See What’s Coming in SOLIDWORKS 2025 – Don’t Miss the Demo Replay

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The General Sessions that spans over three days at 3DEXPERIENCE World always bring a jam-packed lineup of technology, engineering marvels, and motivational keynote speakers.  At 3DEXPERIENCE World 2024 in Dallas,  the tech marketing team put together a demo that you just can’t miss, intended to highlight some of the upcoming features to be released later in the year and next year’s version of SOLIDWORKS.

This year, the team put the audience’s mystery-solving expertise to the test by following a team of engineers at a fictitious company, MVP Corp, who had been accused of sabotage of a chassis design. In case you missed it, you can watch the entire demo here which is highly recommended!

ACT 1 – Last-Minute Lightweighting

The day started off with the revelation that the team at MVP Corp had been tasked with building and racing a soapbox derby car, a dream the company owner, ‘The Masked Billionaire,’ has had over the last four years. Why? To gain worldwide recognition for the company in the infamous EXTDUDO! Energy Drink Soapbox Derby Cup.

Unfortunately, the past four years have been marred by a series of crashes at the same corner.

Enter Reynard Rouge, the world-famous CAD detective, who has been sent on behalf of their employer to investigate which of the engineers has been sabotaging their pursuit for a spot on the podium.

Andy Analyst, the teams simulation expert, took the podium first to show that his validation efforts were spot on, leaving little to ponder that he was the guilty party:

Andy’s results sparked some concerns about the geometry, as Eric Engineer had made some additional design changes to lightweight the entire chassis.  Eric highlighted some new enhancements coming in SOLIDWORKS 2024 and 2025 as well.

Modify Sketch Color From Right Mouse Button Menu

Available in SOLIDWORKS 2024 FD02/SP2, users can access the sketch color dialogue through the right mouse click button menu.

Selection Wizard Support for Chamfers

Selecting multiple edges though the intelligent selection wizard has been supported for fillets, and will now be available for chamfer selections as well.

Support for Multi-Body Fillets

Users will be able to apply fillets to individual multibodies, no longer requiring multiple features to accomplish this task.

Specify Colors in Assembly Visualization & Rollup added to In-Context Menu

Assembly visualization will allow users to define custom colors to better help depict the results in their visualizations.

Eric proceeded with the lightweighting design despite Andy’s validated model, prompting concerns about potential catastrophic failure. However, assigning blame solely to Eric may oversimplify the situation. It’s crucial to thoroughly investigate the circumstances leading to the current predicament. We also see a discovery of red herring bearing found during assembly visualization, which raises more questions about the integrity of the modifications and who is responsible.

ACT 2 – A Red Herring Bearing?

Eric remained confident that his alterations to the chassis wouldn’t compromise its structural integrity. However, upon closer examination of the top-level assembly, he stumbled upon an intriguing anomaly – the red herring bearing hidden, easily exposed by altering a display state. This discovery warrants further scrutiny to determine its origin and ascertain whether it poses a risk to the steering column’s functionality.

Drawings Supports Reload

Part and assembly files have had the ability to reload a file from the file drop down menu.  This is expected to now be supported for drawing files.

Automatic Repair Dangling Dimensions (drawings and sketch)

When geometry goes through a major change, oftentimes dimensions will lose the location they are attached to, creating a ‘dangling dimension.’  SOLIDWORKS 2025 looks to add automatic repair for these in drawings and within the sketcher for parts as well.

Filter BOM By Display States

Bill of materials will now support the ability to filter assembly structures by display states.

Managing the bill of materials and determining what goes to manufacturing after release falls under the responsibility of Mike Manager. However, upon discovering a few irregularities in the product structure, the weight of culpability rests squarely on Mike’s shoulders. It is now upon him to demonstrate his innocence to the team, and luckily for Mike, the 3DEXPERIENCE platform can help showcase this through complete traceability in all of the team’s actions.

 

Tasks and Geometry Preview

Reflecting back, Mike recalls the three main tasks he took on.  First was reviewing the frame that Eric had submitted as an attachment in his assigned task.   Directly through Mike’s webbrowser, he is able to review the CAD geometry in 3D.

After a quick visual check, Mike moved the frame to a frozen state to keep any additional modifications from occurring until the simulation report was attached.  A few other tasks where taken on that day, including changing out some metadata to reflect a switch to a new vendor.  The 3DEXPERIENCE platform makes visualizing and modifying these types of changes a breeze.

Visualizing Assemblies by Vendor

Mike continues to go through his actions the day he was working on the assembly structures metadata.  The only other modifications he made that day were adding in some missing part numbers, which wouldn’t impact the overall integrity!

Adding Missing Part Numbers

Using Product Release Engineer, Mike is able  to quickly modify metadata, assign part numbers (EIN numbers], review ownership and move products through different lifecycle states.

None of what Mike took on through his assigned tasks should have led to anything structural, and to prove his innocence even further, Mike dove into the revisions of the primary chassis design to see the revision history, along with exposing the owners of each.

Verify Revisions

Revision history, along with branches and merges are all recorded.  The 3DEXPERIENCE platform allows for comparison of revisions on the fly as well, which illustrates geometric and metadata changes of any revision or branch, and done from a simple drag and drop.

The final released revision has Mike’s name attached as the owner, implying he may be guilty of a structural change.   Eric immediately recognizes that the modifications done looked a bit sloppy and don’t reflect his design work.  Is there a better way to have modeled this structure?   Eric jumps in to show off some modeling techniques and new features in SOLIDWORKS 2025.

Pattern Planes and Axis

Axis and planes can now be pattern, including the option to skip and very instances

 

Copy and Paste Cut List Properties

Custom properties can be easily applied to additional weldment cut list items with a simple copy and paste.

Bend Notches

Sheetmetal introduces bend notches to be added at locations of bends.

Configure Structure System Profiles

Structure systems introduces a simple way to configure profiles

 

Eric’s ‘superior’ design to the chassis in question has been modeled in a very efficient manner and with great design intent, but will it stand up to the stress and harmonics of the race track?  Andy Analyst has his doubts and decides to jump right in to validate the new chassis and show off a few enhancements in SOLIDWORKS Simulation.

Specify Frequency for Harmonic Response 

Simulation premium now allows user to manually specify additional harmonic frequencies of areas of interest

Orthotropic Spring Connector

A new orthotropic spring connector allows for definition of a spring stiffness in axial, radial and torsional directions.

Andy Analyst’s quick simulation analysis shows immediate concern that Eric’s design is not ready for the harmonic excitation that occurs during derby racing.  Eric is starting to look like he may be the one to blame for the catastrophic failure…  But Act 3 still has a few more clues to introduce before Reynard Rouge, world famous CAD detective, comes to his conclusion.

ACT 3 – A Final Demo and the Reveal

 

 

Eric, Mike and Andy have all pleaded their cases and attempted to prove their innocence.  Reynard spends a minute on his 3D Lean board to review all the clues presented during his interviews over the last two days.

Andy seemed to be faking his injury, which was caught early on… He also seemed to have a lot of motive to cause the crash based on his frustrations with hardware procurement.  However, his simulation results were thorough, and the fact that the frame was dramatically undermined after his analysis seems to shed some light on his innocence.

Eric admitted to dramatic lightweighting changes at the last minute.  He had plenty of opportunity to undermine the frame as he was the primary owner of the main branch of the chassis.  Eric had plenty of motive, feeling that his talents were being wasted on chasing such a silly pipe dream, versus getting any real work done.

Mike admitted modifying the metadata, but clearly showed he was just doing his job by updating the new vendor information and adding missing part numbers.  As a manager, Mike is one of two people who have admin rights to release anything for manufacturing.  Mike also is savvy with branches and revisions in PLM, making it easier for him to try and  hide any modifications if he needed to.  Unfortunately, the 3DEXPERIENCE has full traceability, and it clearly shows Mike as the owner of the branch in question…

 

At this point, it’s just Brenda left to show everyone what’s on her dashboard….  Which we learn is populated with all things EXTRUDO!  She is the first to admit that she is completely encapsulated in the EXTRUDO! Brand, and has been monitoring the potential of CAD-centric energy drinks.

With all eyes on Brenda, she finally caves and admits it was her to modify the primary chassis structure.  The team is absolutely in shock, although Reynard seems to have been suspicious all along…  The real twist is WHY DID BRENDA DO IT?  For that, you’ll have to watch the video here.  It’s full of fun filled CAD jokes, intrigue and of course CAD.  You’ll also see some new enhancements coming in 2025 not mentioned here, so make sure to check it out!!  

 

 

Mike Sande

Mike Sande

Territory Technical Manager at SOLIDWORKS
Michael is a graduate of Montana State University where he focused in finite element analysis and simulation MEMS manufacturing in his quest for his BSME. When not enjoying engineering documentaries, you will find Michael exercising his creative side through his love of photography, art, family, animals and of course SOLIDWORKS CAD.
Mike Sande

@@MSANDE82

Mike Sande