Does this mean that SW 2006 is officially released, or is this a sneak-peak?
This is a question that maybe some of you using the 2006 beta can answer: At the SW 2005 release event, we were told that SW 2006 will no longer be compatible with Excel 2000, does that mean that we can no longer use Excel 2000 for Design Tables? Do we have to purchase Excel 2002, or does 2000 still work in SW 2006?
an exponential increase in performance - does this mean that regeneration time will be close to Pro/E now?
new user productivity tools such as Smart Components - like Pro/E introduced in 2000i?
new features for consumer product - like Pro/E introduced in Wildfire?
new mainstream design validation capabilities - like Pro/E introduced in Wildfire?
innovations that significantly ease the migration from 2D to 3D - So this is where SW development is concentrating its efforts, forget developing new capabilities for existing users, try to sell SW to the millions of AutoCad users out there?
enhancements in SolidWorks Office Premium that empower design engineers across the entire spectrum of their activities - try to make more money from maintenance paying customers?
Part regeneration time has not changed, at least not on the parts I tried. Not to say they a remodeled part done exactly the same way might not rebuild faster due to changed algorithms.
Supposedly the biggest perforamnce increase comes with large assemblies and drawings though you won't reallt see until the assembly and all files have been saevd to 2006 format. Basically lightweight assemblies don't need to be resolved for most all functions and drawings rebuild views as a background process allowing you to work in the drawing while it's doing it.
Since we do a lot of wire, I am looking forward to see how easy it is using the 3D Sketcher. Also have heard rumors that 2006 uses Lightworks. We have Photoworks, but I have heard that Lightworks is easier to set up.
I would have say that PTC created my problems with Wildfire then they solved. Albeit, they have improved it with the release of WF2 but I can list corporations that refuse to upgrade from Pro/e 2001. IMHO, Pro/e 2001 is the last stable copy PTC has released.....I wouldn't use WF2. I've tested it and it's not on par with SWx. I will stay with Pro/e 2001 and SWx
Best Regards,
Heckler
Sr. Mechanical Engineer
SW2005 SP 2.0 & Pro/E 2001
Dell Precision 370
P4 3.6 GHz, 1GB RAM
XP Pro SP2.0
NIVIDA Quadro FX 1400
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SW2006/PhotoWroks does not use lightworks as the rendering engine. SW 2006/PhotoWorks is still using Mental Ray as the rendering engine. SW/PhotoWorks did use LightWorks up unitl SW2003 and then they switched to Mental Ray.
![[pc2]](/data/assets/smilies/pc2.gif "[pc2] [pc2]")