Every day we work hard to improve GrabCAD Workbench and help you collaborate more efficiently with colleagues, clients, customers and manufacturers. One of the great things about a SaaS tool is that we can deliver updates daily. The downside is that users don’t always know when we’ve made improvements, so we wanted to take a moment to review some of the latest greatest features, then let you know how you can have your voice heard in our product development process.
Better communication tools make it easier to collaborate
Trying to keep a product team on the same page can be complicated so its important to capture, organize and timestamp comments related to product suggestions and changes. We’ve made a number of recent enhancements to help you stay in touch with your collaborators, no matter where they may be.
- Include sketches to comments: A picture speaks a thousand words. Sometimes its necessary to include an image in the comment suggestion to literally illustrate your point.
- Comment threads: Depending on the scope of your project, you may sometimes require long exchanges. Comment threads are here to organize your conversation.
- Deleting comments: You can delete irrelevant comments so you’re not wading through unnecessary text to get to the important information.
- Respond by email: Sometimes you aren’t in Workbench but still want to chime in with a quick response. Now you have the option to reply to comments via email - both on the project and file level.
Improved precision so you’re ready to manufacture
If you’re going to manufacture or prototype a part, it needs to be accurate. Here are some improvements to our measuring tools to make that easier.
- Unit conversion: You can specify which units you want to use and you’re measurements automatically update and convert.
- Circle/hole geometry: A new measuring tool feature lets you pick whether you see radius or diameter.
- Measure in section views: Measurements (and other tools) are now available inside section views.
More ways for you to view (or hide) your model
In addition to our efforts to always make the Workbench environment easy on the eye, we want to make viewing your model easy. Adding new ways for you to view and share your CAD data with your collaborators allows you to work through development cycles quickly.
- File types: The list of native file types you can view is ever-expanding by request of you, the user. Most recently we are happy to add Rhino files (.3dm), .obj, and .ifc files to that list.
- Sectioning: We’ve improved the section view so that solids look solid when you cut them open.
- Isolate components: It’s easy to pick one part and hide all the rest from view by right-clicking and selecting “Isolate”.
You help us decide what's next
The improvements listed here are largely a result of users letting us know what they wanted. Keep it up! Use the “Feedback” button at the bottom right of the Workbench page to send us a quick note with improvements you’d like to see, or drop any of us a quick email.
