SolidWorks Corporation has given students and teachers the key resources they need to enhance engineering education with the release of SolidWorks Education Edition 2007-2008. The latest version of SolidWorks 3D CAD software for students includes links to a new 3D CAD curriculum portal (http://www.solidworks.com/curriculum), plus all the major features in SolidWorks 2007 Office Premium.
SolidWorks Education Edition 2007-2008 now includes COSMOSWorks Advanced Professional and COSMOSFloWorks Professional Edition analysis software - enabling students from middle through graduate school for the first time to perform all of the analysis tasks undertaken by a typical engineer designing products.
“Design and analysis are increasingly integrated functions in professional engineering jobs, and this coupling is important for those intent on designing better products,” said Ashland O. Brown, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of the Pacific. “SolidWorks Corporation has addressed this both in its commercial software and in its education edition, clearly taking it to the next level in this advanced package. I can confidently say this is one of the best 3D CAD and FEA analysis software products available for education.”
COSMOSWorks Advanced Professional is a high-end finite element analysis (FEA) product offering capabilities for non-linear, dynamic, and composite material analysis. COSMOSFloWorks Professional Edition includes advanced analysis capabilities for compressible flow (liquid), solar radiation, rotating frame of reference, and moving walls. Both new tools will be useful for intermediate, advanced, and graduate-level students. For example, students competing in Formula Student race car design and racing competitions can use these products to check the car frame’s structural rigidity under different loading and material conditions.
The new curriculum portal includes a wealth of new resources for educators, including lessons, projects, exercises, answer keys, movies, white papers, PowerPoint presentations, and case studies - as well as expanded course-specific curricula for design analysis. Coursework is available in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Swedish, Brazilian, Portuguese, and Dutch.
The portal complements the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) weblog (http://blogs.solidworks.com/teacher) that SolidWorks launched last year, now offering more than 100 free lessons and receiving more than 10,000 visits per month.
Formerly on DVD, student guides are now available from the Design Library embedded in SolidWorks Education Edition 2007-2008. This convenience means students no longer have to find the disk and load guides onto their PCs.
SolidWorks Education Edition 2007-2008 includes an enhanced DWGeditor tool for editing existing 2D DWG/DXF drawings and learning 2D design techniques. SolidWorks Corporation will supply three DWGeditor licenses for every licensed version of SolidWorks Education Edition.