So now we are in week 2 of previewing some of the changes that you can expect to see in SolidWorks 2010 and my blog reader is filling up quickly with all of the posts that the “SolidWorks Blog Squad” members are doing.  At weeks end I had a total of 33 posts covering a bunch of new & cool functionality from the upcoming release of SolidWorks 2010.

To start this week off I wanted to show you something that I mentioned in my overview post that I did last week Monday.  As I mentioned then one of the areas that the usability team at SolidWorks focused on was the help files and tutorials that you can reach from inside the SolidWorks interface.  The first thing that you are going to want to make sure that you do is make sure that the option to use the web help is turned on.  You can do this by selecting the drop down arrow next to the question mark in the upper right hand corner of the user interface.  The drop down you should get will look like the screenshot below.  You can see in the screenshot that I have the option to “Use SolidWorks Web Help” selected.

So once you get into the help files (see screenshot below) you will notice some slight differences from last year but for the most part all of the new functionality will be going on behind the scenes.  As I mentioned in my overview post this online help format will allow SolidWorks to continuously update the help files.  In other releases if something needed to be updated they would have to wait until the next service pack release but not anymore.  I personally feel that this is a HUGE step in the right direction towards getting the help files to a point where they actually help.  I give this enhancement and A++!

One other thing I noticed in the help files that I really liked was that the “What’s New” is included in the help files.  This will be a nice a quick way to check out what has been changed or added.  Also, this will allow for quick access to the tutorials that you can find in the what’s new PDF for selected features.

The other area that has been updated here is the tutorials.  They have added new tutorials for DimXpert, Electrical Routing, TolAnalyst, SolidWorks APU C#, SolidWorks API Visual Basic, SolidWorks API .NET, Design Check for Assembly with Mixed Mesh, and Design Check for Connectors.

For Simulation you can go to Simulation > Help > Simulation Online Tutorial to see these tutorials.

All in all I really like these updates, especially the revamped Help section.  I think that this will be extremely useful for all users.