SOLIDWORKS Manage 2021 New Features & Benefits (With Video)

1. New Feature: Project Lists for Informed Decision-Making

SOLIDWORKS 2021 products have a huge set of new features and performance enhancements, including SOLIDWORKS Manage. Managing multiple projects is commonplace for people who use SOLIDWORKS Manage. New in 2021, SOLIDWORKS introduced the concept of project lists. Project lists are very helpful and can be created to meet individual needs.

You can add all the things you would normally add in terms of resource management, including scheduling, capacity planning, and load charts, all in one list. This makes it easy for a manager to see all the information they need to make proactive decisions on project start dates, by assigning tasks to users and allowing them to complete those in the system. And it’s a great way to keep everyone up-to-date on the project status.

2. Automatic Update of User Info in the Database

Now in 2021, we also have a background service that will automatically update all the information from the clients, or the users, into the database. The manager does not have to constantly see and execute updates. These updates are picked up automatically as users complete them, and we can even do things like have the deliverables move to the deliverables tab of the product itself.

So in short, this is an automated project updating service that configures to check for task updates and updates the completion progress of each project state.

3. New Ways to Easily Visualize Project Data

We also in the 2021 release have some new ways to visualize project data through out of the box dashboards and graphs. These will give you all the information you need to have clear visibility into project tasks. The task board can now be grouped by priority as well as status and you can change items from one column to another in a simple drag-and-drop (for example, making a task go from not-started to in-progress). If I double tap on a task, I can go ahead and edit all the information I want to immediately!

Items are a way to correlate design data in Manage. If we look at an item record, it’s looking at several assemblies that need to be consolidated when looking at the manufacturing Bill of Material (BOM). Now in SOLIDWORKS Manage 2021, we have windows that are moldless. I can easily copy data from one window to another without having to switch from one to another, full screen.

4. Preview Contents When You Use the Copy From Command

We also have the Copy From command, which allows you to select the assembly you want a copy and you can preview the contents, new in 2021. You can tell the system what you do or don’t want added by deselecting the things you don’t need.

When you’re working with the Bill of Material, we have familiar actions available like cut, copy, and paste, but you’ll notice that to show what’s in the process of being cut, we can turn the color of the rows to orange. This way, we can see the items being cut, and we paste them and save, to show what has been cut out of the original occasion and what is now in the new location.

5. Create New, Right From the Bill of Materials (BOM)

Let’s say you’re looking at your model, and looking at an assembly. There’s a sheet metal part that might need a couple of operations done to it: Laser cut, and formed on the brake press. New for SOLIDWORKS Manage 2021, is the ability to create new, and new from, the items right in the Bill of Material.

All you have to do is change whatever metadata needs to be changed and specify what you need to carry over. That’s it!

6. New Feature: Configuring Manufacturing Operations with the Dissolve Command

Now, if I must add that sheet metal part I was talking about, to these different manufacturing operations, we can now use the Dissolve command. I can dissolve the parent assembly and I can, of course, indicate which subassemblies I want to break down and it’ll do so for me. I can get rid of the components in that subassembly that I don’t want and don’t need as part of this operation. Then, the software lets me cut this item and paste it into the two manufacturing operations.

7. Share Files Easily: Share with PDM Users & Others Who Don’t Have Manage

New for the Web Client in SOLIDWORKS Manage 2021, we have the ability to leverage the Web2 Client in SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional so that people using the SOLIDWORKS Manage web client can take advantage of the ability to be able to see the 3D model right in the web page. Also sharing with people outside of Manage has never been easier, because now I can select the share operation and I can choose what I want to do: send an email, or copy a link to send in Teams or some other social media or medium. I can have security options set for password expiration date. I can use Templates to make it easier to reuse my data and gather things quickly. And then on the end user side, they just see it in the webpage and then they click Download and they have all files that I want to share with them.

So that’s just some of what’s new in SOLIDWORKS 2021!

Want More?

• Data Sheet for SOLIDWORKS Manage (PDF)
• Product Data Management (PDM) Page
• Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) – 3DEXPERIENCE on the Cloud Page
• PDM Implementation Offers
• SQL Licensing Changes for SOLIDWORKS Manage Blog

Contact Us

We’re always available over the phone at 262-790-1080, or, if you don’t have time for a phone call, we take submitted inquiries online.