SOLIDWORKS Plastics 2023 - Top Enhancements

The official launch of SOLIDWORKS 2023 is fast approaching!  Do you plan on being an early adopter, installing the new version as soon as possible?  Have you read through the What’s New documentation for SOLIDWORKS 2023 and decided there are new features and functionality you cannot live without?

I am looking forward to the software release date for several of the included enhancements, including what will be in SOLIDWORKS Plastics 2023.  If you’d prefer to watch, I’ve created a video with this info as well:

SOLIDWORKS Plastics Materials Database – Material Grades

I posed this very question last year, “What would an annual release of SOLIDWORKS Plastics be without changes to the material database?”.  SOLIDWORKS is, of course, updating its material database for 2023. Now, you’ll see many new, commercially available material grades in the polymer database.  Additionally, we’re seeing more than 50 materials in the existing database receive updates with the latest material property values, as supplied by the resin vendors.  SOLIDWORKS is also removing many obsoleted resins from the SOLIDWORKS Plastics 2023 material database.  For those of you keeping score, the SOLIDWORKS Plastics 2023 material database includes resins from 196 companies, spanning 138 material families. This also includes more than 4000 commercially available resin material grades for our injection molding analysis.

SOLIDWORKS Plastics Materials Database Manager

One of the first things users will notice with the SOLIDWORKS Plastics Materials Database Manager is a facelift to the user interface.  This is an interesting change that I welcome!  Light colors on a white background can be difficult for some individuals to see. SOLIDWORKS Plastics 2023 replaces the yellow-on-white in SOLIDWORKS Plastics 2022 (Figure 1) with a medium gray-on-white (Figure 2).

Figure 1. SOLIDWORKS Plastics 2022 Polymer Database

Figure 2. SOLIDWORKS Plastics 2023 Polymer Database

The astute reader will notice that several tabs, such as Elastic Modulus and Poisson’s Ratio, have been removed across the top of the interface.  I appreciate the decluttering of tabs where, in most instances, the included material property data was a constant value and not temperature-dependent.  Another subtle change is moving the material polymer family and resin manufacturer name from the title bar and into separate material property fields (Figure 3).

Figure 3. New material property fields

There are a few other Plastics Materials Database Manager changes not currently in the Pre-Release version of SOLIDWORKS 2023. However, they should become available in an early 2023 service pack.  For example, filled materials will include detailed fiber properties in an expandable material property field (Figure 4).

Figure 4. New fiber properties

The database will include both solid density and melt density for many resins in an expandable Density section.  Also, Thermoset resin material properties will include PVT data for the cured and uncured states, Heat of Reaction and Induction Time Constants, and Ejection Conversion and Initial Conversion data from resin manufacturers, when available.  The solver for SOLIDWORKS Plastics 2023 has also been enhanced to account for these additional material properties to improve the accuracy of Fill, Pack, and Warp simulations.

Summary and Report

In SOLIDWORKS Plastics 2023, you can now access the Summary and the Report of the finished analysis separately when right-clicking on the Results folder (Figure 5).  This is a simple – and great – addition to SOLIDWORKS Plastics 2023!

Figure 5. Summary and Report changes

Along with this change, when accessing the Summary information, there are tabs with more content for easy access to the pertinent information from a solved SOLIDWORKS Plastics 2023 analysis (Figure 6).

Figure 6. New Summary information and tabs

More Reporting Options

You’ll also notice changes to how SOLIDWORKS Plastics 2023 creates reports (Figure 7). SOLIDWORKS removed the Classic and Light report options from prior versions of SOLIDWORKS Plastics. Now, we see an updated report template.  We will also be able to select the type of report – MS-Word, MS-PowerPoint, HTML, or all formats – to generate instead of having all possible report formats created by default.  This will save time if you choose a single report format.

Figure 7. Updated report generation

The changes coming in SOLIDWORKS Plastics 2023 are new and updated materials, a user interface change, and better summary and report options.  On the surface, it seems there are only three updates for 2023.  Digging into the details of each enhancement shows a lot more going on “under the hood” to make these happen.  I hope you’re looking forward to SOLIDWORKS Plastics 2023 and taking advantage of the new features and enhancements.  Now go make your products better with SOLIDWORKS Simulation!

I hope this part of the What’s New series gives you a better understanding of the new features and functions in SOLIDWORKS 2023.  Please check back to the CATI Blog as the CATI Application Engineers will continue to break down many of the new items in SOLIDWORKS 2023.  All these articles will be stored in the category of “SOLIDWORKS What’s New.”

Bill Reuss
Sr. Application Engineer Specialist, Simulation
Computer Aided Technology

What is Design Innovation Month?

DESIGN INNOVATION MONTH 2022 – Live Events, Webinars, Virtual Showroom, Contests

Design Innovation Month is CATI’s “What’s New in 2023” event for SOLIDWORKS, 3DEXPERIENCE, and 3D Printing & 3D Scanning technology.   This year we’re going back to the future to bring you in-person events, live and on-demand webinars, demonstrations, in-depth blog posts, and prizes!   Best of all, it’s free of charge!  Check the DI Month Hub for all the details and to sign up for your nearest live event.