SolidWorks Corporation has released the next generation of its 3D CAD software for students and educators, SolidWorks Education Edition 2008-2009, which delivers all the powerful capabilities of SolidWorks 2008 Office Premium plus new analysis software, curriculum, and more.
Students from middle school through graduate school will immediately notice the most sweeping enhancement - a new, intuitive, time-saving user interface (UI). Students can work more efficiently than ever, because the UI gives them new opportunities to interact directly with the model in addition to intuitive menu options.
A streamlined workflow anticipates which tools students will need in the context of the specific task they are undertaking and presents them for use. The interface increases useful window real estate, reduces mouse travel, provides innovative customisation options, and offers task-based command selection. These attributes have helped establish SolidWorks as the easiest to use 3D CAD software system, focusing students on their designs and minimising distractions.
“SolidWorks Education Edition 2008-2009 makes it even easier for students to rapidly realise their design and engineering visions,” said Kim Alan Olson, instructor of tool design engineering at Moraine Park Technical College in West Bend, Wisc. “It improves usability and eliminates complexity without in any way dumbing it down for our students. If anything, SolidWorks’ easy-to-use capabilities expose students early to engineering principles they’ll encounter in the professional environment down the road.”
SolidWorks Education Edition 2008-2009 for the first time includes COSMOSFloXpress, an easy-to-use fluid dynamics application that calculates how fluid flows through a part model. Based on this analysis, students can easily find and fix problem areas in their designs. More advanced students can graduate to COSMOSFloWorks, a full-featured computational fluid dynamics and thermal analysis application in SolidWorks Education Edition. SolidWorks Education Edition now offers the most comprehensive integrated analysis capabilities in education software.