Focus on Speed and Collaboration Enables Design Teams to Work More Productively and Profitably

CONCORD, Mass. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — September 1, 2010 — Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp. (DS SolidWorks) today unveiled the SolidWorks^® 2011 product line, delivering new ways to speed product design, deepen collaboration, and strengthen designers’ engagement with manufacturing.

The new SolidWorks 2011 family of products includes hundreds of improvements requested by customers who use SolidWorks every day to design new products, validate their performance, communicate with partners, manage design data, and minimize a product’s impact on the environment.

"In addition to refinements throughout, SolidWorks 2011’s new CAD and PDM capabilities will enable our engineering groups to intelligently tackle new challenges in the design of our products and production systems," said Janine D. Essex, global product line manager for the SolidWorks application at Robert Bosch LLC, a leading global technology and services company. “We’re expecting measurable, improved, and enhanced productivity throughout our customer base.”

“There are big changes,” said Robert Teele, lead mechanical designer for Nuvera Fuel Cells, a clean energy products company in Billerica, Mass. “Our production and marketing departments, for example, are eager to use the new walk-through animation capability to explore our equipment designs and our custom on-site installations with customers.”

Work faster and smarter

The more quickly you can move a great new product to market – and that pressure continues to intensify – the greater the success for everyone involved. SolidWorks has always focused on this imperative and continues to do so in SolidWorks 2011, which includes the following highlights:

• New drawing detailing functions in SolidWorks CAD software eliminate the time and effort of manual dimensioning. Users can automatically align, stagger, or center dimensions in a single click without any overlap. Drawings look cleaner and more professional than ever with just a few clicks.
• New 2D Simplification helps speed up parts analysis. Users simply select an intersecting plane and apply the loads and restraints to perform static, nonlinear, pressure vessel, and thermal studies. SolidWorks Simulation instantly calculates the results and displays them on the full 3D model – with no waiting.
• A new Electronics Cooling Module lets users set up and execute thermal simulations quickly and easily, helping ensure that heat doesn’t melt a product’s electronics. A new HVAC module works the same way for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. Expanded part libraries now include fans, materials, two-resistor components, and integrated circuit packages. New analysis variables include local air quality, ambient temperature, and Joule heating.
• A new menu bar in SolidWorks Enterprise PDM product data management software speeds access to key designs. The menu bar, which slips right into Windows Explorer, combines the simplicity of Windows with the benefits of an enterprise data strategy for improved collaboration, control, and reuse of valuable design information.

All SolidWorks 2011 products improve speed and reliability by using memory more efficiently when working with large designs and during prolonged work sessions.

Deepen communication and collaboration

The better key stakeholders grasp intent and direction of a design from the start, the smoother the journey to the finished product. That’s why DS SolidWorks consistently improves SolidWorks’ powerful collaboration and visualization capabilities.

• New in SolidWorks 2011, for example, is the ability to more easily create compelling photorealistic renderings in PhotoView 360. It is now fully integrated into SolidWorks CAD software, creating a single, unified environment for design and rendering.
• For an immersive experience, SolidWorks users can lead their customers through designs using new Walk-Through capabilities. Users can easily navigate their design visions via their mouse or an onscreen console — no preset paths are required.
• SolidWorks customers can also work more closely with partners by sending them detailed designs — but not too detailed. The new Defeature tool facilitates the removal of unnecessary detail or sensitive intellectual property before sharing.
• For improved communication beyond the design team, 3DVIA Composer technical communication software, introduces a dynamic, interactive, “storyboard” capability that helps customers deliver process instructions through interactive images. Users can create a step-by-step linked narrative for recipients, such as a colleague in manufacturing, a prospect considering a big contract, or a consumer actually using the product. Users simply drag and drop views to create interactive procedures that are clear and effective. Magnetic lines are another innovative feature that increases productivity by neatly organizing content with minimal clicks.