To our clients it is, our plan is to leverage the strength and capabilities of the Dassault Systèmes 3DExperience Platform and build a new experience that is as intuitive and easy to use as the SolidWorks tools you use today. Today, I want to share the first example of this new approach, which we are calling SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual.
SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual is a tool for conceptual
mechanical design that is complementary to the products you use today. It
allows you to capture ideas digitally, quickly create 3D concept models, get
feedback from internal and external stakeholders, and easily manage multiple
concepts before committing engineering time to build.
Why Conceptual?
- 31% of project time is spent on conceptual mechanical design
- 3 out of 4 engineers are engaged in conceptual mechanical design
- On average there are six conceptual and four design iterations in a typical project
- There can be more than three internal and two external stakeholder groups involved in the concept phase
Today, SolidWorks is the best solution for detail design,
but it limits your creativity for this key conceptual step. SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual fills in
these gaps and allows you to:
- Capture ideas digitally
- Manage multiple concepts
- Collaborate and communicate
Instinctive Design
Evolving a concept is where SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual
really begins to speed the design time.
Most systems force you to think about product structure in order to
capture ideas. Our single modelling environment is about ease of use,
creativity, and ease of change – with amazing flexibility. Capturing concepts
digitally is quick and easy with familiar tools and concepts so the focus is on
ideas -- not on the software.
Sketch
SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual merges the benefits of
history, parametrics, and direct editing into a single interface. As a concept evolves, you can make any change
necessary to a design while respecting the design intent you previously
created. The Single Modelling Environment allows you to evolve from layout
sketches to 3D geometry, to separate parts and assemblies, without taking
product structure into consideration.
SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual lets you evolve your
design’s organizational structure as you evolve the idea and have a better
understanding of where the design will go.
This eliminates wasted time because you never have to start over or
drastically rework designs to make an underlying change.
Search Assemble
In our single modelling environment, as we evolve our
product structure into assemblies we have familiar tools and intelligence that
improves with use as components learn how they were used previously. You can
also automatically apply previous intent to new designs. And SolidWorks
Mechanical Conceptual always saves the design, as well as various iterations,
so it’s very easy to get back to a previous idea and develop it further.
As we get to more of a 3D concept, we can use motion
simulation to better understand the real world interaction of parts and
identify key concerns early on, before getting to detail design.
Social Innovation
When you feel that sufficient concepts have been captured,
then it’s key to be able to engage stakeholders (both internal to the
organization as well as with customers and vendors) to get feedback on the best
path forward.
SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual has social innovation
capabilities built into its foundation.
At any point, the designer can engage stakeholders by posting concepts
to their private communities. Stakeholders are notified that there is a concept
to review and can provide feedback using simple and familiar Web concepts. The world is becoming more social every day,
and at SolidWorks we believe in collective intelligence. SolidWorks Mechanical
Conceptual truly brings these capabilities to concept design. This type of participation will allow you to
better engage with your customers and differentiate yourself from the
competition. After stakeholders are
done, the designer is automatically notified and can continue to evolve the
concept with this feedback.
Connected
SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual is always connected to the
design database and to other users. This
gives us the ability to secure your data, prevent data loss from any crashes,
and automatically save iterations of each concept.
You are also connected to other users both working on your
project and also in the wider SolidWorks community. You can participate in live chats with other
users to get feedback on a question or a design challenge. Users are always working together on the same
design so that there is no time wasted, or confusion as to what is the latest
version. When a team member makes a
change, all users are updated in real time with the latest version so the
concepts will always progress forward.
Communities
Being connected provides access anywhere at any time to your
concepts. SolidWorks Mechanical
Conceptual even allows users to take designs on the go for design reviews, or
even for sales and marketing using mobile applications.
We are very excited about the progress we have made with
SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual. This
product will be a great complement to companies using SolidWorks today. We believe the product delivers on a new
approach to conceptual design by incorporating the flexibility of a single modelling
environment, social innovation, and the benefits of being connected online.
In May of this year, we will be working with select
customers to validate these principles of conceptual design in their production
environments. Once we are confident in
the benefits these customers are seeing we expect to make SolidWorks Mechanical
Conceptual available to all users in the Fall of 2013.
The team at Hamilton By Design have been using Solidworks since 2001for more information on how to get your projects moving contact HamiltonBy Design Today
