SolidWorks:Heard! - Episode 292 - 2011 What's New - Assemblies, CircuitWorks, Configs & Design Checker

2011 What's New - Assemblies, CircuitWorks, Configs & Design Checker:

This podcast is an audio version of the What's New PDF included with every major release of SolidWorks. Topics covered:

Assemblies:

- Assembly Features & Visualization 

- Defeature for Assemblies

- Equations

- Interference Detection

- Mates

- Rebuild Report

- SpeedPak

CircuitWorks:

- User-defined Coordinates for Component Orientation

- Interface & Workflow Improvements

- Comparing Boards

- Export to PADS PowerPCB Format

Configurations:

- Configuration Publisher

- Modify Configurations

- Parameters

- SpeedPak

Design Checker:

- Building checks from SolidWorks Files

- File location, dimension precision, feature positioning & standard template checks

- Design Checker Report

- Summary report for Task Scheduler

- Design Checker Task in Enterprise PDM

This covers chapters 5-8 of the What's New PDF which outlines changes/enhancements to the SolidWorks product line since the previous release.  If you have not done so, please download this PDF and walk through the areas that are most important to you.

The goal of this series is to provide a portable, audio version of the 2011 What's New so users can have a quick way to evaluate the features that have been changed/added/removed in SolidWorks' product line.  We all fall victim to the "ruts" of using SolidWorks and knowing what's to come brings awareness early.

I will be releasing an additional show a week as well as the usual monthly Tech News shows (up to 3 a week) in order to cover the entire What's New PDF in September before FCS (First Customer Ship). Between the podcast, blog and other posts around the web, there will be no shortage of SolidWorks 2011 content to come! ~Lou

Remember to check out the SolidWorks: Heard! Blog and to follow me on Twitter, Facebook and THE HEaRD!

SolidWorks:Heard! - Episode 288 - SolidWorks PDM Integrations

SolidWorks PDM Integrations:

This podcast covers the "out of the box" integration with some of the core features and gold partner add-ins with both SolidWorks Workgroup and Enterprise PDM. Topics covered:

- Compare Utilities (Drawings, Documents, Geometry, Features, BOM)

- Workgroup PDM issues with Compare tools in Windows 7 and Vista. (SPR 419281 & 335748)

- SolidWorks Revision Tables

- SolidWorks Toolbox

- SolidWorks Design Library

- CircuitWorks Libraries

- DriveWorks Pro 6 & 7

Over the years I have talked about PDM and the various tools in SolidWorks that can talk to PDM but I wanted to highlight some of the tight integration attributes for the SolidWorks user.  Many of the compare tools have been able to take advantage of the version/revisions within the PDM environment.  Workgroup PDM has always been the highly integrated option for SolidWorks users but Enterprise has really taken the lead in the past couple of releases.

Despite the advances, Enterprise PDM still lacks some of the tool-specific integaration like Workgroup into the compare tools, revision tables and the design library.  With the adoption of Windows 7 (starting with Vista), almost all the compare tools are no longer available to Workgroup PDM due to the lack of the vault browser (located on the left side of Windows Explorer in the File Open dialog).  This has been missing now since SolidWorks 2007 Pre release, when Vista was in testing, and officially was supported with SolidWorks 2008.  I am surprised this has not been remedied to date since the only workaround is to check out one version, save a copy, and repeat for another version to compare.  This approach side steps PDM and adds a substantial amount of work and manual file management to the user.  

To many users' surprise, both CircuitWorks and DriveWorks Pro have integrations into both PDM products from SolidWorks.  Out-of-the-box integration to PDM helps the adoption of add-in products like CW and DW! As PDM becomes more mainstream with the SolidWorks user, tight integration will become an important evaluation criteria! ~Lou

Remember to check out the SolidWorks: Heard! Blog and to follow me on Twitter, Facebook and THE HEaRD!