Series Overview – What’s New in SOLIDWORKS?


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Snapshot

What’s New in SOLIDWORKS offers discussion and review of the latest developments in SOLIDWORKS, including software improvements, new features and products, licensing options, and more. This course is updated with new lessons each month.

What's New

Who is this series for?
Power users, CAD administrators, and users of all experience levels looking to stay current on the latest updates to SOLIDWORKS, available tools and software packages, and licensing structure.

How can you use it?
This series is an excellent way for users to stay aware of any upcoming or recent changes made to SOLIDWORKS, gain an understanding of how these changes may affect them, and determine if a software upgrade or onboarding of a new product is justified.

What makes it special?
What’s New in SOLIDWORKS is regularly updated like a video newsletter in response to the latest announcements from Dassault Systèmes and includes explanations and commentary to help you understand the impact these developments may have on you and your business.

Determining What’s Important

Like many SOLIDWORKS users, it’s important for SolidProfessor to stay up to date with the latest changes and developments in the software. We use this information as part of our process for planning course updates, new lessons, event sessions, and all sorts of other content. But as many of you have likely experienced, keeping up with every announcement can quickly become overwhelming.

This week alone I’ve received three different emails from SOLIDWORKS discussing what’s new in browser-based design, how to leverage design optimization in 3DEXPERIENCE, and inviting me to join an upcoming webinar to learn how to enhance my product design processes through simulation democratization.

Just under one week worth of news from SOLIDWORKS

If that last sentence made your head spin, you’re not alone (and if it didn’t, please visit our LinkedIn page for open positions). The constantly-changing landscape of design and manufacturing along with the mountain of available information can make it difficult to determine what’s impactful enough to prioritize learning about, and what’s safe to be ignored.

What’s New in SOLIDWORKS does the sifting and sorting for you, relying on decades of customer experience to pick out the most important and impactful updates, changes, and announcements. These subjects are broken down and presented clearly to help you understand what they mean, why they matter, and how you can benefit from them (or ignore them).

Perhaps most importantly, this series is regularly updated with new lessons in response to announcements from SOLIDWORKS. This is in contrast to our standard courses, which are typically reviewed on an annual basis. These frequent updates allow you to remain aware of and understand the potential impact of the latest SOLIDWORKS news as it develops.

Deciphering Technical Jargon

In many cases the most difficult aspect of understanding new developments in the world of design and manufacturing is comprehending the technical language used. What’s New in SOLIDWORKS makes a conscious effort to explain industry-specific jargon and help viewers unfamiliar with the terminology determine if the content is important to them. As a byproduct, learning these specialized terms may also assist in demystifying news, announcements, and other content that viewers may see elsewhere.

For example, the assembly visualization tool has received some major improvements for SOLIDWORKS 2025, but if viewers aren’t already familiar with assembly visualization it may be easy to assume that this function has something to do with making assemblies look realistic (it doesn’t), which they may or may not be interested in.

Assembly Visualization being used to sort components according to mass in SOLIDWORKS 2025

Unfamiliar terminology can result in scenarios where users skip lessons, assuming they aren’t applicable to them when they are in fact very important; on the other hand, users may watch several minutes of a lesson only to realize it covers an irrelevant subject, and neither of these outcomes is ideal.

To combat this effect, What’s New in SOLIDWORKS presents material in plain language whenever possible and introduces tools and concepts in such a way as to provide a baseline level of understanding and context for the material being introduced before digging into the fine details. This allows viewers from any industry and of any skill level to quickly determine if a particular subject is impactful for them and avoid any potential confusion presented by industry-specific or advanced CAD terminology.

News for All Types of Users

As one would expect, different SOLIDWORKS users are interested in different types of news, with lessons summarizing the latest enhancements for the newest version of the SOLIDWORKS easily being the most popular. But there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes than just annual software updates, and whether you’re an occasional SOLIDWORKS designer, a power user, a CAD administrator, or even a business owner, there’s likely going to be something else that’s also important for you to be aware of.

Though videos covering enhancements currently make up the majority of our lessons for What’s New in SOLIDWORKS, we’re actively expanding the series to address and explain new software solutions and licensing structures being promoted by Dassault Systèmes.

As an example, let’s consider SOLIDWORKS Ultimate. This brand-new tier of SOLIDWORKS is the first of its kind in over 20 years and should be very exciting to most users, but there’s a tremendous amount of information available on it to the point of being overwhelming.

A small sample of the list of SOLIDWORKS Ultimate capabilities as compared to other tiers

Between new included web-based applications, collaborative capabilities, a different price tag, and a different licensing structure, researching this subject on your own may very likely result in more questions than answers. In response, SolidProfessor has planned a lesson covering SOLIDWORKS Ultimate in the near future to explain these new capabilities and help you understand if it’s right for you, your team, and your bottom line.

And perhaps most importantly, you won’t need to enroll in a full-length course to get these questions answered.

Independent Lesson Format

Traditional SolidProfessor courses contain multiple sequential lessons, expecting that viewers will watch them in order. Lessons often build off previous material, and jumping into the middle of a course can sometimes be difficult without having followed the previous lesson(s).

Each entry in the What’s New in SOLIDWORKS series is self-contained, standalone lesson that does not expect viewers to watch any prerequisite material to be able to follow them. This means that you can skip to the video of your choice at any time and still walk away with an understanding of the subject matter, getting you up to speed with the latest information as quickly and concisely as possible.

Naturally, some subjects will be more or less relevant to different users, and it’s worth mentioning that despite the standalone nature of the lessons, this series was designed with the assumption that viewers are already familiar with the subjects being discussed at a foundational level. While the lessons do emphasize the use of plain language and introduce tools/concepts to provide context, they do not start from scratch, instead quickly recapping the information necessary to understand the material being presented.

New sheet metal enhancements being introduced and demonstrated in SOLIDWORKS 2025

For example, our lesson on enhancements for Sheet Metal in SOLIDWORKS 2025 does not discuss the basics of creating bends. Likewise, our video on the new Groove Bead feature does not explain how to create structural members, as it’s expected that viewers interested in these subjects are already familiar with the basics. However, the end of each lesson does provide resources to full-length courses to learn more about related tools for those who need a refresher on the basics.

Continuous CAD Education with What’s New in SOLIDWORKS

Unlike our standard full-length courses, which are revised as needed on varying yearly cycles as software updates are released, the What’s New in SOLIDWORKS series is frequently updated throughout the year with new lessons. This provides a unique opportunity to gain a clear understanding of important news and announcements as they occur, whether that be the latest enhancements for SOLIDWORKS, a new software package like SOLIDWORKS Ultimate, or an alternative licensing structure.

Our 2-Minute Tech Tips and Ask SolidProfessor series follow a similar release schedule with frequent updates, so be sure to check back often to discover new possibilities and stay informed with What’s New in SOLIDWORKS.


Jacob Ames
About the Author

SolidProfessor Content Evangelist, vintage dirt bike enthusiast, and off-road unicyclist.