SolidWorks Helps Users Get SWIFT with CAD

SolidWorks 2008's SWIFT technology fosters CAD user productivity and reduces the overhead of learning CAD

Beth Stackpole, Contributing Editor -- Design News, September 22, 2008

Golden Mousetrap Winner Hardware Software

CAD SOFTWARE
SOLIDWORKS 2008,
SOLIDWORKS CORP.

With this major new upgrade, SolidWorks continues to make sophisticated CAD and 3-D modeling functionality available to the broader design chain beyond its traditional base of hardcore CAD jockeys.

The SolidWorks 2008 upgrade delivers more than 250 enhancements, among them interface improvements and additions to the SolidWorks Intelligent Feature Technology (SWIFT), all designed to foster productivity among engineers and CAD users along with reducing the overhead of learning CAD. The new SWIFT Instant3D capabilities, for instance, let users perform expert 3-D CAD operations by dragging and selecting pieces of a design while new visualization functions enable users to drag handles to select areas of a design for real-time editing. The 2008 release does away with a lot of the standard dialogs, input fields and esoteric commands common to CAD packages, instead enabling users to select faces and drag them to on-screen rules to determine exact values.

To promote reuse among engineers, SolidWorks 2008 has more powerful search functions for locating SolidWorks or DWG files on the network in the PDMWorks PDM system or out on the Web. There is also a preponderance of features intended to bridge the gap between designers and manufacturing personnel, the goal being to reduce lead times on delivering products. One such capability, DFMXpress, is a validation tool that identifies geometry that's overly expensive or difficult to manufacture, helping development teams rule out flawed designs much earlier in the process. New simulation capabilities delivered through the COSMOSWorks Design Insight module help engineers identify areas in a design that are over-engineered as part of an effort to reduce materials costs.

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