solidThinking, Inc., a subsidiary of Altair Company, has announced the 2016 version of solidThinking Evolve, the computer-aided industrial design (CAID) software solution for Mac and Windows platforms.
New in Evolve 2016
Evolve 2016 includes over 30 new features across the entire application’s capabilities, from modeling, sketching and rendering, among others.
In terms of user-interface and workflow improvements, there are an array of new improvements to the Translate, Rotate, Scale and Camera controls. Snaps have also been improved with new Snap to Intersections and Snap Midaxis.
A new Snapshot feature has been added so that a snapshot image of the model can be executed at any point in the workflow. Several UI features have been changed to improve visibility, including the Curvature Plot is now grey versus white, and the Default workspace theme has been updated to a lighter gray for similar reasons. On the Mac, a user can now determine the location of an open file by Command + Clicking on the file name in the title bar of the application.
Modeling Updates
In the areas of modeling, there are several extensive updates. The Edit PolyNURBS tool has several new features, such as being able to bridge together edges and faces using the new Create Bridge button. There is a new Draft Analysis tool to help users improve the design of products to be manufactured using injection molding. You can analyze the draft of a model to determine if it will be easily removed from a mold.
Rendering
The interactive rendering display mode has been improved so it alway uses the GPU (graphics processing unit) and automatically stops when the specified samples per pixel has been reached. It is now possible to create an HDRI from a rendered scene itself.
The Rendering Browser is now called the Image Browser and supports image panning and zooming, can be paused, resumed, and stopped. It also displays estimated rendering time. Rendering info has also been added so you can recall what rendering method and settings were used for a previous rendering.
Other Features
Other improvements include I/O support for iT-Adv (all formats are listed individually and for Parasolid (updated for VS2013). On the operating system front, there is improved graphics via forced enabling of High Performance Graphics with Optimus Intel/NVDIA architecture. Forced discrete graphics in AMD Switchable Graphics, AMD/Intel Combo GPU Architecture as well.
These are the highlights to the new solidThinking Evolve 2016. To learn more visit them online here.
Availability
The new solidThinking Evolve 2016 is available now and users can test drive the program for free for 30 days.