SOLIDWORKS 2020 What’s New – Best New Features

November 7, 2019 by Kris Dubuque

The new release of SOLIDWORKS 2020 is now available and the Computer Aided Technology Tech Team is excited for this release and all its new features. At the beginning of September, we started documenting the best new features of SOLIDWORKS 2020 from Part, Assembly, and Drawing tools to the new features in the SOLIDWORKS family of tools like Simulation, EPDM, SOLIDWORKS Electrical, and SOLIDWORKS CAM. We have been sharing them with you and the SOLIDWORKS community thru the CATI Blog. We have since published over 80 different […]

SOLIDWORKS 2020 What’s New – Specifying the Thicken Direction

November 6, 2019 by Randy Simmons

This new enhancement in SOLIDWORKS 2020 is super straightforward. Thicken (for a surface) and Thicken-Cut features can now be thickened in a direction other than normal to face. All of the following can be used to specify the direction: Sketched Line Pair of vertices Sketched Points Cylindrical Faces Reference Planes Conical Faces Reference Axis Points in Reference Geometry Linear Model Edges Planar Faces I hope this part of the What’s New series gives you a better understanding of the new […]

SOLIDWORKS 2020 What’s New – Electrical Leader Lines

November 6, 2019 by Corey Kubichka

Text and balloons with leader lines are a common method to convey design notes. SOLIDWORKS Schematic 2020 introduces leader lines for text and balloons. Creating a balloon layout or annotating a layout to better call out information has been something users have been looking for quite some time! Now you can create leader lines with blocks and notes in 2D panel layouts and harness drawings. Users can add in these annotations with dedicated commands and a leader style manager. You […]

SOLIDWORKS 2020 What’s New – Creating Curved Beams and Merging Tangent Members in Weldments

November 4, 2019 by Judy Marlo

In SOLIDWORKS Weldments, users have the ability to support curved members. Now, in SOLIDWORKS 2020, users can create curved beams from primary and secondary members in a structure system. Curved members behave the same way as linear members where you can add secondary members between them. If you select a 3D curve or spline as a reference, the member can only pierce through the center of the profile. Also, in some scenarios, you cannot sweep members with 2d or 3D […]

SOLIDWORKS 2020 What’s New – Importing 2D DXF or DWG Files as Reference Sketches

November 4, 2019 by Brandon Nelms

Sketch Blocks are great for reference sketches. Especially when you’re importing a dxf or dwg file. That file doesn’t have dimensions or design intent and you really don’t want to change them anyway. So, a lot of users use blocks to lock down all those under-defined sketch entities and not worry about accidentally changing them with a quick draw double click on a sketch. But you know how painful it is to make sketch blocks? You have to edit the […]

SOLIDWORKS 2020 What’s New – Reimport Electrical Data for Wires, Cables, and Harnesses

November 2, 2019 by Brandon Brooks

Previously, in SOLIDWORKS Electrical / SOLIDWORKS Electrical 3D, if you wanted to remove a wire from a route you would need to clear the unwanted wire, cable, or harness from your Schematic and delete the route to be able to successfully remove the wire from the 3D model. Now in 2020 we have the capability to remove a wire or core from electrical routes, cables or harnesses in SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematic, then re-import that model, and the software removes the […]

SOLIDWORKS 2020 What’s New – Mirror Components

November 2, 2019 by Brian Reel

It’s hard to believe that Assembly Mirror Components has been a command offering since SOLIDWORKS release 2001 and to think that almost 20 years later they are still adding enhancements to this great command. Well for SOLIDWORKS 2020 this is true, and I would like to show you some of the new command options that will make creating mirrored components in assemblies even easier. In SOLIDWORKS 2019, we had options of mirroring type based on Bounding Box Center and Center […]

SOLIDWORKS 2020 What’s New – PCB Enhancements

November 1, 2019 by Brian Cooke

Duplicate Pad Designators Traditionally, PCB designers would make their PCB footprints with mounting holes and label those holes as pad 0. Multiple mounting holes would all be labeled pad 0. And pretty much every PCB design software doesn’t have an issue with that. SOLIDWORKS PCB hasn’t had an issue with that either, except for when it comes to the collaboration with SOLIDWORKS CAD. We couldn’t handle it on the mechanical end and required people to label every pad with a […]

SOLIDWORKS 2020 What’s New – Defining Hole Depths

October 31, 2019 by Bryan Pawlak

Controlling the depth of your holes using the SOLDWORKS hole wizard or advanced holes just got easier in 2020. You now have the ability to control if you want to measure to the shoulder or all the way to the drill tip. Previously we were only able to measure to the shoulder. This new functionality applies to the following end conditions: Blind Up to Vertex Up to Surface Offset from Surface This is a small change, but it gives a […]

SOLIDWORKS 2020 What’s New – Component Patterns with Variable Instances

October 31, 2019 by Dennis Barnes

I am very exited to announce the latest enhancement for SOLIDWORKS 2020 Assembly Patterns. With this new release SOLIDWORKS has improved the functionality of the Circular Component Pattern tool to include the ability to modify individual instance within the circular pattern. This has been a feature for linear and circular patterns in parts since SOLIDWORKS 2015 but having this available at the assembly level really improves the flexibility of the circular component pattern. Let me show you how it works: […]