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18
Jun

Solidworks 2008




SolidWorks is a pretty incredible piece of technology, I’m sure you’ll agree. It revolutionised the 3D modelling world by bringing parametric and history-based modelling techniques to the PC platform at a cost level much lower than was traditionally the case. Since that first release, the application set has grown to encompass pretty much everything you’d need to do to get a product to market, including solid modelling, surfacing, drawing production, rendering, animation, physics simulation, finite element analysis and computational fluid dynamics. But all this raises one big question: where next?

For SolidWorks it seems that the question of where next is rather paradoxical, “Right back to the beginning.” SolidWorks 2008 has a huge range of features – for example, the new ‘Functionality Guide’ for the Press (the majority of which don’t know a ‘fillet’ from a ‘fillet o’ fish’) is 25 pages long. But if 2008 comes down to one thing, it’s all about the user interface and user experience.

Take a look at the screenshots that accompany this review. The interface is based on the tabbed concepts of Microsoft Office 2008, although not exactly the same. The tabs give you access to each toolbar, the PropertyManager auto hides away and the view manipulation tools are now permanently docked on the top edge of the model window rather than popping up with a hit of the space bar.

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at Wednesday, June 18, 2008

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