MegaHertz604

Hello readers, this week we’re branching off into yet another product offering, completely separate from SolidWorks. SolidWorks Composer (formerly 3DVia Composer), is a tool used for creating publication-quality materials from SolidWorks (and other) 3D CAD data. Composer outputs can be used to create user guides, marketing materials, high-quality illustrations, assembly instructions, and repair manuals.

Honorable Mentions

User Assistance

What good is a product if no one knows how to use it? Composer is certainly an intimidating product that may not be intuitive to full-time 3D CAD users. Therefore, SolidWorks has improved their user assistance offerings for Composer Products. The help menu is now provided in HTML format via a browser-based portal, which offers a single entry point to user assistance for the entire Composer line. User training guides have also undergone a major revamp. In particular, step-by-step information has been separated from reference information.

Render Mode as a Document Property

The Render mode (Smooth, technical, flat, etc.) can now be set as a document property, which affects every view, instead of a simple view setting, which only affected one view at a time. However, the option won’t appear until you create an environment variable called DS_3DVC_OVERRIDE_RENDER_MODE, and set its value to 1. (I’m still trying to figure out how to do that. That enhanced help menu wasn’t much help.)

Once the variable is created, you’ll be able to change the Render mode of all your views at once through the Properties menu, or create and save templates based on Render Mode.

Winner

Windows 8 Support

The Windows 8 operating system is now supported for all Composer products (Composer, Composer Player, and Composer Sync). Windows 8 gestures are supported in Composer products on desktop and tablet devices. I don’t think this means we’ll be seeing Composer on iPads anytime soon, but Windows tablets are fair game.

<< Chapter 6: CircuitWorks | Chapter 8: Costing >>

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