Hey everyone! SolidWorks 2010 is out! There are a lot of small improvements in SolidWorks Simulation. There is nothing earth shattering but there are a lot of long over-due improvements that make Simulation friendlier to use. I will try to put together a series of short blogs that outline the highlights. This entry will cover interface enhancements.

Study tree feature names are now more descriptive. It used to be, unless you manually renamed your features, you had to edit a feature to tell what you had actually applied. This is no longer the case. Most features have descriptions in parentheses next to them in the feature tree.

If you hover over an item in the Simulation feature tree, an even more detailed description pops up.

Hovering over a symbol in the design window also pops up the details.

Fixtures, loads, and connectors can now be organized into folders. To do this, right click on Connections, Fixtures, or External Loads and select Create New Folder. Items can then be dragged into the new folder.. When using the Connectors dialog box, and connectors that are created while the dialog box pushpin is depressed will be placed in a new folder. If this is not wanted, the items can be dragged out of the folder back into the general connections folder.

It is now possible to group edit like features. For instance, if you have 25 identical bolt connectors, you can either ctrl select or shift select all the bolts you would like to edit, right click, select edit feature, edit a value in the dialog box, and accept the change. The change will be applied to all the selected connectors.

These may seem like relatively simple interface changes but I think they will make Simulation much more user friendly. As always, if you have any questions about any of the enhancements discussed here, the What’s New documentation is a great source or I would be happy to answer your questions on the support line.