the stage to participate in a “Certification Hole in One” putting contest in which an attendee (in this case, a Smith & Wesson employee) could win one of the TEAM Associated Short Course (SC)-10 RC trucks that were featured at Monday night’s CSWP event.

Mike and Avelino then announced a new certification, the Certified SolidWorks Expert (CSWE) exam, available as of that morning.  Among the topics covered in the exam were multi-bodies, sweeps, lofts, belts/chains, curves, in-context assemblies, and springs.  In order to take the exam, a user must meet the two prerequisites of successfully passing the CSWP exam and three advanced topic exams.  There is no example exam, and if you do not pass it, you must wait at least 90 days before attempting it again.

Fielder then took the stage again and talked of 2 customers and how they were using SolidWorks to develop their designs: Edd China’s Cummfy Banana, designer of street-legal furniture; and Bill Kitchen’s SkyVenture, an indoor skydiving wind tunnel designer based in Orlando, FL.

Fielder then demoed a virtual-reality product from Canon that allows one to interact with a CAD model and view it as situated in the real world.  He also mentioned another product that was shown in the Partner Pavilion, the Infinite Z 3D system.

Next up was Tuesday’s special guest, writer, producer, and director James Cameron.  Instead of a keynote speech, SolidWorks co-founder Jon Hirschtick did an interview with him onstage.

James Cameron is best known for his work in blockbusters such as Aliens; the Terminator franchise; Titanic; and most recently, Avatar.  However, he has produced several documentaries and spoke fondly of those experiences.

Cameron said that his documentaries have never made much money, but that the real reward was working with others toward a common goal, and being able to realize the worth of the contributions of each individual.  As a designer and engineer, I totally get where he is coming from.

Cameron mentioned his next big documentary project is a dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest known part of the Earth’s oceans.  The pressure at the bottom of the trench approaches 16,000 psi, so they need to design their submersible to meet this crushing requirement.

The submersible they are designing is a one-man vehicle, and is as close to a sphere as it can be with viewports and such.  He said that they had ran finite element analysis (FEA) on it and it passed, but they wanted to confirm this, since this will be a manned mission.  They built a prototype and tested it at 16 ksi with strain gauges attached, and he said that the results matched up almost exactly with the analysis results.

Cameron himself and two other people are pilots for the submersible.

He mentioned a sort of ritual he does when starting a new project: he posts a list of three maxims for his crew to see that I think everyone should consider when setting out to do something new:

1. Hope is not a strategy.
2. Luck is not a factor.
3. Fear is not an option.

The thing that got the biggest response from the crowd was when he said that he was a precision tool and die machinist while he was in college.  I think that statement really earned him some street cred with the attendees!

I will have the video of the press conference that immediately followed the General Session available shortly.

DISCLOSURE:  DS SolidWorks Corp paid for my conference fee, lodging, and some meals.

The first General Session of SolidWorks World 2010 began in Anaheim, CA, with SolidWorks CEO Jeff Ray taking the stage.  Jeff mentioned that in the current state of the economy, most companies were scaling back events, but that there were over 5000 people registered for this year’s conference.

MEET THE PARENTS

Jeff mentioned the fact that over the last couple of years, signs of SolidWorks’ parent company, Dassault Systémes (DSS), had become more apparent.  He wanted to talk more about the relationship of SolidWorks with DSS.  He introduced Bernard Charlés, CEO Dassault Systémes, who took the stage.

Charlés gave a brief overview of DSS’ 6 product offerings, or as he called them, “lovemarks”:

• SolidWorks
• Catia
• Simulia
• Delmia
• Enovia
• 3DVIA

Charlés said that there were over 2 million users of DSS software, with 5 of their offerings holding the #1 position in their sector worldwide.

The main theme of his talk was “use a 3D virtual universe to design anything in the world” and “use 3D everywhere”.  DSS’ vision is to connect the research, engineering, consumer, and education communities.

Here is a video of Matt talking to Bernard Charlés about SolidWorks, cloud computing, and the future of 3D:

DO CAD USERS DREAM OF ELECTRIC CARS?

Jeff took the stage again and talked about “green design”.  He asked the question, “What do you think about when you think of a green car?”

He then said that he wanted to see what some car design enthusiasts could come up with, so he brought up Jeremy Luchini, who heads up the Certification team at SolidWorks (and is a vehicle enthusiast), and Dr. Mike North, from the Discovery show, Prototype This.  Jeremy was in charge of the chassis and design and Dr. North was in charge of the powertrain.  The product of this experiment is the SolidWorks 100% Electric ‘33 Hot Rod:

 
The first time they tested it, they got 0-60 in 3.8 seconds!  And that was on one battery pack (the car has three).  Dr. North said that they could get it down to around 3.0 seconds if they had hooked up the other battery packs.  The chassis is from Factory Five Racing; the electric engine was robbed from a bus, and delivers 660 ft-lb of torque; and the batteries are from A123 Systems and deliver 440 volts at 2000 amps.

And SolidWorks is taking this one step farther…  They are beginning a web series based on this experiment.  A website has already went live, Let’s Go Design, where you can submit design ideas for consideration.

CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT

Jeff then had a couple of follow-ups from two of the featured customers from last year’s General Session.

Terrafugia, with their street-legal flying car, has completed tests and had extensive media coverage.  Jeff mentioned that they had used Catia to design the complex wing shapes.  And MicroWind Technologies used SolidWorks Simulation to deal with vibration issues in their wind turbines.

Jeff then introduced some of folks attending from Walt Disney’s Imagineering group.  They were one of SolidWorks’ first customers, having used the software since 1995.

And as has been previously reported, SolidWorks shipped it’s one-millionth license last year to Ogio.

SOLIDWORKS IN THE CLOUD

As I mentioned in my previous article, SolidWorks showed off some new technology featuring cloud-based architecture.  They showed software running on a Mac, netbook, and iPhone; and a multi-touch interface running on a tablet.  What really blew me away was when they loaded up this huge factory assembly and instantly started doing a fly-through!  There was very slight stutter every once in a while, but it was otherwise very smooth.

According to Jeff Ray, it was all performed live, with no previously-recorded movies.  This technology has been working, he said, for the past 2 years or so, and they felt that it was now ready to be previewed.  They did not announce a release date, but Jeff said that the first aspects of cloud computing will ship later this year.  They will be showing SolidWorks talking to Enovia V6 in Wednesday’s General Session.

One of the big issues that they are trying to tackle is that CAD doesn’t really model real life.  Springs, o-rings, and the like are just some of the items we need in our models, but they don’t behave in the CAD model as they do in reality.  One of the demos they showed had them adding a spring to a jaws-of-life assembly, and it actually deformed and moved as it would in a real assembly!

KEYNOTE SPEAKER, JAMES MCLURKIN

The speaker for Monday’s General Session was James McLurkin.  Mr. McLurkin is a roboticist, inventor, researcher, and teacher at Rice University in the Computer Science Department.  The title of his presentation was “Dances With Robots: The Story of One Engineer, 112 Little Robots and the Toys, Insects, and Star Wars Movies that made it all Possible”.

He spoke about his research in swarm theory, and how those behaviors of swarms of insects can be applied to robots.  He did a demo with a swarm of 15 or so little mini robots on stage that was pretty entertaining.

I think being able to take a behavioral model from and insect species and apply it to programming for robots is amazing and brilliant; until they try to take over the world, that is! (Mr. McLurkin said that there wasn’t a robot that could pull open a door at the moment, so we should be safe for now…)

SUMMARY

I think the prospect of having the option to run your CAD software from the cloud is intriguing.  That’s right, I said option.  Jeff Ray said that there would still be a standalone solution for years to come, and that they were not going to force customers into making the decision on how they use their CAD software.  Dassault is still supporting Catia v4, and Jeff said that SolidWorks will follow that model.

DISCLOSURE:  DS SolidWorks Corp paid for my conference fee, lodging, and some meals.

At the start of the SolidWorks World 2010 General Session this morning, there were several computers on a table.  A netbook, a regular monitor, what looked to be a Wacom tablet, and some big monitor with a cloth draped around the back.  I thought to myself, “That looks like a Mac…”.

One of the cries from some of the users here lately has been about porting SolidWorks to the Mac (and also Linux).  Could it be that SolidWorks was going to announce ports to other operating systems?

As it turns out, it WAS a Mac!  And SolidWorks used it (and the other machines) to show a rare technology preview today…  Codenamed “Avalanche” (and from a quick screen view, I believe it’s called “App”), it is new cloud technology from SolidWorks.  It allows one to access data from anywhere in the cloud; all that’s required is an internet connection.  It looked pretty well fleshed out.

What excited me even more than seeing a SolidWorks product running on a Mac was what they showed on the tablet: they demoed multi-touch functionality that looked really sweet!  Add that with multiple OS support, and you can see where they are headed with this: data access anywhere, anytime.

 
And of course, they were able to run the app on the netbook and access the data from the cloud (they also showed access on an iPhone/iPod Touch).

Here is a video with Austin O’Malley and Fielder Hiss discussing the new technologies that were shown in the General Session this morning:

While I think that there are still some kinks to be worked out, and I know there are certain systems and data that can never be on the cloud, it is exciting to see this much progress already made in this direction.  Some of us think that there is a possibility of running your own server to provide a cloud for your network.  What do you think?

I will have more information on this in my article on today’s General Session.

DISCLOSURE:  DS SolidWorks Corp paid for my conference fee, lodging, and some meals.

SolidWorks 2010 has many improvements and new features that can help engineers and designers create and documents their designs more efficiently.  As is often the case in life, it’s the small things that matter, and small, simple improvements can make a big difference when designing or detailing a design.

SolidWorks seemed to have spent more time this go-around on polishing rough edges and speeding things up.  The themes for this release were user experience, reliability, and performance.

Below I have listed just a few of my favorite improvements in SolidWorks 2010 that I think can help make a big difference in improving users’ workflow:

USER INTERFACE (UI)

Consistency in PropertyManager/Graphics Area Controls

The SolidWorks 2010 PropertyManager has been made more consistent by retaining settings and values in the same commands across SolidWorks sessions and using round numbers for default values.  The control focus in the PropertyManager now transfers automatically to the next input after a selection has been made.

In the graphics area, right-clicking for ok or to advance through multiple PropertyManager controls when required works more consistently.

Mouse Gestures

Along with keyboard shortcuts and the shortcut menu (S-key), mouse gestures is yet another shortcut way to access commonly used commands.  Users can choose to have four or eight shortcuts on the mouse gesture guide, which appears by right-clicking in the graphics area and dragging the mouse to the desired command.  The gestures can be customized independently for any commands in the sketch, part, assembly, and drawing environments.  If desired, the mouse gestures guide can be deactivated by going to Tools|Customize and unchecking the option on the Mouse Gestures tab.

Heads-Up View Toolbar Customization

The heads-up toolbar can now be customized differently based on what environment you are in (modeling or drawing).  You can also choose to simply hide the toolbar.

PARTS

Multibody Part Materials

You can now assign materials to individual bodies in a multibody part.  Now users can model assemblies of say, a library assembly of a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) item, in a multibody part.  The individual body materials are honored in mass properties, drawing section views, and in SolidWorks Simulation.

Display States in Parts

SolidWorks 2010 allows Display States to be used in parts in the same way as assemblies.

Standards in Cosmetic Threads

Now, cosmetic threads can be defined using the standard sizes from the Hole Wizard database (FINALLY!).  There is a new option, Standard, in the Cosmetic Thread PropertyManager that gives users a selection of all available standards to choose from.  I know that this is a small improvement, but it’s one that I know I personally have wished for every time I’ve had to add threads manually.  The information has always been there, there just wasn’t a way to access it.

ASSEMBLIES

Make External Components Virtual

In SolidWorks 2010, external components of an assembly can now be made virtual.  Existing reference to the component is ignored, the component is renamed, and there is no link back to the original external part.  The virtualization can be done at the time of insert or after the component has been inserted into the assembly.  The only use I see for myself for this tool is converting a library assembly into a part.

Assembly Component Instance References

SolidWorks 2010 now allows users to assign different values for each component instance in an assembly.  When component instances have different reference values, they can be shown in a BOM as discrete line items and can be linked to balloon text in drawings.  This enhancement will also help immensely if you use SolidWorks Routing, as previously you needed to uncheck “Update component names when documents are replaced” in the System Options|External References dialogue to avoid issues when components were replaced.

Assembly Visualization

SolidWorks 2010 has a new tool called Assembly Visualization that enables users to display and sort components of an assembly based on custom properties.  In the image to the right, for instance, you can see the mass distribution in the components of the assembly.  This information is critical to have if trying to hit a weight bogey, and this tool helps easily identify the heavier components.  It could also be used to find a cost distribution.  The colored display is reminiscent of the SolidWorks Simulation reports, and can be customized.

Assembly Mirroring

Mirroring components within an assembly has been enhanced in SolidWorks 2010 with the addition of the MirrorComponent feature.  This new feature is added to the FeatureManager to maintain the position of all the mirrored components relative to the seed components.  It is an editable feature, and has the option to just mirror the components about the selected plane or to create opposite-hand versions as derived configurations in the mirrored components.

DRAWINGS/DETAILING

Rapid Dimension Tool

SolidWorks 2010 has a new Rapid Dimension tool that enables users to quickly add evenly-spaced dimensions to drawing views.   A glyph, called the rapid dimension manipulator, appears whenever you have selected an entity to dimension, and allows the user to place the dimension in the correct orientation, even when zoomed in tight on the view.

In addition, if you delete a dimension, SolidWorks 2010 can be set to automatically readjust the remaining dimensions to eliminate any gaps that may be created.  This setting is a document property.

Parametric Quantities on Balloons

You can now add parametric quantities to balloons in the industry-standard way as shown in the image to the right.  No more having to manually add a note, and then group it with the balloon, and having to remember to update the quantity if it changes!  The quantity can be shown to the right, left, top, or bottom of the balloon.

Annotation Attachments

New handles have been added to annotations, such as Geometric Dimensioning & Tolerancing (GD&T) and surface finish symbols, that make it easier to attach and detach annotations to other annotations and dimension witness lines.

Drawing Center Mark Improvements

SolidWorks 2010 will now add a gap between center marks and dimension witness lines, whether the holes were dimensioned before adding the center mark, or dimensioning a hole with a center mark already placed.  Previously, you would have to add the center mark and then dimension to that instead of the hole to have the witness lines show the gap.  By dimensioning to the hole, the center mark can be deleted without leaving the dimension dangling.

Dimension Palette

SolidWorks 2010 now has a new heads-up dimension palette that appears whenever you insert a new dimension or select an existing dimension.  It lets the user access most of the formatting options available in the Dimension PropertyManager without having to mouse over to the side of the screen.

Notes Improvements

In SolidWorks 2010, borders can now be added to selected portions of notes.  This should make referencing flag notes and the like easier to format.  In addition, you can now drag notes into other notes, and they will be appended to the end of the note.  In the case of numbered drawing notes, the dragged note will take on the next sequential number.

GENERAL/OTHER

Reference Planes

SolidWorks 2010 allows creation of more types of reference planes, such as mid-plane (FINALLY!).  The interface has changed somewhat and may take a little getting used to.  New users should have no trouble picking it up, but old-timers may have a little trouble with it, as you don’t get the various plane options until something is selected.  After a selection is made, it then shows the available plane options and attempts to choose the option best-suited to what has been selected.  At first, I was kind of turned off by the new interface, but after using it for a while, it grew on me and I found it quite intuitive and it generally seemed to select the plane option I was after.

Online Help

Starting with SolidWorks 2010, the Help file system is now hosted online.  Now, the help files can be updated on an as-need basis instead of waiting for a service pack.  It should also help with localization.  And expect more resources to be available in the future.  For systems that cannot be connected to the Internet, the standalone files will still be delivered during installation.

Multibody Sheet Metal Parts

SolidWorks 2010 adds functionality to sheet metal parts by adding multibody support.  Now, you can have sheet metal and weldment parts in one file!

You can also perform sheet metal operations on two separate bodies and combine them by adding an edge flange between them (provided, of course, that both bodies have the same thickness).  In addition, you can now use the Mirror Part command on sheet metal parts.

Find Similar Material

I have posted previously about the new SolidWorks SustainabilityXpress and Sustainability products, and the Find Similar Material tool included with it looks to have real potential.  Even if you aren’t interested in designing green with sustainability in mind, this tool can still come in handy.  Every version of SolidWorks comes with SustainabilityXpress, so check it out!

SUMMARY

Of course, this isn’t a complete list.  It’s just the new features and improvements that impressed me the most and the ones that I think will help me become more proficient in my work.

To see more of what’s new in SolidWorks 2010, you can access the What’s New in SolidWorks Version 2010 document at Ricky Jordan’s What’s New Guides repository.

Some images courtesy of SolidWorks and the What’s New in SolidWorks Version 2010 document.