Users shape the future of SOLIDWORKS with community-driven enhancements in SOLIDWORKS Top Ten List.
Every year, Dassault Systèmes (DS) SOLIDWORKS asks its user base to take part in SOLIDWORKS Top Ten, in which they can submit and vote on enhancements/functionality they’d like to have in SOLIDWORKS products. The Top Ten is hosted on the 3DSwym Platform. Users can add their submissions and vote during a set time. This year, the session was held virtually at 3DEXPERIENCE World 2021 due to the pandemic.
The session on the Top Ten was presented by Bruce Holway, DS SOLIDWORKS product definition. John Sweeney, DS SOLIDWORKS Development senior director, was also there to provide an update on research and development (R&D). In addition, Gian Paolo Bassi, DS SOLIDWORKS CEO, and Suchit Jain, DS SOLIDWORKS vice president of Strategy & Business Development, also sat in.
The session covered the history of the Top Ten, what Top Ten requests from past years went into SOLIDWORKS 2021, this year’s voting results and an update on R&D. In this article, we’ll stick to the Top Ten.
It is obvious that the Top Ten is important to users as this session was full and capped at 300 participants.
Holway provided some history about the Top Ten, which dates back to 2001 and was started at the annual user event held in Orlando, Fla. Interestingly the sessions were held in person for a number of years, and attendees voted in the room on a laptop. One year, they only had a Top Five list because of low attendance due to a massive storm in Boston. In 2009, one request was for dual monitor support. SOLIDWORKS has come a long way.
The first Top Ten is in the image below.
Before getting to the big reveal of the 2020 Top Ten voting, let’s take a look at what was implemented into SOLIDWORKS 2021, as covered in the session.
Past Top Ten Requests Implemented in SOLIDWORKS 2021
Here are four requests from prior Top Ten lists throughout the years.
- In PDM – Show Cut List items in Assembly BOM
PDM users will notice there’s a couple of new options right in the assembly bill of materials (BOM) where you can get your cut list with the two preferences.
- Allow Equations in Custom Properties and Cut Lists
This was the No. 1 request in the 2018 Top Ten.
With this one, there’s a new type on your custom properties and equation. There’s a new type there too. Holway said this is great for a lot of things, such as doing conversions between units where you can create custom units and build into your properties, and it works with the weldment cut list.
- Flip the New Mate, Not the Old Mates
Holway ran a demo on this one explaining, “You have a simple assembly with three blocks and two have a reference plane coincident with faces on them. Normally, a reference plane can be different from a solid face, and the solid face is always pointing up. You can see the mate between the orange and red [blocks]. There is a coincident mate between the orange and red block. If you edit that mate, you can see the mate alignment option in property management. It is aligned. So, what happens is the user may decide to delete that reference from a reference pane to a solid face and the normal direction was different. So, what do we do? The software follows the way the option was set. It was aligned, so it flips it around. We realized that’s not what the user wants to do.”
“This was the request. Be smarter and keep the assembly from moving… [Now] in [SOLIDWORKS] 2021, with the same situation with the same assembly, you edit the mate and see the same two reference points were mated with the align option. We delete one of those references and select solid face, and the main alignment shows you on the bottom left you have to flip… to keep the assembly from moving…”
That’s one example. All in all, there is much less flipping when creating new mates or editing mates, which Holway said was tricky to track down. Yet, SOLIDWORKS ensured it solved the right problem by discussing it in the forum.
- Reset Markup View
This one came from the 2020 Top Ten. Holway pointed out that users may recall when markup view first came out, the zoom factor was recorded when you exited the markup and saved it. If you wanted to add to that markup outside the zoom view, you couldn’t. When you now go in and edit, whatever your zoom factor is whenever you leave it, it captures that.
Now, for this year’s 3DEXPERIENCE World Top Ten. Submissions were taken from November 2020 through early January. Voting ran through January 2021.
The results are…
No. 10 UV Mapping for SOLIDWORKS Visualize
The participant wrote, “We are free to import NURBS or polygon models into SOLIDWORKS Visualize. It is possible to render them all, and it is great. It’d be great to have the option of UV mapping so we can control the seams and direction of a texture on our object. What’s more, if our geometry does not have useful UV, unwrap UV capability would also be important to generate UV coordinates for our objects.”
In reply to this, Holway pointed out that currently there is only UV mapping in the core SOLIDWORKS product where users can map textures to align with the UV directions, but that it’s not an option in SOLIDWORKS Visualize.
No. 9 Add the Option Mark for MBD
Those who build drawings are familiar with the mark the drawings option if using MBD. If you’re using MBD, the idea is to use the same thing. This would make it easier because when you start your MBD, it would already be set up.
The forum participant wrote in the request, “It would be great to have the possibility to right-click a dimension and ‘Mark for MBD’ so that you can use the MBD functionality ‘Auto Dimension Scheme’ to get the dimensions used as MBD dimension.”
No. 8 Make Mark-ups Shortcuts for Drawing Sheets
Holway said of this idea, “I think this is really cool if you have large multi-sheet drawings. You got your markups up in a folder. When you show them, it jumps to the right sheet and shows you exactly where they are. That will be a big improvement.”
The participant wrote, “A zoom to mark-up button would be amazing!”
No. 7 Add Mark-ups to the Large Data Design Review Mode
This forum user wrote of this request: “The mark-ups are fantastic! They will save thousands of trees and thousands of user hours. They [mark-ups] are currently available in detailing mode for drawings, but cannot be viewed, created or edited in assemblies opened in large design review mode. They should get the same functionality that snapshots have in LDR mode. Adding this functionality will make the life of managers, checkers and power users much, much easier.”
Holway responded, “LDR mode is really fast. It’s a great accelerator. We didn’t implement mark-ups there yet. Great request.”
No. 6 Make Property Tabs File Type Agnostic
Those of you who have used the property tab builder know there are four different file types. The big idea here is on how it would be handy to make them work across all file types.
No. 5 Improve Re-attach dimensions
The request here was, “One should be able to grab the grip of a linear dimension, leader and other annotations and place it at any snap point with absolute certainty that it will attach to that port.”
Holway responded, “We’re going to have to hunt down examples for this one. We do have re-attachment, but apparently a lot of people are not satisfied. We’ll do some work on it.”
No. 4 Drawing Detailing Mode from Assembly Large Design Review Mode
These two modes accelerate performance, however, you can’t get from one to the other in a convenient way.
The request stated:
“Assemblies open very fast in the LCR mode. Imagine how much you would save by being able to:
- Open an assembly in LDR mode
- Select a component (part or sub-assembly)
- Open the drawing corresponding to that component in detailing mode.”
That goes hand in hand with this idea, “Ability to Open a Sub-Assembly in Large Design Review mode.” (No. 2 on the list below)
No. 3 Variable Angle Draft
This suggestion applies to forging molds.
No. 2 Ability to Open a Subassembly in Large Design Review mode
(Related to No. 4 above)
The idea submitted was:
“This enhancement will be a game-changer for large assembly users! It will allow them to edit assemblies and subassemblies in LDR mode in a fast and fluid and consistent manner.
The steps are:
- Open an assembly in LDR mode.
- Select a subassembly from the FeatureManager or Graphics Area and open it in LDR mode.
That could open a lot of opportunities. In theory, I can open a huge assembly in LDR mode then:
- Turn the LDR Edit mode on.
- Modify the subassembly from inside it.
- Modify the subassembly (delete/add components or mates) while still in LDR mode.
- Save the subassembly.
- Return to the top-level assembly opened in LDR mode.
- Update the graphics to see the changes.”
And the No. 1 request…
No. 1 ESCAPE Key Should Always Stop the Current Process and Revert to the State Before It
The submission stated, “The title says it all. It happened to me right now. I had been working with a huge drawing and made the mistake to start the Auto Balloon tool. The software hung for a long time. I wanted to stop the process but could not without losing the prior work.
It would be very useful if SOLIDWORKS would always remember the state of the model or drawing before a command is started. If the ESCAPE key is pressed, the command should be stopped, and the previous state restored.
That should work for all processes.”
Note, this participant submitted six of the Top Ten suggestions. His examples were very explanative and often included video, which is why these ideas received the most votes, Sweeny pointed out. The participant noted that from working as a reseller, some of these requests came from customers. He wanted to give credit to those who put some of these ideas out there.
Here were some other ideas participants could vote for that didn’t make this year’s list:
– Enhance functionality of Selection Sets
– Copy of a BOM with Linked Item Number
– Option to maintain Draft angle within Mid-Plane Extrusion
– Combine Chamfer and Fillet into a single feature
– Enable Layer Functionality in parts and assemblies
Until next time, we’d encourage you to watch the on-demand session “The Top Ten List,” from this year’s 3DEXPERIENCE World 2021 to learn more about the Top Ten, how SOLIDWORKS is responding to customer requests and what the R&D team has in the works.
SOLIDWORKS Listens!
The Top Ten is just one of many ways SOLIDWORKS listens to its customers.
“Every year we put in hundreds of enhancements and improvements into SOLIDWORKS,” Holway said. “We get the ideas from the users, so we do a lot of listening.”
With thousands of requests each year, the company wants to ensure it focuses on the things that matter most to customers. In addition to the Top Ten, it receives input from technical support and value-added resellers (VARS) and has team members watch forums and discussions, attend user group meetings and visit with customers.
“We do alpha testing and usability testing, making sure every feature and function gets tested,” Holway said.
If you haven’t joined in the discussion in some way, we encourage you to do so and help shape the future of SOLIDWORKS!
