Solidworks 2022 has launched with a myriad of new enhancements that it says have been developed to let designers work smarter by focusing on high-value activities while letting the system handle more repetitive, routine and time-consuming tasks.
“Technologies change. Competition increases. The need for fast, nimble and error-free product development steadily grows,” says the opening gambit of the Solidworks 2022 sales blurb, but this could equally be said of its own software, and for 2022 the Dassault Systèmes says it has added much to make its system respond faster.
Modern processing power has been harnessed with Solidworks 2022 handing key updates to its simulation and visualisation units.
As an example, Solidworks Simulation 2022 sees the addition of background enhancements to aid speed, along with a new default curvature-based mesher – which adds to speed, but which can also be made coarser in order to solve even faster.
Demos show a speed increase over the 2021 version of 27 per cent, although up to 30 per cent improvements should be possible.
As Solidworks CEO Gian Paolo Bassi exclaimed at the media launch: “Nobody has time anymore – A-to-B no longer exists!” adding that “we will never have enough simulation.”
Solidworks Visualise receives improvements via Match Camera and Shadow Catcher, which adds impressive enhancements on its previous abilities through more realistic shadows and lighting.
The modelling side of the software also sees further features added to Solidworks’ Hybrid Modeling [sic], which offer to help designers work with mesh geometry more efficiently by letting users combine BREP geometry – regular native Solidworks designed elements – onto mesh data.
Solidworks says this approach combines the speed advantages of using mesh data with the accuracy and parametric features offered by solid modelling.
An impressive list of modelling enhancements have been added to this release, all with the aim of speeding up processes and streamlining workflows. One that stands out is the inclusion of a new Stud Wizard feature to create external threads quickly and easily, complete with new cosmetic thread graphics. Improvements to working graphics is another simple win, where 3D textures reveal themselves faster, and silhouette performance is increased.
3DExperience integration looks to take another step forward in Solidworks 2022, with the development team citing integration as taking up almost a similar amount of their R&D timeframe as feature enhancements.
3DExperience Works, both on the cloud and on platform, sees a healthy amount of progress, with 3D Sculptor, a cloud-based Sub-D modelling tool “for every product designer with an internet connection” showing some fast conceptualising abilities before users can then take those ideas straight into Solidworks.
3DExperience Works’ sheet metal tools have also bee developed since their introduction in 2020, with the tailored environment meaning its developers have been able to make it more intuitive to use.
Other key 3DExperience integration is to be found in the linking of Solidworks with Dassault Systèmes’ more feature laden simulation software Simulia.
While for some, Dassault’s quest for “barrier-free communication and collaboration” might be creeping away from the meat and potatoes of how they currently use Solidworks on a daily basis, yet the 2022 release has plenty on its menu for improving existing workflows, including improvements to BOM, faster imports and greater ability to manage large, complex assemblies. The full list of all that’s new can be found here.
