SOLIDWORKS 2018: The Tools to Unlock Your Design Potential

Making product development more accessible has been our mission from day one. Access to the right tools at the right time is critical to bringing your ideas to market faster, more efficiently, and at a lower cost. More importantly, it’s paramount that SOLIDWORKS provides these design tools on your terms. You, our customers, are more innovative than ever. SOLIDWORKS is committed to matching your enthusiasm with the most powerful and accessible tools in the industry.

Narrowing the gap between design and manufacturing is the next major step in accessibility. For years, design and manufacturing have used different tools and separate processes, preventing concurrent design and leading to inefficiencies due to poor collaboration. We’re looking to change this by enabling you to take an integrated approach to design and manufacturing with SOLIDWORKS 2018 and the new SOLIDWORKS CAM. The ability to easily move from concept design to manufactured parts quickly enables you to output products faster, with greater, more predictable quality, and at a lower cost. Our hope is that this integrated design-to-manufacturing process will enable you to bring products to market faster and provide more time to create your next great design.

SOLIDWORKS CAM leverages the rich content in your 3D CAD model to speed up product development and reduce error-prone, time-consuming, repetitive manual steps in the current development process, like programming CNC machines.

Innovation is not just for the wealthy or connected. It’s for anyone with a passion for ingenuity. We especially want to foster opportunities for entrepreneurs and small- to medium-sized businesses. Lowering the bar for innovation to all types of businesses is important for growing the global economy. This not only includes providing the right tools, but also mentorship and education that users can find in Fab Labs and SOLIDWORKS User Groups around the world. In addition, we’re also working hard to aid startups in the SOLIDWORKS for Entrepreneurs program. The ultimate goal is to provide all engineers with a network of skills, connections, and technological investments to usher in the next generation of innovation. If you teach a person to design, they’ll be an inventor for life.

The key to achieving this level of democratization is not resting on our laurels. SOLIDWORKS has been around for more than 20 years. If we’re going to thrive in the next 20, we need to continue our investment in R&D. SOLIDWORKS 2018 is no exception. Thanks to beta testers and conversations with users, we’ve packed hundreds of new updates in this year’s release. SOLIDWORKS itself cannot and will not remain stagnant. And, new features, like topology optimization (image below), PCB, CAM, and distributed data management are expanding beyond traditional capabilities and bringing you the tools to put innovation at your fingertips.

Based on real-life use, desired goals, constraints, and even manufacturing consideration, Topology Study in SOLIDWORKS Simulation Professional helps guide your decisions on component form, regardless of the manufacturing process you choose.

SOLIDWORKS 2018 was created to empower your possibilities. It’s here to streamline your design process through powerful new features, collaborative manufacturing tools, and automation capabilities to let you focus on making great design happen. I encourage you to visit the SOLIDWORKS 2018 website to learn more about what’s to come. However, that is just the tip of the iceberg. Local resellers around the world are hosting SOLIDWORKS 2018 launch events to give you a hands-on experience with new features and deep technical demonstrations highlighting what you can achieve by breaking the barriers to design. You can also learn more by registering for the live stream of the SOLIDWORKS 2018 launch event on Tuesday, September 26. Thank you for being our partner in innovation and I look forward to speaking with you throughout the year.