New user interface, features and enhanced capabilities for design in the age of experience.

Powered by Dassault Systèmes’ 3DExperience platform, SolidWorks 2016’s integrated 3D design environment covers all aspects of product development. New user-requested enhancements include the ability to flatten any surface, visualise and help validate design performance, more efficiently communicate with manufacturing, quickly create marketing-quality images, and more easily access commands. With these and hundreds of other new capabilities, including an improved user interface, designers and engineers can focus on their designs, solve complex problems, streamline parallel design processes and fast-track designs through manufacturing.

The following are some of the top user-requested features, new products, and enhancements included in the SolidWorks 2016 portfolio:

Focus on design, not software
Accelerate the design process, reduce time and effort to achieve desired geometry, increase modeling flexibility and easily access commands with the following features:

• Curvature continuous edge fillets—create super smooth blends or “curvature continuous” fillets faster than ever before for all fillet types, including asymmetric and variable sizes.
• Sweep command— create complex swept shapes faster than before with better, more reliable and predictable results, and automatically create swept circular profiles in sections, with bi-directional sweeps in either or both directions.
• Thread wizard—accurately model standard and custom-defined threads with one quick and easy-to-use command.
• Breadcrumbs—quickly and easily access any model without viewing the Feature Tree and reduce mouse travel with the breadcrumb in the cursor.

Solve complex problems quickly
Make analysis more efficient to help solve complex problems, visualise and verify functionality, and find potential errors before they occur:

• Innovative design simulation tools—greater control and insight over operation sequencing, loads, part movements, forces needed and mesh quality result in reliable performance data.
• Flatten everything—quickly and easily flatten the most complex geometry for manufacturing, easily identify strains induced when forming shapes back onto 3D surfaces, and introduce relief cuts for the flat pattern to alleviate excessive stretch/compression.

Streamline the parallel design process
Communicate, collaborate, and work concurrently across teams, disciplines, customers, and vendors with mechatronic design, concurrent design, and streamlined electrical/mechanical design:

• Mate Controller—similar to a game controller, easily and intuitively create and animate complicated assembly motion with calculation, control, and visualisation features.
• eDrawings—improve collaboration and communication of designs throughout product development by consistently measuring designs, navigating between documents and more accurately visualising models.

Below is a selection of the 200 users and company personnel that attended the launch of SolidWorks 2016, in South Africa, held at Bytes Conference Centre, Midrand, Gauteng.

For more information contact the local agent Mecad Systems on TEL: 086 111 2236 or visit the website www.mecad.co.za.

Minette van der Walt and Charl Coetzer, both of MIS Engineering

Donavin Smith, Ricardo Loureiro, Wade van Heerden and Jaco van Genderen, all of Regent Lighting Solutions

Andrew Leeburn, Kuene Labuschagne and Richard Buckley, all of Scamont Engineering

Michael Schildhauer and Heinrich Wichmann, both of Mechcal, with Robert Milne (centre) of Mecad Systems

Lourens Pienaar, Steyn Roux and Leon van der Walt, all of Powertech Transformers

Richard Pauck and Kim White, both of Southern Implants, with Detlev Borner of Walter Meano Engineering

Carlos de Oliveira and Bryan Baney, both of Driconeq, with Freek van der Berg and Hannes Pretorius, both of Mecad Systems