Hide Table of Contents

Overview

Composer is a desktop content-creation system that enables the reuse of digital 3D data from CAD and other sources. Easy-to-use, Composer lets you create quickly assembly and disassembly procedures, technical illustrations, interactive 3D animations, training materials, marketing materials, sales tools, and more.

This page discusses:

Composer Capabilities

Composer allows users in sales, marketing, customer service, training, support, and manufacturing to create associated 2D and 3D product deliverables directly from digital product data – without requiring CAD knowledge or CAD training.

Composer has the following capabilities:

  • Based on a lightweight, open, XML-based architecture.

  • Creates 3D interactive documents such as interactive assembly and service procedures.

  • Creates high-resolution raster images including BMP, JPG, PNG, and TIF files.

  • Produces 2D line art as SVG and CGM files with automatic hidden line and construction line removal.

  • Adds annotations, labels, dimensions, arrows, images, and cutting planes that can be used in any way and format the user wishes.

  • Controls visual consistency of content through the use of styles.

  • Imports data from many 3D CAD systems and can be maintained in the file system or in any PLM system.

  • Outputs industry-standard file formats, including PDF, HTML, AVI, and graphics formats like SVG and CGM.

  • Lets you document a product while it is incomplete by letting you update all deliverables quickly and easily.

  • Uses occlusion detection to find internal, non-visible parts on a single view, all views, or the animation timeline.

  • Uses decimation to reduce the tessellation of selected parts to reduce the size of the .smg file.

Composer Benefits

Before Composer, creating graphical content for product documentation was a costly, error-prone process that had to be repeated, usually from the start, for any product or process change. Now, by using Composer, users can:

  • Deliver products more quickly to market.

  • Quickly and easily incorporate changes into their documentation images.

  • Reduce product documentation costs.

  • Improve manufacturing yield rates with 3D interactive assembly instructions.

  • Provide more comprehensive training materials by leveraging 3D information.

  • Improve customer service through delivery of crystal clear interactive documentation.

  • Produce product documentation content in parallel with the design of the product.

  • Reuse 3D product data in departments such as sales, marketing, customer service, training, support, and manufacturing.

  • Increase the value of 3D information while ensuring the creation of accurate, always current deliverables.

Using Composer Documentation

The Composer User's Guide includes a Getting Started covering key capabilities of Composer. To get the most out of this guide, we suggest that you start here.



Provide feedback on this topic

SOLIDWORKS welcomes your feedback concerning the presentation, accuracy, and thoroughness of the documentation. Use the form below to send your comments and suggestions about this topic directly to our documentation team. The documentation team cannot answer technical support questions. Click here for information about technical support.

* Required

 
*Email:  
Subject:   Feedback on Help Topics
Page:   Overview
*Comment:  
*   I acknowledge I have read and I hereby accept the privacy policy under which my Personal Data will be used by Dassault Systèmes

Print Topic

Select the scope of content to print:




x

We have detected you are using a browser version older than Internet Explorer 7. For optimized display, we suggest upgrading your browser to Internet Explorer 7 or newer.

 Never show this message again
x

Web Help Content Version: SOLIDWORKS Composer 2025 PR1

To disable Web help from within SOLIDWORKS and use local help instead, click Help > Use SOLIDWORKS Web Help.

To report problems encountered with the Web help interface and search, contact your local support representative. To provide feedback on individual help topics, use the “Feedback on this topic” link on the individual topic page.