What’s New in SOLIDWORKS PDM 2020

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In every SOLIDWORKS® release, we work on improving software performance while at the same time working to improve your overall experience. Our goal, as always, is to make your life easier, and the enhancements to SOLIDWORKS PDM 2020 are no exception. We are excited to continue providing PDM solutions that help you to get your design data under control and substantially improve the way your teams manage and collaborate on product development.

Faster Browsing Performance

When opening projects from the PDM vault, you no longer need to wait for the entire project to load before conducting further browsing. We have added new functionality that loads project data in the background. Performance improves significantly for folders with a large number of files or database servers with high latency.

This will help speed up your daily tasks and keep you as productive as possible.

When you select a file and switch between the Bill of Materials, Contains, and Where Used tabs, SOLIDWORKS PDM loads the data in the tabs in the background. When you switch to a different file or folder, the background loading stops and the new file or folder starts loading.

Quick Search

We put a lot of R&D effort into improving the search mechanism in SOLIDWORKS PDM 2020. Previous versions were limited to a search box using very basic parameters. Now, a wide range of search parameters is compatible with PDM search, reducing the time and effort needed to find your information.

The new Quick Search box is on the PDM menu (File Explorer vault view) located near the standard search magnifying glass icon, which appears on the upper right-hand side of your display. You can define multiple variables for your search and even use Boolean operators—AND, OR, and NOT—in the search string. Plus, Quick Search records up to five previous searches in the drop-down history list.

Web2 Interface

As of this release, we have retired the legacy web client. As some of you already know, Web2 is a web client that lets you connect to a SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional vault from most devices via an internet browser.

Web2’s responsive and straightforward user interface continues to improve how you access and work with your PDM data. The need for easy and secure access to data continues to increase, and Web 2 delivers additional capabilities to answer this growing need.

SOLIDWORKS PDM Web2 has a new Download with References dialogue box that provides detailed options to help ensure you’re downloading exactly the files you want. The file list includes options based on these settings:

• Version (Latest or Referenced)

• Preserve relative paths

• Include sub-folders

• Include drawing

• Include simulation

Download with References allows downloading of complete assemblies and related drawings making it easy and fast to download the exact package of files you want to share with your suppliers, contractors, or colleagues.

Learn more about Web2’s Bill of Materials tab and History tab in the What’s New in SOLIDWORKS 2020.

We are always looking for more ways to reduce clicks, increase performance, and maximize your experience. Your thoughts and recommendations matter to us, which is why SOLIDWORKS relies on your feedback via our enhancement request system. Or feel free to make comments below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jerome Marget

Jerome Marget

Jerome joined SOLIDWORKS in 2008. He held different technical roles including large accounts management before he joined the Product Management Team in 2016. He is now focused on data management products and specifically on SOLIDWORKS PDM. Jerome likes new challenges and is always eager to fix any issue. Consequently, in his spare time, you may find Jerome writing code using SOLIDWORKS’ products API to bring even more to the user community.