Have you ever wondered what you might have missed? If you're still using SOLIDWORKS 2020, or perhaps an even older version? this video maybe for you. In it, we're going to explore some of the top ten areas of SOLIDWORKS, which have seen improvements year on year, and some specific enhancements within those areas that you can enjoy by upgrading to the latest version. 2025. So sit back and take in everything that's been improved in SOLIDWORKS. Over the past five years, SOLIDWORKS has revolutionized technical drawings, enhancing your workflow for faster and more efficient design. To start, notes, dimensions and whole call outs can be set to always be uppercase, ensuring consistency and readability across all of your drawings. Annotations have been improved for clearer communication of design intent, particularly with geometric design and tolerance in information, which enhances precision and accuracy in building materials or Bom tables. All types can now include detailed cut lists offering insights into profile information, material lengths, and even cut angles. These Bom tables can now also be filtered like an Excel, making it even quicker to access the right information for sheet metal parts. Predefined views now include flat patterns with better control over the display of bend lines, again saving time and improving manufacturing accuracy. A major workflow boost is the ability to reference drawings within other drawings, keeping all necessary information at your Additionally, the balloon tools can now display quantities alongside the item numbers, reducing the need to repeatedly reference the Bom Data sharing has always been crucial in the design process, and recent improvements have made it even easier with virtual reality support. You can now use drawings to step inside your models for an immersive review. Easy drawings has further enhanced the viewing experience, allowing you to see custom and configuration specific properties directly within files, providing quick access to essential details. The rendering has also been improved for more detailed and realistic visuals, while upgraded measuring tools allow for precise measurements regardless of design complexity. Moving and rotating bodies within models is now possible for more interactive views. Sharing models has become easier, with the option to save files as HTML, making them viewable across devices using a web browser. Additionally, drawings now supports more file types, allowing seamless collaboration across different platforms and file formats. The integration with 3D platform further streamlines collaboration, enabling users to instantly share links to Cat files with any stakeholders. These shared files can be opened without specialist software and even mocked up or commented on. Allowing smoother and more efficient teamwork. The integration of SOLIDWORKS with the 3D experience platform significantly enhances collaboration, data management, and design processes. The 3D NX platform provides a cloud based environment that connects teams, tools and data across the entire product lifecycle, enabling real time collaboration and streamlined workflows. By integrating SOLIDWORKS with the 3D experience platform. Users gain access to a wide range of tools that extend beyond traditional design. This includes advanced data management through Anovia, which helps with version control, build of materials or bond management, and even product lifecycle management or PLM. Users can manage, track and share design data securely, ensuring that all team members work with the most up to date information. The integration also enhances simulation and manufacturing capabilities with tools like Simula for advanced simulation and Dalmiya for manufacturing process planning. Bringing new levels of optimization and insight. Working with different file formats in SOLIDWORKS has become much easier with recent updates. Streamlining your workflow. You can now selectively open step files, allowing you to choose the exact parts or assemblies you need, making large files more manageable and faster to work with. With 3D interconnect, SOLIDWORKS eliminates the need for file conversions, enabling smooth referencing of native CAD data from other systems. If you're working with BIM data, SOLIDWORKS now supports IFC files again with selected opening, allowing you to bring in only the relevant parts of a building model. For better collaboration, exporting DXF and DWG files is now more intuitive, with colors already applied to lines for quicker preparation of drawings for manufacturing or for sharing. Additionally, SOLIDWORKS now allows you to save files in formats compatible with previous releases up to two years old. In showing backward compatibility. Customizing SOLIDWORKS has never been more intuitive or efficient. The new collapsible command Manager maximizes screen space and allows for easy customization of your screens. Real estate to fit your workflow. The ESC gives you instant access to your most used tools, and you can customize these toolbars by searching for features and simply adding them to your palette. The toolbar are context sensitive, so if you're sketching, for example, they will display only your favorite sketch tools. Again, speeding up your workflow. Mouse gestures continue to offer quick access to frequently use commands, and a new Q shortcut lets you temporarily view any reference geometry, reducing clicks and minimizing mouse movement. If you're ever lost, the enhanced search function quickly locates commands and help articles, making your experience far more effective. SOLIDWORKS assemblies have seen some major upgrades in recent years, enhancing your experience. First, flexible components let you easily adjust parts in an assembly to accommodate different configurations or conditions. Offering greater versatility, speed up your workflow with quick mates, which allow you to make components in just a few clicks, making positioning parts faster and more efficient. Variable patterns give you greater control over component placement, letting you adjust distances, angles, or orientations in complex designs. Instances can also vary in configuration for added flexibility. To simplify your designs, you can save entire assemblies as single parts, again reducing complexity while maintaining the design intent. The 2025 update introduces z up templates for parts and assemblies, improving collaboration with other CAD and manufacturing systems. You can check out all the latest updates to SOLIDWORKS and look back at years of recent releases on the What's New section of our website. Just head to the link in the description to catch up on all the updates to SOLIDWORKS, or sign up to watch our in-depth webinars. Whenever you fancy For many years, SOLIDWORKS visualize has been a key tool for creating high quality photorealistic imagery from CAD models over the last five years. Several significant improvements have enhanced its functionality. One of the standout features is the Extended Reality, or EXR exporter, which easily converts visualize files into augmented reality. Are all virtual reality VR experiences, enabling more interactive project presentations? Additionally, SOLIDWORKS visualize now integrates fully with SOLIDWORKS PDM, simplifying file organization. IIs Lite profiles were also introduced. These define the light distribution characteristics real world light sources, providing detailed information about how light is emitted from a specific light fixture, including the intensity, direction, and even distribution pattern of the light. New tools for creating montage imagery using photographs have also been added, such as the Match Camera tool, which helps align models with backplate images for more accurate positioning. The ability to use geometry as shadow catchers also enhances realism by displaying shadows without blocking the background, creating even more realism. But the most impressive enhancement is the new render engine, which boosts performance, making viewport interactions smoother and significantly reducing render times, especially for high images and high end GPUs. These updates make SOLIDWORKS visualize an even more powerful and effective tool for CAD visualization. SOLIDWORKS continues to evolve by streamlining POC creation with new tools and reduced workflows. The improved Sheet Metal Stamp tool now allows for easier and more precise creation of stamped or pressed features by simply using a sketch, giving you far greater control over your designs. Creating realistic surface textures like a knurled finish is now even simpler. With 3D textures, you can directly apply these new surface finishes to your model using either a library asset or a user defined image. Bringing your designs to life before they hit production. The Structure Systems tool, introduced in 2019 and upgraded year after year, enables quick creation and modification of complex frames and structures. Much like SOLIDWORKS 12 months but without the need for sketch geometry, sensors that are specific to sheet metal can monitor critical parameters like bend radius, material thickness, and even sheet size. Ensure manufacturability. And finally, the symmetric option in the Linear Pattern tool automatically creates mirrored, symmetrical features with just a single click. Saving you time and ensuring perfect symmetry. Large Design Review, or LDA in SOLIDWORKS, allows users to open and interact with large assemblies without the typical performance delays. LDA mode loads only essential data such as assembly, structure, mates and lightweight representations, enabling quick reviews and analysis with minimal system resource. Users can navigate feature manager design to measure distances, create cross-sections, hide show components, and even detect interferences. Detailing mode allows users to work with 2D drawings without fully loading the 3D model, again improving performance with large or complex designs. Only 2D elements like views, annotations, and dimensions are loaded. Replacing 3D geometry with simplified placeholders. Now this is the big one. Over the last five years, SOLIDWORKS has seen significant performance improvements aimed at optimizing efficiency for users working with large assemblies, complex models, and detailed drawings. Some of the key advancements include enhanced graphics performance, with SOLIDWORKS being integrated with more powerful GPU support and optimized rendering techniques. Improved load times as the software now uses more efficient methods to load assemblies, parts, and drawings, significantly reducing the time required to open large files and cloud and collaborative tools with integration of cloud based services, again further enhancing performance across teams and devices. And there you have it. The top ten areas of improvement in recent years with SOLIDWORKS. If you want to know our top ten features of 2025 or any of the previous years, you can find them on our website or YouTube channel. And if you want to know more about any of the features you've seen or would like to book a demo, please get in touch using the details on screen.