Top 10 User Enhancement Requests 2017

Each year between November and January SOLIDWORKS opens up the opportunity to submit and vote on enhancements for the “Top 10” list for that year. These are announced at SOLIDWORKS World, usually on Wednesday. This year they broke the tradition of announcing them in the giant General Session and instead did them in a break-out session in front of approximately only 30 people.

Some of the statistics that were given at the beginning of the presentation were:

-Since 2001 (when they started doing this) 70% of all the Top 10 list have been implemented.

-SOLIDWORKS gets about 6000 Enhancement Requests per year!!

They also reviewed which Top 10 Enhancements from previous years made it in to SW2017:

-Ability to switch to “classic colors” interface

-Converting between Fillet – Chamfer and vice versa

-Use of line endpoints for Hole Positions (advanced hole tool)

-Correct quantity of identical holes in callouts no matter how the holes were created (mirror, pattern, etc.)

Without further ado, HERE is the 2017 SOLIDWORKS TOP 10 ENHANCMENTS list voted on by YOU!!

10. Fully Integrated Sub-D Modeling tool

9. Automatic Fastener BOM creation w/o physically inserting the fasteners

8. Bounding Box Values for any part or assembly

7. External Reference graphical display (like Treehouse)

6. Export BOM with Model Thumbnail included in Excel file

5. Completely release memory / GDI handle when file is unloaded

4. Allow Zero Thickness Geometry

3. Improve the performance and quality when importing LARGE IGES/STEP files

2. Substantially increase stability in SOLIDWORKS

1. Focus more on fixing bugs

So, I think you can see from the list above, users want SOLIDWORKS to spend their maintenance dollars on QUALITY (and performance) rather than new enhancements.

The overwhelming response from the crowd at this session was to move the announcement of the Top 10 list BACK to the main General Session presentation.  SW CEO Gian Paolo Bassi was in attendence and heard it loud and clear, even repeating the desire back to the audience to make sure it was heard correctly.  We’ll see if it gets moved back for next year!!

Be sure to participate in the TOP 10 ENHANCEMENTS voting for next year (starting in November) and don’t forget to turn in your enhancement requests all year long via the SW Customer Portal!!