Going for its first CAD/CAM million

PC CAD/CAM and now PLM (product lifecycle management) software developer SolidWorks has set its sights on 1 million seats. At the firm’s recent world user group meeting, both R&D vice president Chris Garcia and CEO John McEleney spoke several times of their goal, which is looking increasingly achievable given the company’s present 300,000. Garcia also wants to make creating designs with SolidWorks: “easy and fun”, with greater productivity and creativity, while also further accelerating production of 2D drawings from 3D models, and getting more modelling breakthroughs. He also spoke of a goal to achieve higher quality and robustness. As well as revealing that SolidWorks was used to design the robot arms on the two Mars rovers, the firm unveiled some of the new features of its 2005 version, scheduled to become available summer 2004. According to director of product management Aaron Kelly, ease of use will be improved through new icons, a ‘Task Pane’ containing a ‘Content Manager’ and a ‘File Explorer’ and new repeat and measure commands. CosmosWorks 2005 will have: ‘Quick Tips’, improved visualisation, a packaged ‘Drop Test’ analysis module and non-linear analysis. Sketching is being improved by introducing ‘Sub Sketches’ that can be made to follow relationships, such as movement about pivot links. The sketches can then be extruded in 3D. Dimensioning will include tolerances, and the animator module will include a time line. eDrawings Professional will work with SolidWorks Animator animations and will have 30% to 60% smaller file sizes. Also, PDMWorks will have a simpler interface. And finally, injection mould tool design is to include the incorporation of automated side cores. Automated ‘Routed Systems’, should be of great assistance to designers concerned with pipe and cable routing in machine design, and a ‘Harnessing’ add-in will automate harness and cable drawings.