3D Systems is transforming customers’ digital design and manufacturing environments and putting software at the core of its strategy. The company unveiled its latest software solution –3DXpert for SOLIDWORKS 15  – which empowers SOLIDWORKS customers to prepare and optimize their designs for additive manufacturing, allowing them to design complex structures and accelerate the product design life-cycle with better automation and seamless bi-directional data exchange from and to SOLIDWORKS. These enhancements help provide an accelerated path to design freedom, increased efficiency, reduced total cost of operation, and gain competitive advantage for a range of applications and industries.

The growth of additive manufacturing will depend on optimizing digital workflows and that begins with software supporting the process and correcting the core issues that pose challenges for designers. Until now, the design toolset available has been oriented for traditional manufacturing techniques, which has created barriers to digital manufacturing workflow optimization. In addition, designers have faced demand for lighter weight parts and parts that possess complex geometries. 3D Systems’ latest software solution addresses these challenges and unlocks new possibilities, including the ability to create more shapes in more ways.

“Software is the foundation of transformative digital manufacturing solutions,” said Radhika Krishnan, executive vice president, software, healthcare, & digitization, 3D Systems. “Looking at our expertise and combining that with our end-to-end software portfolio solutions and the specific needs of SOLIDWORKS designers, we realized that we could help users streamline their digital manufacturing workflows and gain competitive advantage in several ways such as adding design for additive manufacturing capabilities to their toolset with 3DXpert for SOLIDWORKS 15. In addition, users can accelerate their product design cycle and reduce the time – from hours to minutes – required to build CAD models of real-world objects using advanced scan-to SOLIDWORKS capabilities that are included in our Geomagic for SOLIDWORKS solution. Users can also use GibbsCAM, our complementary CAM solution to complete their subtractive design and manufacturing workflow.”

3DXpert for SOLIDWORKS is an add-on for SOLIDWORKS, extending SOLIDWORKS’ design capabilities with a complete DfAM toolset, equipping designers with everything they need to prepare and optimize their designs for 3D printing.

3DXpert for SOLIDWORKS 15 further enhances the direct path from SOLIDWORKS to additive manufacturing and enables users to:

• Shorten the design cycle with enhanced bi-directional data transfer: Seamless bi-directional data transfer achieved with the click of a button – reducing time and effort while preserving data integrity.
• Optimize design structure with an enhanced lattice development suite: Designers can now develop bespoke structures to capitalize on intellectual property, reduce costs and gain competitive advantage, in addition to using the rich library of predefined lattice structures.
• Easily achieve successful prints with automated tools & workflows: A new power-supports capability fully automates support generation for multiple geometries with the click of a button. In addition, enhanced build simulation capabilities provide designers with clear and immediate feedback on their design decisions.

General availability of the new version of 3DXpert for SOLIDWORKS 15 is planned for March 2020. Designers and engineers can experience the benefits of 3DXpert for SOLIDWORKS through a free trial available for download.

3D Systems
www.3dsystems.com