SolidWorks 2010 Select the right product for your business

The SolidWorks user interface underpins everything you do. This intuitive and logical interface works the way you would expect it to, enabling ease of use and rapid learning from infrequent to experienced users.

Solid geometry often starts with sketching a profile or shape. SolidWorks enables you to sketch quickly, adding geometric constraints and dimensions to control the size. Excellent tools give visual feedback, ensuring predicatble changes. Sketch can be combined in blocks to simulate mechanisms, belts and pulleys.

Part Modelling forms the foundation for building simple to the most complex parts. Design parts as they will be positioned in the assembly to manage relationships to other parts. Sketch in 2D and then extrude, revolve, blend or sweep the section along a path to create any 3D geometry. Edit by merely clicking and dragging geometry, or by clicking and changing dimensions. Time saving features such as holes, bosses, fillets, chamfers, slots, keyways, o-ring grooves, louvers and ribs are also provided. Drag/drop, pattern, copy and mirror features to eliminate repetitive modeling tasks.

SolidWorks gives you the tools to get it right on screen when you create assemblies;saving the time and cost of physical prototypes and remanufacturing. Mate components by picking individual surfaces, edges, curves, and vertices. Create mechanical relationships between components. Conduct interference, collision, and hole alignment checks. Link motion of pulleys and sprockets. Automatically assemble fasteners and accompanying hardware. Automate assembly of commonly used components, appropriate hardware, and required features. Use MateXpert to fix conflicts such as over-constraining a component.

Simply by clicking and dragging components, you can check an assembly for proper motion and collisions. In addition, you can simulate physical motion involving assembly mates, contact, springs, and gravity, as well as create, edit and save video animations.

Use “Lightweight” mode to reduce time spent opening and working on large assemblies. Speedpak technology enables simplified versions of assemblies to be created that speeds assembly operations and drawing creation. Use Quick View to select and open just the components you need to work on. Analyze and improve your assembly’s performance using the AssemblyXpert.

Develop production-ready engineering drawings that automatically reference the 3D part so that drawing views and bills of materials update each time that you modify the part or assembly design. In addition, you can use DWGeditor to maintain and update all your existing DWG drawing files.

Improve the aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability of your product designs. Using the Freeform feature, creating new geometry or importing and manipulating new surfaces is easy and intuitive.

Create sheet metal parts from scratch using folds, bends, flanges, rips, tabs, mitres, lofted bends, sketched bends, hems and more. Alternatively, create a solid shape as starting point then use advanced capabilities such as ‘convert solid-to-sheetmetal’ functionality to develop a manufacturable sheet metal part.

Sketch a layout for your frame and select a weldment profile, then SolidWorks will automatically generate a weldment design in 3D. Modify, validate, reinforce your design then enhance it with standard parts that you can drag & drop from the Design Library and/or 3D ContentCentral. Then, generate precise manufacturing drawings with cut lengths for all segments

Easily import and use existing data, as well as data from external sources. SolidWorks includes translators that support DWG, DXF™, Pro/ENGINEER®, IPT (Autodesk Inventor®), Mechanical Desktop®, Unigraphics®, PAR (Solid Edge™), CADKEY®, IGES, STEP, Parasolid, SAT (ACIS), VDA-FS, VRML, STL, TIFF, JPG, Adobe® Illustrator®, Rhino®, IDF, and HSF (Hoops) formats.

Leverage your successful designs to create compelling proposals for new ones. Quickly search for pre-existing components in your own custom design library, then simply drag and drop them into your new designs.

Significant time savings result when you use SolidWorks to automatically generate a complete Bill of Materials (BOM) from your design. Your BOM is associative: When you change your design, the BOM updates automatically, and vice versa. Plus, you can export the BOM data to Excel, ERP, and other applications.

SolidWorks Simulation Xpress tools help both new users and experts to ensure your design is durable, safe, and manufacturable..

You can use SolidWorks FloXpress to optimize your designs for water and air flow effects.

Save time with SolidWorks Smart Component technology to automate the selection and insertion of standard components and DriveWorksXpress to automate repetitive design tasks and provide configurability of your design, allowing the quick creation of several variants from a single design

Drive new design variants with rules based on your existing designs, to very quickly produce new parts/assemblies and drawings. Easy to use Design configuration.

Collaborate more effectively by creating eDrawings files that can be reviewed and marked-up. Let an unlimited number of recipients mark-up and provide feedback on product designs

Create exciting AVI files of SolidWOrks parts and assemblies. Observe in real time how moving parts interact as true solids and document product assembly processes

In SolidWorks, you can import any of the major CAD formats including IGES, STEP, Parasolid and ACIS to begin your mold designs. Complete your mold design using specialised mold design features such as parting lines and surfaces, and core/cavity splitting as well as specialized plastic part design features such as shrinkage, draft, ribs, fastening features and lip and groove features. Automatically check for draft angle, undercuts and thickness to ensure that parts are really ready for manufacturing.

Visualise and communicate your designs more clearly than ever. Without rendering, you can quickly create nearly lifelike, fully dynamic representations of your parts, assemblies, and completed products.

There’s no need to start from scratch when you want to transition a 2D drawing to a 3D model. SolidWorks includes data translation tools along with help documentation for AutoCAD users, so you can smoothly convert DWG files into 3D models. Alternatively, use DWGeditor®—included with SolidWorks software—to edit, manipulate and maintain existing AutoCAD® DWG files in their native format

Learning about designing for the environment now will put you ahead of the curve. With SolidWorks Sustainability, you’ll have the built-in environmental intelligence to make more informed decisions about what materials to use. You’ll also see how region-specific material sourcing, manufacturing, use, and disposal will affect your product’s life cycle before manufacturing begins.

Use PhotoWorks and PhotoView 360 to leverage your SolidWorks 3D models for presentations, proposals, and virtual and material studies—before creating any parts. Save time and eliminate the high costs of prototyping and photography.

Determine the cost of manufacturing your design to allow you to make decisions accordingly. View a real-time total and itemised cost for your design to help optimise your designs.

Protect your product design data with secure, managed access to authorised individuals. In addition to internal users, you can also permit access to partners, customers and your supply chain. Help your design team avoid overwriting files and help purchasing and manufacturing order and produce the correct parts, every time. Find Files Quickly and easily find SolidWorks files by searching on metadata (Custom Properties). Easy to use, easy to configure system suitable for smaller workgroups.

Extend the power of E drawings, by allowing the receipient to measure, markup, section and provide feedback on your designs.

Raise your quality level with SolidWorks Design Checker. With thorough, automated checks and autocorrect capability, you can ensure full compliance with your company standards before you release your designs for manufacture

SolidWorks Utilities enables the designer to do many things including compare parts or drawings to find differences between two similar designs or similar drawings. FeatureWorks streamlines use of data from different CAD systems to work together

With SolidWorks Toolbox, you have instant access to thousands of pre-built SolidWorks models of standard hardware such as bolts and screws, bearings, o-rings, gears, etc. Just drag and drop them into your design, or use the SmartFasteners capability to automatically assemble and size fasteners.

Perform resource intensive tasks automatically. Schedule Batch printing, generate drawings and run custom programs

Create and publish live web pageswith 3D Interactive content. Share and manage access to designs easily internally and externally.

Study the interactions of assembly components onscreen, before incurring the costs of physical prototypes. Accurately simulate static or dynamic loads to evaluate your design’s performance under stress, strain, and displacement.

Apply a wide variety of physics-based models to simulate real-world operating conditions for your design. Check for colliding parts. Output numerical and graphic data of the results, as well as animations of your tests.

Use CircuitWorks, a bi-directional ECAD translator, to ensure the fit and function of printed circuit boards (PCBs) into electrical and mechanical products.

Automate and accelerate the process of routing tubes, pipes, electrical cables, cable harnesses, and electrical conduits with SolidWorks Routing. ECAD to MCAD Integration.

TolAnalyst allows tolerance stack-up analysis directly inside SolidWorks, and analyses designs based on the order and manner in which parts are assembled, as well as DimXpert-applied dimensions and tolerances. Determine if your design meets fit and function requirements without tedious and error-prone hand calculations

Import digital scans of handcrafted models into SolidWorks using ScanTo3D. You can also import design concepts created in Rhino software or sketches developed in Adobe Illustrator.