CAD maker SolidWorks teased an online design product now in the development pipeline, introduced its newly available visualization product, and revealed a new licensing structure at SolidWorks World 2016, held last week in Dallas.
While the traditional model of purchasing perpetual SolidWork licenses isn’t going away. This method allows users to automatically receive CAD updates on a regular schedule. Users will soon be able to rent the software for three months or longer, said Gian Paolo Bassi, SolidWorks chief executive officer.
“Now you’ll be able to buy a new license to take care of peak demand in the summer if you have interns, then you can stop using it,” Bassi said.
The in-the-pipeline XDesign will include design guidance, scribble sketching, super features and super mates, and provide suggestions on how models should be designed. It will also creating parts based on parameters input into XDesign. Also, it will be integrated with the SolidWorks product eDrawings for collaboration with colleagues.
“It’s a major goal of Dassault to back this up at the application level,” Bassi said. Dassault Systemes is SolidWorks the three-dimensional design brand of Dassault Systemes.
XDesign will feature XDrive, another tool the company is at work on. XDrive will be, like XDesign, an application on what Dassault calls its 3Dexperience Platform (its portfolio of design-related products). Xdrive will offer cloud storage, sharing, and collaboration for many file types, Bassi said. The drive will be available to subscription users with the 2017 SolidWorks release.
SolidWorks Visualization, formerly Bunkspeed, released at SolidWorks World, allows designers to create photo-quality images of their in-process models early in the design process, said Brian Hillner, product manager at Dassault Systemes.
“Which better helps describe a concept? A technical drawing or a computer- generated image that looks identical to a photograph?” Hillner asked.
To make the right design and engineering decisions, photo-quality content has become the new standard, he said.
“It’s important for designers to see their designs in a photorealist environment,” Hillner said. “Then they can go back into SolidWorks, make design changes, and revisualize their design.”
He described Visualization as a virtual photo studio that particularly excels at rendering reflections on glass (such as for an automobile’s windshield) and other traditionally hard-to-render types of reflections and lighting.
The product offers a suite of standalone software tools that combine rendering capabilities with design-oriented features and workflows. Its users can import SolidWorks, Autodesk Alias, Rhino, SketchUp, and many other CAD formats to create photo-quality images and scenes.
The images can be shared with others within a company, such as employees in marketing or sales or with external suppliers and for other types of presentations, to provide others with images of what the final product will look like, he said.
The user interface is particularly easy to use—comprised of five buttons—and images can be depicted in a number of different styles, including black and white (for an artsy effect) or, for particularly reflective objects, like automobiles, within a glass atrium, Hillner said.
The product is priced at $1,495 for standard and $2,995 professional. A premium version is not yet available, he said.
“Because we’re brand new as Visualization, we’re going to let it marinate for a couple of years to hear back from the community before we announce a premium version,” he said.
