Every year, Hawk Ridge Systems offers live Launch events for its customers to introduce the new enhancements of that year’s release. What if you were unable to make one of the 2018 live sessions? Don’t worry – we have you covered! We recorded the live stream (HawkLive 2018) of our first Launch event and separated it into 8 modules so you can easily digest what’s new in SOLIDWORKS 2018! Even if you’ve attended a launch in another city (besides San Jose, where this one was recorded), it’ll be different and exciting content! In today’s blog article, we’ll continue our series and discuss some of the topics covered in Module 2, which include enhancements to the user interface and sketching. Here are some of my favorites:
New Welcome Dialog Box
When we fire up SOLIDWORKS 2018, we’re welcomed with a new dialog box! The purpose of this dialog is to help users have one centralized location to create new or open existing documents, access SOLIDWORKS resources, view recent documents, and so much more. The goal of having everything is one interface is to not have us hunt all over the screen to get the commands we need.
If we’ve selected an assembly to open, we’re welcomed by another enhancement.
Open Progress Indicator
The Open Progress Indicator provides the user with the following information:
- How many components it’s opening.
- The component currently being opened.
- How much time has elapsed.
- In addition, if the file has been opened before, it’ll also list how long it took to open last time.
Color-Coded Folders
Folders are a terrific way to organize our assemblies without creating unneeded assemblies. Now, folders give us more information at a glance! In assemblies, the following icons will show depending if the parts in the folder are suppressed, hidden, shown, or a combination of the three.
Assemblies
Parts
For parts, the folder icon will show us if the folder has features that are unsuppressed, suppressed, and a mixture of both suppressed and suppressed features.
For more information, check out Module 2 or review Gabriel Crisologo’s blog on Color-coded folders here
Mouse Gestures
One of my personal favorite enhancements was making Mouse Gestures easier to customize! We can browse the extensive list of commands to find what we’re looking for or use the Search For to find the exact command. In this case, I’m looking for the Normal To command to be added to the ‘Part’ Mouse Gesture. We can see that we also have a new interface called the Mouse Gesture Guide, which allows us to visually see what gestures are currently assigned to at the Part, Assembly, Drawing, and Sketch level. To add our command, we just need to drag-and-drop it onto the desired wheel – it’s that simple!
After we have them assigned, we can then print out a copy of the Mouse Gestures with Print Gesture Guides, giving us a handy print-out we can put on our desk or screen for reference. In addition to making it that much easier to see what gestures are being assigned for Parts, Sketches, Assemblies, and Drawings, we have more options on how many gestures we want to use!
Sketch
Reverse Endpoint Tangency
One of the simple enhancements included is the ability to change endpoint tangency for arcs and lines, custom slots, and splines. Instead of deleting the spline or redoing the arc, we can right-click the entity and select ‘Reverse Endpoint Tangent’
For some more examples, check out our Reverse Tangency Direction blog!
Mirroring
Mirror 3D Sketch about a Plane
Before, if we wanted to create symmetry in a 3D sketch, we’d have to sketch out the geometry and apply the ‘Symmetric’ relations. In 2018, we’re now able to mirror 3D sketches on a plane by ctrl + selecting the 3D sketch entities and the plane to mirror about, and going to ‘Mirror Entities’!
Mirror 2D Sketches about a Plane
3D Sketches aren’t the only sketches that got an enhancement regarding mirroring! When we wanted to mirror a 2D sketch, what would we need? A centerline! Now, if there’s a plane we’d rather use, we can use that to mirror our sketch – no centerline needed!
In addition to all the enhancements we covered in this blog, there’s so much more that Module 2 covers:
- Touch Sketching
- Freehand sketching and dedicated user interaction mode for Windows 10 touch-enabled devices.
- Automatically convert pen strokes to shapes with Auto Shape and convert pen strokes to sketch entities with Auto Sketch Entities.
- Magnified Selection Tool for touch devices.
- Configurable Layout for left or right-handed users.
- SOLIDWORKS Admin Portal, where we can manage assets online, associate products with users, and quickly see license usage.
- SOLIDWORKS Online Licensing
- Imagine we’re working in multiple locations and we’re still planning to do some work at home. Thing is, we forgot to deactivate our machine. Now, with online licensing, it’s no longer stuck to a machine ID but locked to our login credentials. This allows us to quickly change hardware without worrying about deactivating/activating, in addition to utilizing an offline mode in areas we don’t have an internet connection.
- Top Level Transparency
- In previous versions, if we ever needed to turn an assembly fully transparent – we’d have to utilize display states or multiple clicks to get our top-level assembly transparent. Now in 2018, we can make the entire assembly transparent with a right-click.
- Enhanced Performance Evaluation
- Providers more information and deeper insight into performance indicators like graphics triangles.
Curious? Register for the recorded Live Stream and look at Module 2 where we go into more detail! Stay tuned for the next blog in the series where we’ll dive into Module 3! For more information, request a SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD quote or contact us at Hawk Ridge Systems today. Thanks for reading!