This week, Dassault Systèmes debuted the latest update to its SolidWorks computer-aided design system, which speeds model development as compared to past versions and acts as part of a platform for the overall design of connected devices.

“Now you can mesh electronic and electrical designs, build, managed, and collaborate on those designs,” said Gian Paolo Bassi, SolidWorks’ chief executive officer.

SolidWorks 2017 includes printed circuit board design capabilities, which merges PCB, electronic, and mechanical design to aid Internet of Things (IoT) or connected device design, he said. Bassi spoke at the launch event held this week in Boston.

“IoT is a journey your company will undertake and you’ll need to design end-to-end connected devices,” he said. About 70 percent of interconnected products show at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show were designed in SolidWorks, he said.

“Our design option helps you understand how components interoperate and how they’ll react in certain environments,” Bassi said.

Many features allow SolidWorks to function as an end-to-end product design option, via the 3DExperience Platform of which the design tool is  a part. These include a rapid manufacturing option through Xometry, a Dassault partner, and 3DDrive, which allows designers to share and collaborate on files, said Suchit Jain, SolidWorks’ vice president of strategy and community.

The company also unveiled a new, online subscription model as well as features to speed design.

“Last year we put our focus on design, having your mouse travel as little as possible during design. The time it took putting an assembly together went from two minutes 49 seconds to one minute 16 seconds with this release the time is even further cut,” Jain said.

Also included in the update is a mate assembly feature, which speeds the time it takes for designers to perform simple tasks, such as placing bolts in the correct spot on a design, he added. They can cut their time spent on these tasks by up to five times, Jain said.

Another new feature, magnetic mates, simplifies and speeds the mating process significantly by enabling users to drag and drop mating and a stress hot spots feature that helps engineers quickly identify areas of stress within a design. A surfacing features include wrap, drag and drop, emboss, deboss, and 3D curve to speed surface model creation.

SoldWorks now includes a term license option, as well as its standard perpetual, renewing license. The term license allows companies to purchase seats of the design tool for a limited amount of time, such as three months or six months. The option is handy when working on a project with a set expiration date or when an engineering company has hired extra employees, such as interns, for the summer, Jain said.

A number of SolidWorks users, such as Myomo, which makes myoelectric upper limb orthosis to allow users with paralysis to move arms and hands, also spoke at the event. Their presentations will be detailed in a future blog post.