Gian Paolo Bassi, CEO of SolidWorks, commented: “More than 90 percent of SolidWorks 2016 enhancements directly resulted from our community’s valued feedback, including their need to work faster and easier. As the next generation of products emerges, SolidWorks advanced capabilities help millions of design professionals, educators, students and ‘makers’ efficiently innovate in product design, simulation, technical communication and data management.”
Included in these customer-led improvements are: Curvature Continuous Edge Fillets — quickly creating smooth blends or ‘curvature continuous’ fillets for all fillet types, including asymmetric and variable sizes; Thread Wizard — accurately model standard and custom-defined threads with one quick and easy-to-use command; Breadcrumbs — easily access any model without viewing the Feature Tree and reduce mouse travel with the breadcrumb in the cursor.
Another interesting feature is called ‘Flatten Everything’ (see picture) and allows complex geometry to be flattened for manufacturing. It identifies strains induced when forming shapes back onto 3D surfaces, and introduces relief cuts for the flat pattern to alleviate excessive stretch/compression.
At the launch there was also a sneak preview of SolidWorks Visualize, a high quality graphics solution that will be released in February 2016.
