Top Ten Enhancements in SOLIDWORKS CAD 2024

Top Ten Enhancements in SOLIDWORKS CAD 2024

SOLIDWORKS 2024 contains new, user-driven enhancements focused on helping you work smarter, faster—together. With each release we base enhancements on several factors.

Let the count down to the number one feature begin!

#10 SOLIDWORKS Visualize – create compelling appearances with more advanced real-life rendering capabilities. Wow. Look at the rendering below. It sure does capture the look and feel of fall. That’s just a sample of what you can do to deliver more-realistic renderings with the latest updates in SOLIDWORKS Visualize. Enhancements enable you to:

• Select appearance types and optimize their parameters more easily with a simplified interface.
• Adjust textures and texture maps for parameters, with greater control and fidelity.
• Combine normal and displacement maps and apply vector displacement

#9 SOLIDWORKS MBD – Communicate your design more clearly downstream. Using model-based definition on your 3D models to communicate design specs is definitely a growing practice so I’d highly recommend checking out SOLIDWORKS MBD if you haven’t yet. This year there’s been many updates that improve communication downstream to manufacturing with new MBD capabilities in SOLIDWORKS MBD. A few of the updates include the ability to:

• Export a hole table when you publish a part to 3D PDF.
• Edit the dangling dimensions to reattach them to a feature in the model.
• Export custom properties from a part or assembly to the STEP 242 format.

#8 SOLIDWORKS Electrical – create more informative documentation faster. Better performance is always at the top of everyone’s list and with SOLIDWORKS Electrical you can expect just that. Key enhancements enable you to:

• Insert auto balloons in SOLIDWORKS Electrical 2D cabinet layout drawings.
• Shorten lists using ranges. In report configuration, when you merge rows, the software lists consecutive values as a range for merged rows instead of listing each individual value in the range.
• Automatically reset undefined macro variables with Excel automation.

#7 Routing – handle more complex electrical routing scenarios with new options for flattening, reorienting, and displaying wires and connectors. Tackle more complex projects with new options for flattening, reorienting, and displaying wires and connectors. Enhancements include:

• A new option to update only the current 3D electrical route.
• The ability to add electrical routes as either single segments or as groups of discrete wires in electrical bundles.

#6 Structure System – build and modify complex structures faster with less effort. Create weldments faster with fewer modifications with the new corner treatments. In addition, you can:

• Speed up the editing and management of corner treatments with the ability to group similar corners and apply treatments automatically or manually.
• Automatically create an open corner for the addition of a connection block with a new corner treatment option.

#5 Sheet Metal – save time and meet manufacturing standards more easily. For sheet metal design you can use the new Rip tool to create rips in hollow or thin-walled cylindrical and conical bodies. Simply by selecting an edge on a cylindrical or conical face, you can flatten the part as sheet metal. Other top enhancements for sheet metal include:

• Normal Cut option for slots when tabs are created at an angle.
• Automatically propagate slots to all instances of a tab that intersects a specific part.

#4 Drawings and Detailing – Create drawings that communicate designs more clearly. Make sure your design intent is crystal clear with new options and detail drawings faster with improved chain dimensioning alignment and adherence to drawing standards. Other top enhancements include the ability to:

• Clean up dangling dimensions more efficiently by reattaching them to the proper reference points.
• Exclude hidden sketches from DXF™ Flat-Pattern with a new option.

#3 Parts and Features – speed up sketching and capture design intent more clearly. SOLIDWORKS 2024 includes a new option to preview and edit a dimension as soon as you select one or more entities. In addition, you can:

• Create bidirectional, symmetric patterns with the Symmetric option for Linear Pattern.
• Display the unit of measurement as a custom property in notes and tables

#2 Assemblies – new workflows speed up large assembly design, documentation, and collaboration. Simplify your design in fewer steps to improve performance and protect your intellectual property. Defeature your model with the Defeature Silhouette option using rules which can be based on criteria such as custom property, mass property, and file name. You can also:

• Represent post-assembly machining operations in SOLIDWORKS with Insert Assembly into Part.
• Simplify assembly STEP file import with the ability to filter out unwanted components on the fly.

And the number one enhancement of the year is…

#1 Previous Release Compatibility – collaborate more efficiently with other users who have older versions of SOLIDWORKS. You’ve been asking for this one and in SOLIDWORKS 2024 we have delivered. This new capability is a game changer as it lets you collaborate with anyone who is using an older version of SOLIDWORKS by saving your files as a previous SOLIDWORKS release.

That wraps up this year’s top ten enhancements, but another big thing I want to mention that was done this year is the availability of Cloud Services, providing all SOLIDWORKS users access to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, now available to all newly purchased desktop licenses.

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