What's New in Version 8.0

solidThinking 8.0 offers a number of key design elements that encourage exploration and creativity during the design process, while allowing designers and companies to quickly bring concepts and products to market. Some of the enhanced capabilities of version 8.0 include:

A restyled and more streamlined user interface enabling better workflow.
New 3D manipulators for translation, scaling and rotation.
Enhancements to point, curve and surface representation for greater precision and improved ease of use.
New options for interactive visualization in the modeling views, including wireframe on shaded model and environment maps.	click to view
A wizard to help users choose the ideal modeling units and tolerances based on the size of the model.	click to view
Real-time rendering to further improve interactivity during the review and visualization phases of design.
Progressive rendering for immediate feedback on the final image with a fast preview of the lighting and materials in the scene; subsequent rendering passes that continue to fill in detail until the final high-quality image is achieved.
Re-rendering of selected subregions of an existing image.
A new materials library functionality with faster browsing and previewing of materials, environment maps and scene sets; users can also now set up multiple materials libraries.	click to view
Optimized specular final gather for increased rendering speed and lighting accuracy.
Ambient occlusion for greater depth, performance and realism in the photorealistic rendering phase.	ambient occlusion OFF ambient occlusion ON
New complex reflectance shaders for generating more lifelike visual elements, including the ability to integrate and create glossy and blurred reflections, frosted glass, car paints, plastic and metallic effects.
High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI) capabilities and the ability to create spherical images that can be visualized in the background of perspective views while modeling.