solidworks 2011…the overview

Dassault Systemes SolidWorks Corporation has paid for my travel, accommodations, and some meals for the 2011 SolidWorks Launch Blogger event.

So here we are, the embargo has been lifted and you are already getting bombarded with SolidWorks 2011 goodness this morning.  I wanted to start out my series of posts with just kind of a quick overview of the next release and the meat and potatoes in the upcoming days and weeks.

The 1st thing that you will notice in the What’s New manual this time around is its size.  Normally this document is well over the 200 page mark but this year it is considerably smaller and checks in at the 168 page mark.  Now this doesn’t mean that this release is not worth a look or download, I think it is smaller because more of the focus was put on the things behind the scenes like performance, stability, and memory management.  I will cover these things more in depth in my next post coming tomorrow.

A comment I overheard in the last couple of days was that the developers spent less time on new projects this time around and the focus was put towards cleaning up existing code to make the product leaner.  This leads me to wonder, are they cleaning up code to make the existing product better?  Yes, this probably plays a role in it.  But also, are they trying to clean up the current code as much as possible now before they transfer some of that to the “cloud” version of the software that is rumored to be coming.  I think this is also a big part of the focus on these areas the last couple of years.

Whether it is or isn’t, it means good stuff for the end user right now.  A more lean code behind the scenes means a smoother, more stable version of the software that we all know and love.

Stay tuned in the upcoming days and weeks for more posts on the stuff you can expect to see in SolidWorks 2011.