SOLIDWORKS 2026 Parts and Features - What's New

Every year, SOLIDWORKS improves its capabilities from previous years, and the 30th anniversary is no different. With the change to the release schedule in 2025, SOLIDWORKS will now release more updates as functional releases (service packs) come out. Check back in as we progress through the year for more updates. In this blog, see what's new in SOLIDWORKS 2026 for Parts, Sheet Metal, and Structure Systems.

Parts Enhancements

The first new Part enhancement is the capability to Exit Part Processes that are still calculating or got bogged down due to the intensity of selection. When the software is in calculations, there is now a message at the bottom left corner of the software that lets you know you can use the <ESC> key to cancel the command.

After hitting ESC, a prompt will appear, warning that it will “...cancel the ongoing process. Do you want to continue?”.

Clicking OK in this prompt will return you to the command PropertyManager where you were making your selections. Choose to edit your selection or hit the <ESC> key again to exit the command.

Commands currently supported with this workflow are:

• Filets
• Chamfers
• Linear Patterns
• Circular Patterns

Another enhancement to general Part modeling is the option to add Reference Points using XYZ values. Previously, users were required to have existing geometry (in the form of sketches, faces, intersections, etc.). Now, the option Define position with numeric values can be enabled.

This is especially handy when creating 3D Sketches. Now, you can directly define the location of reference points to run your splines or lines through and have them fully constrained without having to create multiple construction lines dimensioned along X, Y, and Z. This example uses points to create a sweep path and then sweeps an AC duct along the path.

The next SOLIDWORKS 2026 Parts enhancement provides more control to Bounding Boxes. Previously, you could control boxes using “Best Fit” or a “Custom Plane”. You could choose Custom Plane and pick between the existing planes, but there are cases where even this takes a decent amount of work or doesn’t work at all. New to SOLIDWORKS 2026 is the ability to use a coordinate system and its axes to define the Length, Width, and Thickness of the Bounding Box.

In addition to the coordinate system is the ability to Fix directions to re-map each dimension the coordinate system axes. (Previously, if you were to change size or configuration, there was a chance that the best fit would shift thickness to width or width to length, etc.) This allows users to have more confidence when using Bounding Box properties downstream.

The final enhancement made to Parts this year is another big one. Now, similar to inside an assembly, is the ability to select bodies (rather than components in assemblies) based on size or a volume, inside a multibody part file.

Think of a use case where you import a STEP file from a customer that contains many different bodies, such as hardware and small bodies not required at an intermediate level. These can negatively impact performance, especially if they were modeled with threads or heavy detail.

Previously, the Delete/Keep Bodies feature would require manually identifying and selecting these bodies. Using the new Advanced Selection option, Bodies by Size, you can dynamically adjust the selection set by varying the percent of part size slider.

Here, a control box contains a radio remote box imported from a vendor and many other imported bodies.

Run the Select Bodies By Size command.

With Dynamic selection and Select Parent Feature turned on, drag the slider to see the different bodies get highlighted for selection. From there, use the Delete/Keep Bodies command to reduce the file size for performance. This part file originally had around 1 million graphics triangles and, after deletion, ended up with just 125 thousand.  

Sheet Metal Enhancements

Sheet Metal has two enhancements this year. The first expands functionality for the Base Flange-Tab. You can now change the starting location of the extrusion. Similar to the “From” section inside a Boss Extrude/Cut, you now get the “From” section inside the Base Flange command. It contains Offset, Vertex, and Surface/Face/Plane for selection.

This example uses the pink sketch sitting at the bottom of the cab and chooses a top face of a weldment member for the sheet metal body to sit on top of.

Using that same sheet metal body, we arrive at the next enhancement: Internal Break Corner Selection. New in SOLIDWORKS 2026 is a checkbox inside the Break Corner command to grab Internal corners only.

This checkbox saves the many clicks of selecting the internal corners manually or deselecting all the outside corners after choosing grab all corners.

Structure System and Weldment Enhancements

There are two big enhancements here: an overhaul of the selection UI for corner treatments and an improvement to Cut-List Property to Top Level Custom Property functionality.

To start, when editing a corner treatment, node colors are changed to better represent the type of corner. In this example, there are three types of corners: Simple, Two member, and Compex. Each has its own color inside the PropertyManager, which reflects the associated nodes.

Selecting a specific node leads us to an enhancement to the UI. Here, I have selected the front right complex corner node. A new UI pops up to more accurately reflect the different trim order options visually. Choose from one of the symbols or use the arrows to cycle through the options. As you step through, the preview and highlighted entities update in the graphics area. Once satisfied, select the green check and exit the command.

The next enhancement improves Cut-List Property functionality. Previously, it wasn't possible to use Cut-List properties in the top-level multibody Custom Properties. New in SOLIDWORKS 2026 is a dropdown to link a Custom Property to a Cut-List Property. (Note: Since this example file is adjusted for compatibility with the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, the tab says Configuration Properties rather than custom properties.)

Check out the rest of our What’s New series for more updates across the SOLIDWORKS platform.

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