This is a special preview of Mike\’s presentation for SolidWorks World 2010 in Anaheim, CA. Mike will discuss the benefits of using a hybrid modeling approach during everyday design work with the psuedo-parametric features that SolidWorks has included in the past few releases. This is clearly a different approach that will rock you to your core.
This presentation is geared toward people who need to modify parts that do not have a feature history. SolidWorks, which has traditionally been a parametric, history-based modeler, enables users to modify a part based on the feature history of the model. This is fine if you are modifying parts that are made by your own had or made by co-workers, but not fine if the part is from another source like another CAD system, 3D Content Central or from 3D Scanned point cloud data. SolidWorks in the past couple of years now, has opened up to be a hybrid modeler, meaning it can be used for direct face manipulation, multi-body filling techniques and for solid/surface modeling. Another trick for modifying feature-less parts is to use FeatureWorks, which is part of SolidWorks Professional and Premium to enrich parts with a new feature history.