Solidworks 2018 is designed to support the complete design process through to manufacturing. This unified process gives a connected and seamless flow of data that is available to all teams involved in product development whenever, wherever and in whatever format is needed without having to port data from one system to another.
Teams can collaborate concurrently to more rapidly and cost-efficiently design a product or part, validate its function and manufacturability, manage its data and related processes, streamline and automate its manufacturing, and inspect it. Any changes in design or manufacturing are fast and easy to manage and automatically flow to all related models, programs, drawings and documentation, thanks to intellectual property embedded early on in the design process.
A key feature of the package is Solidworks CAM, a new application that provides rules-based machining with knowledge capture to allow for the automation of manufacturing programming. Designers and engineers can gain a greater understanding of how their designs are made, make more informed decisions, and quickly create prototype parts and manufacture in-house to control quality, cost and delivery. This application also enables teams to execute new 'build to order' strategies with custom parts that are automatically designed and programmed in seconds rather than hours.
