Welcome to this new edition of the SOLIDWORKS Support Monthly News, coauthored by members of the SOLIDWORKS Technical Support teams worldwide.
Vote for the best SOLIDWORKS enhancement ideas!
Over the past few weeks, many of you have proposed great ideas of enhancements for the SOLIDWORKS World Top Ten List.
We already have hundreds of ideas logged in! Wow! All the categories, from the ever-popular Parts/Features/Surfacing to CircuitWorks, Costing, Electrical, Routing, and even Simulation, have been with the best ideas you could imagine. There’s very little time left for submissions as this phase ends December 11, 2014.
Then, you can cast your votes and there should be plenty to choose from.
The voting rules are:
- Any user with an active SOLIDWORKS Customer Portal login can vote. If you have only one seat of SOLIDWORKS but more than one registered user, all can vote
- Go to this forum and log in to vote
- You can vote for as many ideas as you want (not just those you proposed) – no limit
- You can vote an idea up (+1) or down (-1)
- You can only vote between December 15, 2014 and January 23, 2015
The SOLIDWORKS World Top Ten List is YOUR wish list. So make it what you want it to be. More than 90% of the enhancements in SOLIDWORKS are directly requested by customers. This is your chance to have your voice heard. You are likely to see your ideas or some you voted for in a future release of SOLIDWORKS!
Whether or not you’re attending SOLIDWORKS World 2016 in Dallas, we look forward to seeing your ideas and hope to see you there.
| Summary: December 11th 2015: End of new idea submissions December 14th to January 22nd 2016: Voting |
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Service Pack News
Service Pack 5.0, the last planned Service Pack for version 2015 is available.
It fixes many issues and increases performance, but it also adds some usability improvements. They will improve your experience working with SOLIDWORKS. Here is a short list of such enhancements:
SOLIDWORKS
- SPR 801460: You can now turn on or off Dynamic Reference Visualization through System Options.
SOLIDWORKS Simulation
- SPR 845050: When running a nonlinear analysis with ‘Show intermediate results’ option, the solver now warns you that opening another file while Nonlinear study is running aborts solver (no error, no results).
To get the full list of fixed SPRs in any service pack of version, log in the Customer Portal and click on Fixed SPR list in My Support:
Also, the Evaluation Version (EV) of 2016 SP1.0 is available for download.
What’s New in SOLIDWORKS PDM 2016
For this year there are many new enhancements available for SOLIDWORKS PDM solutions. We are also renaming our main data management solution to SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional and we introduce a new solution named SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard, both using the same architecture of what was formally known as SOLIDWORKS Enterprise PDM. To keep it simple I made a selection of what we can say are the most relevant enhancements:
SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard
It is a new document management product using the same core functionalities as SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional and it is included with each license of SOLIDWORKS Professional 2016 and SOLIDWORKS Premium 2016. SOLIDWORKS PDM client application it is built right into Windows Explorer which makes it to feel and look very familiar in other words you can get up to speed quickly. For SOLIDWORKS users they can take advantage of the SOLIDWORKS add-in that offers a deeply integrated data management solution that includes among many others file versioning, searching and workflow management. For customers that need a higher level of automation they can easily upgrade to SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional that is done smoothly without any file migration hassle. To find more about SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard check post Powerful Data Management Capabilities with SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard
PDF Plug-in to modify Custom Properties of PDFs
This feature is available only in SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional and lets users read or write custom properties of PDFs using the PDF plug-in. Now it is possible to also map any user-defined custom properties that are written in the Custom tab of a PDF.
Reference Handling for Moved or Renamed Files
When you have files in the local cache that contain references, the SOLIDWORKS PDM add-in warns you if another user moves or renames the references. For example if a user will change the path of the references SOLIDWORKS PDM Add-ins it will show a warning next to the named of the modified files.
Synchronizing a Revision Variable to a Revision Number
We can map a revision variable in the workflow to synchronize it with a revision number. Previously, to set a revision number, users had to perform an increment revision. Now, using Set Revision you can synchronize a revision number to a revision value stored in a card variable, for any files including those that were previously managed outside of SOLIDWORKS PDM.
Consolidated installation
Now you can install SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard or SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional using SOLIDWORKS Installation Manager (SLDIM) however, it is still possible to use the previous method based on SOLIDWORKS PDM InstallShield Wizard.
Using Windows Search for Content Search
SOLIDWORKS PDM uses the Windows Search service to perform content searches. Previously, SOLIDWORKS PDM content search used the Microsoft Indexing Service that is not anymore supported in Windows 8 or Windows
Server 2012 operating systems.
SOLIDWORKS PDM API
Since 2015 first release there are several new interfaces and methods introduced; it is worth mentioning the new method GetVaultType (IEdmVault16) which is useful as a safety check for applications that are meant to be used only for a specific vault type (i.e. Professional).
To find out more about the SOLIDWORKS PDM new features visit What’s New section from SOLIDWORKS HELP DOCUMENTATION site.
Noteworthy Solutions from the SOLIDWORKS Knowledge Base
Why will SOLIDWORKS® not launch after I have applied Windows Update KB3097877?
A problem has been identified with Windows Update KB3097877. After installing this update SOLIDWORKS® can fail to launch. A newer version of this specific Windows Update has now been released to resolve this issue.
If your computer shows symptoms of crashing during launch after applying this Windows update please follow these steps to resolve the problem:
1. Uninstall the original Windows Update KB3097877.
2. Download the newer version of the update from the Microsoft® download site.
3. Install the new version of the Update.
From Solution Id: S-070223.
When I try to log in to the SOLIDWORKS® PDM Professional 2016 vault, why do I see the error message “Failed to obtain a license for SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional. License server system does not support this request.”?
It is possible that you will see this message if the SolidNetWork License (SNL) server version does not correspond to the version of the SOLIDWORKS PDM software that you are running. For example, if you are running the SNL server version is 2015 and the SOLIDWORKS PDM server is version 2016. To resolve this issue, follow the steps explained in Solution Id: S-069969.
How is the SOLIDWORKS ® Plastics Cool Settings default value for Cooling Time calculated?
The default Cooling Time is the predicted time required for ninety percent (90%) of the mesh elements to fall below the Polymer Material Ejection Temperature. Some factors that affect the predicted Cooling Time are: Melt Temperature, Mold Temperature, Part Ejection Temperature, and the part geometry thickness.
As an example, a larger temperature differential between the Melt Temperature and the Mold Temperature will require a longer Cooling Time.
Another example is, a thick part will have a longer Cooling Time than a thin part.. From Solution Id: S-070032.
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That’s it for this month. Thanks for reading this edition of SOLIDWORKS Support News.
Originally posted in the SOLIDWORKS Tech Blog by Julien Boissat.