Find out What's New in SOLIDWORKS 2015 with these Top 10 enhancements from Alan, 90% of which have been from customer enhancement requests.
As usual I've been participating in the SOLIDWORKS Beta
program this year and found lots of great new features and am pleased to find
many I remember requesting in the past. In fact 90% of the new functions this
year are from customer enhancement requests.
We are running SOLIDWORKS 2015 Launch Events all over the country to show you what’s new in person but if you
can’t wait until then below are just some of my personal favourites amongst
hundreds of enhancements.
1. Sketching-Spline
across Multiple surfaces
The Spline on surface command has been completely reworked
to make it more robust and workconsistently across multiple faces.
2.
Sketching
– Line From Midpoint
Starting a line from a midpoint is great for
capturing symmetry and now it needs less clicks
3.
Features - Equal Spacing for Linear Patterns
Pick a reference and a number of instances or spacing
between instances and SOLIDWORKS does the rest.
4.
Features
– Asymmetric (elliptical) Fillets
We now allow elliptical profile fillets
with similar controls to the chamfer tool. These can be simple elliptical
profiles or controlled with a conic rho value.
5.
Features-
Flatten Surface
We can now flatten surfaces bodies with
compound curvature In SOLIDWORKS Premium i.e. beyond simple cylinders, cones
etc.
6.
Drawings-
Angle dimensions without having to add extra construction lines-
Simply pick an angled line then a corner point,
SOLIDWORKS will present 4 arrows to allow you to pick the direction you
require.
7.
Drawings
& Assemblies – Open Part in Position
We've always been able to open a
part from a drawing or assembly by selecting it but now we can open it in the
same orientation as it is in our current drawing or assembly view.
8.
Assemblies -
Width Limit Mates
Usually width mate will center a component in between two
surfaces, now we have the ability to allow it to slide but keep in within the
limits of those faces. (you can also specify a fixed percent or distance along)
9.
Assemblies-
Profile Centre Mate
Common
shapes such as rectangles, cylinders can now be aligned using a single mate,
optionally specifying a vertical offset.
10.
Assemblies -
Moving Chains using Chain pattern.
SOLIDWORKS 2014 added the curve driven
pattern in assemblies now extending from this we can do chain patterns with
movement either connected or a distance apart.
SOLIDWORKS 2015 is currently in pre-release form so we’d
advise holding off a little longer until
SOLIDWORKS 2015 SP0 is released, currently scheduled for October. Again to see
these tools plus many more enhancements in depth please register for one of our
Launch Events
Alan Sweetenham
Elite Applications Engineer