Beyond CAD for Design Acceleration

By

Today’s demanding design workflows require engineers to wear many hats. Aside from designing you need to be able to manage your data and collaborate on it. With the 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS role you can continue to use the CAD software you love, plus easily access cloud-based data management and collaboration on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform for a more efficient design process, and ultimately get the most value out of your data.

For those of you not on board yet, let me tell you more about it. And those of you already using 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS, stick around as you might learn something new too, as I’ll cover some new features.

Getting Started is Easy

Getting started is simple as you can use the Welcome app to get going. Simply install and launch the SOLIDWORKS Connected app directly from the Welcome app, which will give you access to the platform capabilities in one place inside the browser.

The Welcome app has much more. It includes short how-to videos on everything from getting started, navigating around the interface and managing content. It also has Sample Content, where you can open a model to get a feel for some of the capabilities. If you want to quickly reach out to your peers or the SOLIDWORKS team, you can instantly access an online community or contact SOLIDWORKS support.

All of the apps of your additional roles are right at your fingertips as well.

Now, you can also access guided quick tours right from within 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS. Each Quick Tour has a sequence of steps shown as interactive pop-ups that point to features in the user interface. Quick Tours include a user interface overview, how to save to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform and more!

 

Saving Data to the Platform

Saving data to the platform is easy and enables you to quickly store, access, and manage your data. You have three options: you can click Save to 3DEXPERIENCE on the standard tool bar, go to the File tab and select Save to 3DEXPERIENCE from the drop down menu or hit CTL+ Alt+ S to launch the dialog. From there you can select a bookmark, and a Collaborative Space, a place to store and collaborate on projects.

 

You can easily see what parts have been saved to the platform right in your design tree and see the status of your data, including revisions, and lock and unlock data.

 

Collaboration with Collaborative Tasks and Share and Markup

The days of sharing via email are over. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform has all the tools to help you capture your ideas and share then with your colleagues. With 3D Markup you can clearly highlight problems, ask questions, and communicate thoughts. A markup can easily be shared in places such as the 3DSwym online community or in Collaborative Tasks. With Collaborative Tasks you can assign a task with the problem description on what needs to be changed and even include the CAD model. Colleagues will get a pop-up notification of the task while working on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. The notification will include the description, and include the CAD model as an attachment, and any comment history related to the task. This enables the recipient to get a complete idea about what the deliverables are, the expected timeline, and other dependencies of the task.

Take external collaboration to the next level by inviting ANYONE to view and mark up a 3D model in the cloud, directly from SOLIDWORKS with Share and Markup capabilities. Getting real-time feedback and iterating on your work is now as easy as sharing a link from SOLIDWORKS.

Easily share your designs with anyone from within SOLIDWORKS whether they are internal and external to your organization and get immediate feedback through comments and markups attached directly to your model. Learn more in my blog here.

Work from Anywhere Anytime with Offline Mode

Need to work on the airplane, or on site, no problem, with Offline mode. Just plan ahead and open the file you want to work on offline and save it your local cache, then turn on Offline mode. When you are back online you can easily push your model to the platform to make sure you are working on the latest revision. Once you are back online you can select Replace by Revision. For step-by-step instructions see my blog here.

 

Release to Production

When you are ready to send your drawing to the shop floor you can set the maturity level and it select an option to change maturity on all related components.

Once you are using the platform you can expand your toolset with more roles in the 3DEXPERIENCE Works portfolio for simulation, manufacturing and more!

 

 

 

Salih Alani

Salih Alani

Salih Alani joined SOLIDWORKS in 2013. He held SOLIDWORKS technical support position focused on core SOLIDWORKS, DraftSight, licensing (Online Licensing), and Lead Technical Support of 3D CONTENTCENTRAL, Technical Support Account Manager for Enterprise Subscription Services (ESS) customer account and lead organizer for VAR Performance Tuning Workshop in Dassault Systèmes Waltham before he joined the SOLIDWORKS Product Management Team in 2020. He is now focused on 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS and SOLIDWORKS cloud roles along with collaboration on the 3DEPERIENCE Platform. Salih Alani is Graduate of the University of Technology, Iraq - Baghdad with BS in Mechanical Engineering, graduate of Northeastern University with a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering, specializing in mechanics and design.