SOLIDWORKS 2016 Updates User Interface

SOLIDWORKS 2016 is available for download, and users are sure to notice one change right away: there are major alterations to the user interface (UI).
Making big changes to something as familiar as the SOLIDWORKS UI is bound to cause a variety of reactions. There will be the excited and curious, early adopters eager to benefit from change. There will be detractors for whom any change could incite a riot.
Let’s meet the UI team and find out what motivated the change.

solidworks_interface

SOLIDWORKS 2016 has a new interface. All images courtesy of Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS.

SOLIDWORKS 2016 is available for download, and users are sure to notice one change right away: there are major alterations to the user interface (UI).
Making big changes to something as familiar as the SOLIDWORKS UI is bound to cause a variety of reactions. There will be the excited and curious, early adopters eager to benefit from change. There will be detractors for whom any change could incite a riot.
Let’s meet the UI team and find out what motivated the change.

The Who

We sat down with the men behind the curtain at the maker of SOLIDWORKS, Dassault Systèmes: Jim Wilkinson, vice president of user experience architecture; Tom Spine, director of user experience design and Kevin Berni, user experience senior manager. These three, who lead a group of more than 15 others, are the ones behind what may be the most visible change in the latest release of SOLIDWORKS.
Driving Goals for the UI Team
The UI team had three goals for the makeover of 2016:
1. The user should be able to focus on the model, not the UI. As Spine put it, “The UI should be in service of your modeling.”
2. Minimizing mouse travel: every click counts.
3. Every user is different, so some customization and flexibility is critical.
The first goal is evidenced by such changes as the new “Breadcrumb Selection” tool (shown below), voted best new feature by the beta users, and the enhanced context-sensitive pop-ups.

breadcrumb_selection_Solidworks

Achievement of the second goal is illustrated in the image below. The image compares mouse travel distance and time to complete the same design operations in SOLIDWORKS 2015 (left) and SOLIDWORKS 2016 (right). No, that’s not scribbling. Those lines show the actual mouse travel needed to complete the tasks in a design session. Also displayed is the time — pretty big difference there, too. This really is actual graphical evidence that SOLIDWORKS 2016 is faster and easier to use than SOLIDWORKS 2015.

solidworks2015_soliworks2016

Users will recognize the third goal in simple ways, such as their ability to better control the brightness of the UI. When they started with 2016, the SOLIDWORKS team had certain ideas about what they wanted the software to do, and brightness control was solidly on the list. But 2016 was a lot of work, and the team didn’t think they’d be able to get in that particular feature. Once they saw the feedback on the beta forums regarding how the UI looked, the team got with the developers to ensure the 2016 UI update included user control of brightness.

Biggest Reason for the UI Display Changes

icon-size
new_icons_solidworks

One thing Tom Spine was sure to be clear about was that the number one reason for the latest change to the SOLIDWORKS UI display was the support of high-resolution monitors. More to the point, monitors with high-pixel density. As anyone who has attempted to use SOLIDWORKS 2015, or earlier versions, on a system with hi-res will tell you, it just wasn’t a good thing. Users would find themselves spending time adjusting the system scaling with the hopes of having visible icons and complete pop-up menus. Oftentimes, users weren’t quite able to achieve the viewing characteristics they were after. Obviously, this was something that needed to be addressed.

Architecture

SOLIDWORKS has been around for more than 20 years. While this is quite an achievement, you can probably imagine how this longevity, and the staying power of outdated code, had contributed to various issues that needed to be addressed, including the Biggest Reason. Many decisions that had been made regarding the code early in its life were creating complexities that hindered coders from not only fixing issues, but from changing and/or updating other aspects of the software. In order to be able make certain improvements, Wilkinson, Spine, Berni and their team had to go in and strip out a lot of the old code and replace it with newer, better code. By doing so, they were able to improve SOLIDWORKS, and allow for quicker changes to the UI in the future.

Modernization

Styles change with time. It happens with everything — cars, hairstyles, clothes. Feedback from customer surveys indicated it was time for SOLIDWORKS to change.
Users were looking for a cleaner, sharper, more modern UI. The image below shows the difference between SOLIDWORKS 2016 (top) and SOLIDWORKS 2015 (bottom). Although the icons have been refined, the basic organization and structure remain the same — satisfying the need for both modernization and familiarity.

solidworks_controls

The Icons

Why did they decide to change them? A few reasons. One, because the old icons were raster sources and unscalable; they didn’t play well with high-res/high-pixel density displays. In 2016, the icons are vector sources and sized at 128 pixels x 128 pixels. And because they’re vector sourced, SOLIDWORKS will be able to enlarge them as needed in the future. Two, the UI team has been working on making SOLIDWORKS friendlier for users out there who are colorblind. This isn’t an easy task when there are so many variations of colorblindness. By changing the color scheme, some of the feedback that the UI team has received over the years is being addressed. Three, the icons, like the rest of the UI, needed a fresh look.

Changeability

Something inherent in SOLIDWORKS 2016 — and future versions — is easier changeability. This all ties back to the code changes that were made. From the sound of it, this should be something that SOLIDWORKS users will like . . . a lot. This important feature has already been showcased as 2016 has gone through the beta process. The ability to control brightness and the icon design changing during beta are both results of customer feedback and all of them are in pre-release 1. Without the code improvements that make software changes easier and more effective, these issues may have gone unaddressed. This bodes well for future customer-driven changes, so make sure you really start using the SOLIDWORKS Enhancement Request process.

Conclusion

SOLIDWORKS’ first goal was that the user would be able to focus on the model, not the UI. The CAD system should get out of your way so you can focus on your real job — design. For SOLIDWORKS 2016, the UI team seems to have delivered in 3 major areas toward achieving this goal:
• A faster and easier to use UI, requiring significantly less mouse travel and fewer clicks.
• A modern, crisp look allowing for the use of high-resolution monitors.
• More flexibility to allow fast customization and future changes.
The SOLIDWORKS UI team started the redesign of 2016 more than 15 months ago. Though change leads to a variety of user reactions, overall there is great value in the tools it brings. What some may not understand yet is that the UI team is also solving problems that most SOLIDWORKS users don’t yet have. Many of the changes had to happen to accommodate technology that is slowly permeating the design world — and it’s better to be out in front of the pack than trying to catch up.

Recent Articles

Related Stories

Enews Subscribe