Archive review from 10 August 2004

Review of Solidworks 2005
from SolidWorks Corporation

The quest for innovation shows no sign of slowing

Page 2 of 11

(continued...) One obvious new feature is the task pane, typically docked to the right of the screen area giving immediate access to SolidWorks resources ranging from creating new documents to discussion forums.

A second tab offers design library content and the third a file explorer listing currently open files and a full windows style file explorer.

Hovering over a file pops out a Tooltip balloon with property information and for SolidWorks files also a preview.

Current files are shown bold if they have been modified since they were last saved and orange if read-only.

Referenced files that are not currently open can also be listed if required, identified by the file icon being transparent.

Write access is now managed better in a shared environment with tooltips indicating the name of the user who currently has write permission for the document.

When attempting to make changes to a read-only document a warning message pops-up.

Checking for availability or changes can be manual or at a scheduled interval and status can be altered using 'Getwrite access' or 'Make read-only' commands from the file menu.

The Reload dialog indicates write status, the name of the user with write access, whether edits need to be saved or if there is a newer version on disk.

As an additional safety measure, colour coding indicates if edits will be lost if the file is reloaded.

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