SOLIDWORKS 2021 – Performance Improvements in Sheet Metal

If you work with SOLIDWORKS on sheet metal parts with many bends, then you will find that performance is faster in SOLIDWORKS 2021.

The time to flatten complex sheet metal bodies containing many bends has been dramatically reduced in SOLDIWORKS 2021.  After creating this single-body part containing 77 bends, I found the time to flatten the part has been reduced by about 4 times, compared to SOLIDWORKS 2020.

SOLIDWORKS Sheet Metal Part with multiple bends

Other comparisons published in the SOLIDWORKS Help at the time this article was written, calculates the improvement at closer to 20-25 times faster for some models.  Several factors can affect the magnitude of the improvement, such as computer processor power and complexity of the model.

Sheet metal performance improvement is made possible by the use of more efficient algorithms to identify bend connections.

Learn more in a live online class

Learn about other enhancements and time-saving techniques in our SOLIDWORKS Advanced Update training course, and Sheet Metal modeling techniques in our SOLIDWORKS Sheet Metal training course!