Enhancements for Education - Dan McGinn
Access Class Content in 3D Designer for Education
Students enrolled in a class can now access their classwork via the “Classes” Tab in the new 3D Designer for Education home screen. Under the Content tab, students can view all their enrolled classes and browse the class content, organized in the same way the teacher created it using the new Teacher role. Supported content types include 3D models, annotation sets, videos, documents, photos, and assignments. Students can review and start their assignments through the Assignments tab. (Only available in 3D Designer for Education)
Easily Submit Assignments
Students can easily submit their assignment right from within xDesign – along with any other material they want to attach with that assignment. This keeps all completed documents in one safe and secure place, conveniently accessible by the teacher from any device to review, mark up, and grade. Both teachers and students receive helpful assignment notifications along the way, via 3DNotifications. (Only available in 3D Designer for Education)
Access Recent Work and Restore Across All xDesign Sessions
Resume your design work seamlessly by restoring unsaved data or opening recent content from any xDesign session, regardless of whether it’s opened in the same widget or not. Recent content and automatic restore points are now stored centrally as opposed to on a specific compute server, allowing users to access that data in any xDesign session. (Only available in SOLIDWORKS xDesign for Students and 3D Designer for Education)
Part and Assembly Design - Dan McGinn
Convert an Image to a 2D Mechanism
Convert an image of a mechanism into a sketch more accurately with the new 2D Mechanism option in the Picture to Sketch tool. This option has improved logic for recognizing objects (such as linkages, anchors, and rollers) and constraints (such as hinges, sliders, and anchor points) in the image, enabling automatic creation of sketch geometry and constraints.
Improved Measure Tool
Quickly inspect and verify geometry to ensure design accuracy and intent. Enhancements to the Measure tool include the ability to hide measurement flags, view maximum dimensions, clear selections from the right-click menu, and use a new mini-dialog that is optimized for small viewports.
Design in Context with Custom Environments
Use the Create Environment tool to create custom user-defined design environments to contextualize your models. Using design environments allows you to design in context of a larger model while maintaining high system responsiveness.
Enhanced Control for XR Design Reviews
Explore and understand designs more effectively when visualizing designs in VR and AR. The Grab skill now supports rotating, scaling, and pinning components in place, while a new Hide skill lets users selectively toggle component visibility.
Subdivision Modeling - Renan Ichi
Align to Sketch Proportional
Quickly create complex shapes that closely capture user input with a new option to create proportional alignment between mesh entities and a user sketch. This new option will distribute the vertices along the sketch while keeping their original spacing.
Drawings and Model-Based Definition (MBD) - Chris Pagliarini
2D Authoring - Section and Detail Views
Quickly document internal features or complex areas of a design using familiar 2D drawing workflows. Create section and detail views directly from the drawings environment using traditional section lines and crop circles, which are essential cues to ensure clear interpretation of the drawing. The section lines and crop circles are automatically shown on the parent 3D views to improve model-based communication and reduce the MBD learning curve.
Generative Drawing Views
Use the power of AI to eliminate repetitive drawing tasks with generative view creation and placement. During new sheet creation, you have the option to intelligently generate drawing standard views, such as orthographic and isometric, directly from the 3D model with minimal manual input.
Generative Hole Callout
Create precise hole callout annotations on native and non-native geometry, such as imported STEP, or SLDPRT files. The hole callout command has been enhanced with generative technology to automatically create comprehensive callouts for all types of geometry, removing the need for holes to be created with the hole feature in xDesign. This expands the detailing flexibility by enabling quick, accurate dimensioning of holes on imported or legacy data.
Hidden Lines Visible (HLV)
Standardize your definition and enable clear downstream communication with industry-formatted Hidden Line Visible (HLV) display for model-based and 2D drawing views. HLV is a display mode that shows the edges of features obscured from view by solid geometry as dashed lined in 3D and 2D. Simplify the drawing, while enhancing clarity, with the ability to clearly identify internal or hidden geometry without sectioning the model.
3D Play Support for Section, Detail, and Flatten Views
Collaborate with key downstream stakeholders. 3D Play now supports the ability to view native annotation sets with full support for viewing model-based section, detail, and flatten views.
Enhanced Placement of 3D Annotations
Ensure your 3D annotations are always readable with new annotation flipping options. When defining your model in 3D, annotation and dimension text can now be flipped horizontally and vertically to ensure readability from alternate viewing angles. This is especially valuable when reorganizing annotations for different model orientations such as moving a dimension from the front to the back view. The flipping options enable the flexibility to ensure clarity and readability in all contexts and eliminate the need to recreate annotations in the new desired view.
Rendering - Chris Pagliarini
Multi-View Rendering
Effortlessly generate stunning renderings of multiple views with a single click. The Render Image dialog is now capable of rendering multiple views in one step. These can include the current viewport or a custom selection of predefined camera views within the xStudio production.
Patch Notes
- Added the option "Show Feature in Design Manager" in context menus and breadcrumbs, which expands the entire parent path and auto-scrolls to the selected feature in the design manager.
- Added a “Refresh” command to the context menu for SOLIDWORKS components that will bring the latest version of the component from the database into the session.
- Added the ability to send an unlock request to other users when using the Unlock command on the Lifecycle tab of the action bar for a component that is locked by another user.
- Added automatic creation of a default bookmark to simplify content organization and make it easier for teachers and students to locate their data in the Bookmark Editor (Only available in SOLIDWORKS xDesign for Students).
- Added a Flip button to the Edit Sketch Plane dialog to correct issues where the sketch flips in the wrong direction resulting in downstream errors.
- Added the ability to pin the Session Information panel to the right side of the session.
- Improved performance and accuracy of dynamic and selection highlighting in the graphics area.
- Improved performance for creating and manipulating dimensions, annotations, and notes in xDrawing.
- Improved the logic for expanding sets when activating or expanding components in the design manager.
- Improved the Sweep command with the Up To Geometry end condition so that the end face is tangent to the reference geometry and improved assigning face IDs for a sweep feature so the faces are referenceable in downstream operations.
