This week so far I have been covering the SolidWorks 2010 user interface changes that you can expect to see.  To wrap up this first week of daily what’s new articles I wanted to give you just a quick rundown of other changes that probably aren’t big enough to warrant a whole post.

Instant3D

In SolidWorks 2010 you will notice a slight change to the command “Move with Triad” in assembly files.  Now when you use this command you will see a ruler appear along with the triad.

PropertyManager

There are a couple of changes made to the PropertyManager in this release but for the most part it is behind the scenes types of things that the real improvements can be noticed.  Following the theme of this release the main changes in the PropertyManager were making it work similar to other “manager” features in SolidWorks.  Also, the workflow has been improved by automatically focusing from one control to the next while using this tool.

Larger Icons for Vista

If you are running Vista you may have noticed that SolidWorks does not currently support the larger icons that Vista offers.  That will change in SolidWorks 2010 as you will now be able to have 256 x 256 pixel icons of the SolidWorks applications and SolidWorks documents.

Touch & Multi-touch Support

Flick touch & multi-touch gestures will now be available if you have a touch-enabled computer with SolidWorks installed on it.

According to the “What’s New in SolidWorks 2010” PDF the back, forward, drag and scroll flick actions are mapped to SolidWorks view rotations.  You can also add gestures for zoom, rotate, pan, roll, right click and zoom to fit commands.

Touch enabled computers is not something that I have a whole lot of experience with but I definitely think there is a place for them.  But (yes, there is always a but) as of right now I do not think that running a CAD program on one is the hot new fad so this new feature seems a little more of a “see what we can do” type of addition.  I may be totally off base with that but it is just my $0.02.

That pretty much wraps it up for the User Interface enhancements that you will see in SolidWorks 2010.  Stay tuned next week to see what has been changed in the other areas of the program.