Red alert! Red alert! SOLIDWORKS Visualize is now faster than ever!! One could say even the fastest visualization tool on the planet. That’s right – I said it. No one is faster than SOLIDWORKS Visualize 2019. Period.

Maybe you’ve attended a Reseller Rollout event, seen some blogs online or know a few things about what we released as new features in SOLIDWORKS Visualize 2019? Or maybe you haven’t heard any news at all? Well you’ve come to the right place. There’s LOADS of new features and improvements in Visualize 2019 and this blog post will give you an overview of what to expect in our latest release.

Visualize 2019 is all about getting your projects done faster than ever, allowing you to likewise get your products to market faster. This means making more money faster. See the trend here?? Turn your imagination into professional photo-quality imagery and animations in no time with all the latest improvements to the Visualize 2019 product suite.

And just to be crystal clear, here is the theme for Visualize 2019:
DRAMATICALLY ACCELERATE YOUR DESIGN DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

To make it easy this year, we’ve created this overview video of all the top new features in SOLIDWORKS Visualize 2019. So watch the video and read up on the detailed breakdown below.

Video credit: Andreas Spieler, Michel Cloutier, Solid Solutions

Here’s a breakdown of some of the biggest new features in SOLIDWORKS Visualize 2019, helping you get products to market faster:

Artificial Intelligence Denoiser

• Thanks to the masterminds over at NVIDIA, Visualize now uses Artificial Intelligence to decipher and eliminate noise from your renders, giving you an instant 10x render speed boost!

Integrated Physics Simulator (Professional only)

• Using the highly-touted NVIDIA PhysX engine, you can now enable Physics with a few simple clicks and watch your items collide and fall, just like they would in real life. After Physics is set up, use the Shake tool to randomize or jitter the selected elements. This helps to add a natural touch to stacked plates, or rearrange pens in a cup, without having to manually move each part individually, saving loads of scene setup time. There’s also saved Simulation States for you to choose which “shake” effect you like best to move to final render.

Vehicle Driving Simulator (Professional only)

• Vehicle designers and engineers will certainly be happy about this one! Also using the NVIDIA PhysX engine, we’ve added a new Vehicle Driving Simulator to create driving footage or dynamic still shots of vehicles that don’t even exist yet. It’s easy to set up with the new Vehicle Setup wizard. You can use your keyboard or even plug in an Xbox controller and drive your car concept throughout your scene, while recording the result for photo-quality driving footage! Or simply use the handy “Wheel Turn” slider [visible after you complete the wizard] to add drama to your final composition.

Video Decals (Professional only)

•  Import videos or image sequences directly into Visualize Pro, creating vivid animations of products with LED screens, like laptops, consumer electronics, car navigation screens, or airline headsets.

Improved Decal Support

• Now you have much more control over decal mapping and exact positioning, providing a stress-free Decal experience. We’ve also added new Decal Mapping modes directly within Visualize, so you no longer have to use the Multi-Layer workaround to have a Decal wrap around a cylinder – just choose ‘Cylindrical’ from the ‘Decal Mapping Mode’ dropdown. Also, we now have support for all types of Decals coming from SOLIDWORKS CAD!

Enhanced Material support (PBR & NVIDIA MDL)

• Don’t want to painstakingly create your own custom materials from scratch, but want to use your company’s existing database of materials/textures or those you’ve found via online websites or communities?  We’ve added two new advanced Appearance Types (PBR & NVIDIA MDL) to give you greater flexibility and creativity to import industry-standard materials. You can even scan real-world materials and import them via NVIDIA MDL or PBR directly into Visualize.

Improved Model Tree Behavior

• Ability to Copy/Paste parts has been on the list for years! Now it’s possible in Visualize 2019. Also added flexibility and functionality to aid you in reorganizing your Model Tree, which cuts down on unnecessary wasted time.

Custom Keyboard Shortcuts

• Save time by creating your own custom hotkeys, specific to your own preferences – including single-key hotkeys! You can also export your shortcut list to load onto another machine.

Automatic Data Recovery

•  If your Visualize session terminates unexpectedly, you can recover automatically saved data the next time you launch Visualize. You can specify the frequency and folder for saving auto-recovery data. Don’t lose your work because of a crash ever again!

BONUS! Export Visualize to NVIDIA Holodeck (Professional only)

• Open up the floodgates and use Visualize Pro as the authoring tool, to export your projects into NVIDIA Holodeck for immersive design reviews, all in photo-quality Virtual Reality! This is seriously the future of how we design and engineer our world. Check out these video links below to see NVIDIA’s Holodeck in action:
  Car Design example
  AEC / Interior Design example

There’s loads of other new delighters and Easter eggs [surprises] within Visualize 2019, like the new way to set a maximum to the render passes of your Viewport (hint: look down in the HUD at the bottom of the screen).

And as we do each year, round BIG of applause to the Visualize R&D and QA teams for delivering another feature-rich release, helping you, our customers, bring better, more innovative products to market each year.

If you’re able to show us what you’re creating Visualize, please upload it to this thread on the Visualize Forum! It’s the second-most viewed Forum thread in SOLIDWORKS history!

Click here for a longer list and more details of top new features in SOLIDWORKS Visualize 2019.

Don’t forget to follow SOLIDWORKS Visualize Product Manager @bhillner on twitter for product news and updates, and share your SOLIDWORKS Visualize creations on social media with #swvisualize and #gettinvizzy!

More Resources to get started with SOLIDWORKS Visualize:

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE SEAT OF SOLIDWORKS VISUALIZE right now to bring your products to market faster than ever before.

WATCH TWO WEBINARS on SOLIDWORKS Visualize and its many benefits to up your render game to a whole new level.

*SOLIDWORKS CAD Professional & Premium users on active Subscription receive the matching number of complimentary Visualize Standard seats. Learn more here.

Brian Hillner

Brian Hillner is a Senior Product Portfolio Manager for SOLIDWORKS, responsible for Education and Early Engagement, and specializes in the intersection of business, technology & user experience. He focuses on creating customer-driven software products tailored for schools, educators and students to develop designers, engineers and dreamers of the future. Prior to joining the Education team, he was the Product Manager for SOLIDWORKS Visualize, eDrawings and the Extended Reality (XR) workflows.