The release of SOLIDWORKS Simulation 2025 has brought a series of exciting new features and performance enhancements aimed at delivering faster, more accurate simulations. Whether you’re an experienced engineer or a designer just starting out, these improvements will streamline workflows, improve precision and offer more control over various simulation scenarios.
Let’s explore the top seven enhancements in SOLIDWORKS Simulation 2025 that will elevate your simulation projects.
1. General Spring Connector
One of the standout additions in SOLIDWORKS Simulation 2025 is the General Spring Connector. This feature enhances the ability to define springs with stiffness in all orthogonal directions — including torsional and bending stiffness. With it, users can create custom spring connectors between surfaces, offering the option to define axial-only, isotropic or orthotropic springs depending on your specific needs.
Property Manager Connector Configuration. (Image: SOLIDWORKS.)
Key Benefits:
- Improved performance and accuracy: By using distributed coupling, the General Spring Connector provides a more accurate representation of real-world springs. This leads to improved simulation performance, especially for complex studies.
- Flexibility: You can now define up to six stiffness parameters using a local coordinate system, making the simulation setups more realistic and closer to physical behavior.
In real-world applications, this connector will make it easier to simulate springs between non-flat or cylindrical surfaces, offering greater flexibility in design analysis.
2. Node-to-surface bonding with offset
The Node-to-surface bonding feature has been further refined in this release to handle bonding contact with a gap between two entities, ensuring better accuracy in mid-surface mesh studies. This feature has been enhanced to support more accurate bonding offset interaction for linear static, dynamic, frequency and even fatigue studies.
Offset comparisons in bonding interactions: user defined restraints for 2024 and 2025 result displacement. (Image: SOLIDWORKS.)
Key Benefits:
- Improved accuracy: The bonding interactions between geometries within a user-defined gap now produce more reliable results. This update allows for better meshing of solid-solid, shell-shell and solid-shell contacts.
- Faster results: Whether you’re conducting a buckling or pressure vessel study, the enhanced offset bonding interaction results in quicker simulations.
This is a critical update for industries requiring high precision bonding analyses, including automotive and aerospace sectors.
3. Exclude Bodies from Analysis
In large assemblies, not all parts contribute to the analysis. The exclude bodies from analysis feature lets users ignore multiple bodies at once, streamlining the simulation process. This is especially helpful in managing complex models with many components.
Excluding other elements from analysis. (Image: SOLIDWORKS.)
Key Benefits:
- Time-saver for large assemblies: Users can now easily exclude all bodies within a selected folder in the simulation study tree. This is particularly useful for large assemblies where analyzing every component isn’t necessary, thus saving a significant amount of time during simulation runs.
This feature provides engineers and designers with greater control over which bodies contribute to the simulation, optimizing computational resources.
4. Flow Simulation GUI and performance enhancements
SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation 2025 introduces significant GUI improvements, along with speed optimizations for handling large assemblies. Whether you’re opening a large model, creating new projects or cloning existing ones, the updated GUI responds faster and more intuitively.
Additionally, Flow Simulation performance has been boosted with faster mesh generation for convergent geometry like STL files — which are often used for 3D printing and imported geometries.
Flow Simulation GUI and performance enhancements. (Image: SOLIDWORKS.)
Key Benefits:
- Faster preprocessing: With the speed improvements for large assemblies, users can now experience faster model opening and project setup times.
- Optimized workflow for imported geometries: The mesh generation process for faceted and STL geometries is now faster, enabling users to save time when working with external geometries.
These enhancements are ideal for industries working with complex fluid dynamics simulations, especially those that frequently utilize imported geometries.
5. Fast mesh generation for convergent geometry in Flow Simulation
In addition to the GUI improvements, SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation 2025 brings faster mesh generation for convergent geometries, including STL and faceted models. This enhancement enables quicker simulations when working with imported geometries or 3D scans.
Key Benefits:
- Time-saving for imported models: Mesh generation times are drastically reduced, making it easier to run simulations on models created outside of SOLIDWORKS.
- Improved workflow: This update is a benefit for those who regularly work with STL files from 3D scans or imported CAD data, when quick turnaround is essential.
This enhancement will benefit designers working in fields like reverse engineering, additive manufacturing and product development — where STL models are commonly used.
6. SOLIDWORKS Plastics enables users to isolate the cause of plastic part warpage
The challenge of warpage in plastic parts has always been a major concern for designers. SOLIDWORKS Plastics 2025 introduces a new feature that enables users to break down warpage into three distinct causes: unbalanced cooling, orientation effects and non-uniform shrinkage.
Key Benefits:
- Detailed analysis: With the ability to isolate the cause of warpage, users can now identify the precise reason for any displacement in their plastic parts. This enables more informed decision-making during the design and manufacturing process.
- Enhanced accuracy: This level of insight leads to fewer design iterations and a more streamlined path to a high-quality product.
This feature is particularly useful for industries focused on injection molding, where minimizing warpage can save both time and costs in production.
7. Enhanced sink mark solutions in SOLIDWORKS Plastics
Another improvement in SOLIDWORKS Plastics 2025 is the enhanced sink mark solution. The previous sink mark solver has been replaced with a more accurate one, providing better results when meshing large assemblies that contain duplicated components.
Key Benefits:
- Higher accuracy: With the new solver, designers can expect better accuracy when analyzing sink marks, a common defect in plastic parts.
- Faster workflow: The updated solver also speeds up the meshing process for large models, making it more efficient to work with complex assemblies.
This update is critical for plastic part designers seeking to reduce imperfections and improve part quality.
In conclusion, SOLIDWORKS Simulation 2025 delivers a suite of powerful enhancements that streamline simulation workflows, increase accuracy and save time for users across a wide range of industries. From the introduction of the general spring connector to improved meshing for convergent geometries, these updates provide engineers and designers with the tools they need to stay competitive in today’s fast-paced development environment.
Whether you’re looking to improve performance in large assemblies or increase precision in plastic part design, these seven enhancements will add value to your simulation tasks. Keep these updates in mind as you begin to explore the new features in SOLIDWORKS Simulation 2025, and take full advantage of the improved performance and accuracy to optimize your designs for success.