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In every major release of SOLIDWORKS, there will be countless enhancements and hundreds of pages of release notes. There will always be some key new features and improvements that take the spotlight, but often it’s the little changes that can make a big difference in your workflow and user experience. So, here are a few of the lesser known “hidden gems” that were introduced in SOLIDWORKS 2020.

SOLIDWORKS understands that engineering is a process of constant improvement. Their software reflects this philosophy and every year more and more features are added to improve the user experience. We always cover the major changes in our roll out presentations, but sometimes there are hidden gems that you might not have heard about.  In today’s article, I go over some of those gems from SOLIDWORKS 2019.

As an experienced SOLIDWORKS user, I know sometimes there are frustrating situations throughout my design process. I have found myself making up excuses or justifications when including explode lines to my explored view; have been unable to mate two sets of holes that are not perfectly concentric and have questioned why my assemblies are slow. If like me, you’ve found yourself in any of these situations, then this blog article is for you. I will share with you some of my favorite features from SOLIDWORKS 2018 onward that have helped increase my productivity. These features will allow you to retire your clever workarounds for workflows you might use daily or during specific phases of your projects.

Every year, there is excitement and anticipation within the engineering and designing community as SOLIDWORKS releases new enhancements and features for the software. At TriMech, we have made it a tradition to put together a list to highlight our top favorite enhancements. With all the excitement it's sometimes easy to forget about previous updates that continue to make our lives easier and allow us to get the job done quicker. I wanted to take a trip down memory lane and refresh the updates from SOLIDWORKS 2017 and later that still impact our design experience as we use SOLIDWORKS. While there are a lot out there, I am going to highlight some of my favorites for you here.

Whenever a holiday comes around, I like to get creative in SOLIDWORKS as you can see from a previous article I created for Halloween a few years ago. For Independence Day, I wanted to raise the flag in SOLIDWORKS! This provided a great opportunity for me to create a rendering and show you the differences between PhotoView360, SOLIDWORKS Visualize Standard and Visualize Professional.

Dark or light? No, we’re not talking coffee here. We’re talking about the SOLIDWORKS UI. For years now, there’s been the option to change the color of the interface as well as the icons. This functionality was introduced to SOLIDWORKS 2016. Before we talk about a light or dark interface let’s first talk about the icons.

Routing is an add-in to SOLIDWORKS Premium that allows engineers and designers to create routed systems easily and automatically. Through Routing, you can generate wire, harness, cable and conduit designs and drawings to take advantage of cut lists and complete bills of materials (BOMs) and speed up their manufacturing process.

TriMech is fortunate to work with clients from Maine to Florida and out to Arkansas, offering a range of engineering solutions. This week's client story showcases how TriMech's Project Engineering Group helped the Ben Bronz Academy with their keyboard devices.

SOLIDWORKS is updated every year to provide users with the best experience and tools. Revision table support was introduced in SOLIDWORKS PDM with the release of SOLIDWORKS 2018. In this blog article, we look at how to use integrated revision tables and how to take advantage of this feature as you manage data across your company.

SOLIDWORKS Toolbox is a library of fasteners and supplier standard components, fully integrated into SOLIDWORKS Professional and Premium. It provides easy access to your frequently used parts and the ability to customize to your companies standards. 

Our world is a highly nonlinear and dynamic 3D domain. To develop products that are of high quality and robust to survive the real-world conditions, it is important to test the product’s behavior and performance prior to manufacturing. Simultaneously, there is the need to accelerate product innovation and cut down the time to market. This is where simulation technology for virtual testing can help you remain ahead of your competition.

Like a lot of people right now, I’ve been working from home and wearing home-made face masks to help slow the spread of COVID-19 whenever I go out on essential errands. I thought it would be interesting to use a tool like SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation to see the difference these kinds of masks can make. Contrary to what you may think, it is surprisingly easy to set up these types of simulations. I hope this article will help remove some of that intimidation and encourage you to experiment as well.