As most of you probably know by now because of all the various media outlets that are at your fingertips, Dassault Systemes SolidWorks launched its 1st mobile platform app (not including the SolidWorks WORLD apps) yesterday morning.
For quite some time now, users have been asking for a CAD viewer that they can carry around with them on their phones & tablet style computers. With the launch yesterday of eDrawings for iPad, we are starting to see this become a reality. At this time, it is only available on the iPad but I can only imagine that this is just the gateway to more mobile applications that will come out of SolidWorks.
I have not personally had time to really sit down and go through this app BUT I have downloaded it and fired it up to see what it has to offer. At 1st glance, it is really nice.
eDrawings for iPad allows you to open native SolidWorks parts, assemblies, & drawings AND also DWG and DXF files via either emails, iTunes File Sharing, or internal networks. You can get a feel for how these files will look on the iPad app.
On top of just being able to open, zoom, pan, & rotate your models and drawings,
eDrawings for iPad also allows you to view the configurations & sheets inside your file,
explode your assemblies with the click of 1 button,
and dynamically highlight components on your assembly by selecting them in your Feature Manager.
The File Management screen is broken into 2 “tabs”, 1 that is preloaded with Sample files (which currently you can’t delete as far as I could find) and the other that is for your User Files.
All in all, this app is really nice for its 1st release and is well worth the cost of $1.99 USD if you have a need for viewing models on the go.
There are some features that I would like to see incorporated into the next releases such as…
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Ability to link file sharing services such as Dropbox or Box.net directly into this app so that you can open files without having to go to any other apps.
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The ability to mark up changes and then resend to other users via email
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The ability to measure and section your parts & models
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The ability to hide & show components
Don’t get me wrong with the items listed above, this app is READY to go but the above enhancements would really put it over the top in my eyes.
Big time KUDOS to the SolidWorks Management & Development team for making this new platform a reality!
RockSolid Perspective 
Hey Jason,
Thanks for the comments. To address one of your comments, Mike Puckett shows how to use the app with Dropbox in this blog post. http://www.mikescadblog.com/2012/05/edrawings-for-ipad.html
Matt / SolidWorks
Hey Matt, thanks for the kind words and link.
As far as Dropbox goes, I knew that you would be able to do that but it would be nice if you could directly open files from your Dropbox account without having to have the Dropbox app installed. I use a program called Quickoffice Pro HD (http://www.quickoffice.com/quickoffice_pro_hd_ipad/) for MS Office & PDF files and I can link my Dropbox (or other file sharing utilities) to this app and I can see all of my files right in that app without having Dropbox installed on my iPad.
I hope that makes more sense.
Your mode of describing the whole thing in this article is really good,
every one be able to simply be aware of it, Thanks a lot.