With green design a hot button issue for product development, SolidWorks Sustainability goes a long way in helping engineers inject sustainable design practices into their core workflows with minimal disruption and without having to consult an environmental expert or master a whole new set of engineering principles and best practices.

The module, which is tightly integrated into the core SolidWorks CAD system, allows design teams to measure the environmental impact of products over their lifecycle, providing real-time feedback on such factors as carbon footprint, total energy consumption, effect on water and effect on air. The software considers the lifecycle assessment of a product, from raw material extraction to manufacturing through product use and disposal, guiding engineers in making design choices that will have an optimal impact on the environment.

Using dashboard displays, SolidWorks Sustainability in real time presents a current design alongside a baseline comparison - and includes a percent contribution - giving engineers a clear picture of the environmental impact of design choices as they evolve their work. A visualization tool color-codes parts based on their total environmental impact for additional context. Instead of the traditional approach where engineers search databases and manually compare material properties for a particular design effort, the SolidWorks software evaluates individual part models and automatically suggests "like" materials along with their environmental impact, giving engineers a much more natural and accessible approach for trade-off analysis. There are also fully customized reporting capabilities, which allow engineers to present the sustainability data along with their design choices in a format that can easily be understood and communicated to colleagues as well as upper management. For more information, go tohttp://designnews.hotims.com/27742-542.