Solid Edge is a software solutions for product development — 3D design, simulation, manufacturing, data management, and cloud collaboration. Solid Edge aims to combine the speed and simplicity of direct modeling with the flexibility and control of parametric design.
$110
per month
SketchUp
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
SketchUp is 3D modeling software with an emphasis on usability. SketchUp is a Trimble product.
$119
per year
SOLIDWORKS
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Dassault Systemes offers SOLIDWORKS, a computer-aided design (CAD) system for education and manufacturing supporting 2D or 3D design, electrical design, simulations, and product development with collaboration tools.
$1,295
per year
Pricing
Solid Edge
SketchUp
SOLIDWORKS
Editions & Modules
Design and Drafting XaaS
$110.00
per month
Foundation XaaS
$267.00
per month
Classic XaaS
$335.00
per month
Premium XaaS
$481.00
per month
Free
$0.00
per year
For Schools (free with G Suite or Microsoft education account)
I've used both SOLIDWORKS and Solid Edge. I prefer Solid Edge over SOLIDWORKS due to the ease of use. They are pretty similar, but the performance is the same as long as you have a good workstation. The price is less since Siemens owns the Parasolid kernel. It may just be a …
Solid Edge and SOLIDWORKS can be very similar in the resulting output of parts, assemblies, and drawings. The difference lies in what goes into getting those results. SOLIDWORKS is held back by slower editing as the parts gain more and more features, and becomes dangerous when …
SOLIDWORKS has a really intuitive interface for a traditional CAD package. It is easy to use, easy to learn and is perfectly suited for any user. Solid Edge lacks this ease of use.
Autodesk Inventor is great for personal use as well as in small businesses. It is easy to learn, …
Synchronous technology stands above the rest by a large margin. Having the ability to perform direct or parametric modeling in the same application is a huge benefit.
SketchUp can be widely used in different design disciplines while some programs such as Revit and SOLIDWORKS are specifically designed for making 3D or 2D drawings related to structures, mechanical components, and building elements. The interface of SketchUp is intuitive, all …
When it comes to easy development of the design and sketches SketchUp is a great tool, but in case you require complex design and more specific details I would like to go for SOLIDWORKS. I used this as my secondary design tool but it solves the purpose of basic prototyping of …
I've spent very little time in other applications and programs, but for the cost, flexibility, and documentation style, SketchUp was the clear winner. I do not need a BIM-capable program or photorealistic rendering capabilities, but I do need a quick, effective, and …
SOLIDWORKS allows me to work much faster than Solid Edge, and also allows more complexity. SOLIDWORKS has more available features that make it easier and give you more options to form your model. It is also much easier/faster to edit parts in Solidworks than Solid Edge.
We have chosen SOLIDWORKS for its diffusion (many of our partners use it), for its ease of use, for its great experience in the development of sheet metal, and for its excellent after-sales service.
I have previously worked with Autodesk Inventor for designing very complex door mechanisms and large assemblies of drilling machines. I did not face any stability or performance issues
Verified User
Engineer
Chose SOLIDWORKS
SOLIDWORKS provides not only aesthetic appearance of a product but also provides the capability to analyze behavior of structural and material components.
I found SolidEdge (used in 2005 and 2006) much less user-friendly and less productive for 3D design. Being an experienced user of SolidWorks for years I found the interface and design tools more cumbersome to use and transition to that software was not easy and it was abandoned …
We chose SOLIDWORKS based on previous experience and relationship with the authorized vendor, as well as internal experience in SOLIDWORKS already existing with some of the engineering base. Cost, value and ease of implementation also were factors that led us to make the …
SketchUp is great for individually studying options for building design. It is an awesome conceptual tool to be able to quickly model and manipulate a building to study different designs. It is not good for complex geometries, especially curves. Surfaces have a hard time registering and cutting into one another. It also eventually needs to go into Revit to be more realistic as it is not good as a documentation tool
As a mechanical engineer, it is one of the best tools to just start modeling and engineering with. The UI tools are intuitive and engineering analysis such Mold Analysis, FEA, are great! Other 3D CAD modeling tools have a longer learning curve to master. All in all, if you're not planning to design an entire airplane with large assembly files, then Solidworks is your tool!
It has very good user interface in classic or ordered environment.
In 2D or drafting, you can give any Geometric tolerancing and symbols to any dimension. There is a wide range of options available.
You can convert any files in step file (.stp) and can open it in other designing applications easily.
After converting 3D drawings in 2D you can make changes in 2D drawing by converting it in the draft. You can also add details like cross-sections and detailed view.
You can directly make threads without creating holes.
Quickly exploring solutions in 3D: We get a lot of "what if" and "what would that look like" questions. While hand-sketching and hand-drafting can be fairly quick, SketchUp allows me to quickly create 3D and 2D views of a detail or solution, change dimensions and materials in a flash, and show a client or installer the plan in minutes.
Creating professional design documents in LayOut: Projects of any scale need good documentation. Using a combination of SketchUp and LayOut, I can create a Design Intent Set, plans for permitting, a set for mechanical trades to mark-up, etc. Having clear, appropriately-scaled drawings with dimensions or notations is a must, and we don't always have the time or budget to get an architect involved!
Using live files to guide discussions: Not all clients are "visual" people, so opening their model and orbiting around their space in real time has been extremely helpful. Clients and trades enjoy the perspective views so much that we often include them in the full-sized drawing sets to give a good "overall" view of the project intent. For complex or tight spaces, sometimes un-rendered plans and elevations just aren't enough!
The collaborative work environment is a cool and useful feature where groups of people can work on the same model at the same time, and SOLIDWORKS ensures that you don't overwrite each other's work.
The ease and amount of customization options are very useful for creating a personalized and intuitive user interface, whether SOLIDWORKS is your native CAD package or not.
It is very easy to quickly edit a model you have already created. The software allows sketch and feature editing without having to take the time to actually enter the sketch/feature environment.
The use of configurations and configurations-specific dimensions in the same sketch is very useful for creating different forms of the same part
Being used to 2-key and 3-key commands from the keyboard, it would be nice if this was more robust in Solid Edge. The capability of programming keystroke commands exists in Solid Edge, but it would be more user friendly in that regard.
Editing hatches can be a challenge.
I'm not a fan of the ribbon bar, but that seems to be a feature across software platforms in Windows.
Save DWG 2D files in inches or metric easily, defaults to metric and has to be manually converted to inches
When using the sketch feature, the ability to disable ALL references. If I don't know the exact shape and I want to draw/adapt my design, it harshly interprets the references which have no value to me. The easiest exact is to think about when you have a Microsoft Word document that has a lot of formatting, photos, tabs, etc. If you accidentally hit the "enter" key, you can explode the formatting and everything goes crazy. SW does this to me, I just want to "doodle" my sketches, edit/delete/etc and not be bound by arbitrary references.
For the sketch feature, ability to use a DraftSight plugin of some sort. I'm super fast in DS, if I could draw using the commands in SW then I would probably never open DS again and convert to SW full time. Currently, I only use SW as a way to convert 3D files so I can build everything in DraftSight.
We typically wait a few years in between renewing, as even older versions are powerful tools for modeling, and we make sure the amount of feature changes are worth the re-investment.
As mentioned previously, Siemens Solid Edge is not the most user-friendly of products at all. It requires intense training to make sure that the basics are understood, and after that, there are numerous other training interventions needed to be able to perform expert-level CAD functions. The GUI is not intuitive, as many other packages are, and the features built-in are not well defined. The process to use many of these features is counter-intuitive and requires a mind-shift.
It is very user friendly and easy to learn. It's simplicity allows for a low learning curve so more people can learn it faster. The downside is that most schools are no longer teaching it, so many younger professionals come out of school not knowing it and knowing more complex software and they have a hard time "dumbing down" their skillsets
I have been using SOLIDWORKS for around 12 years as of writing this review, so have learned where most things are and how they work. When first starting out it was quite daunting, but the interface is well laid out with like functions near each other which made finding new functions relatively easy.
I have been involved with support and training of Solid Edge for 24 years. Given that I based my business model on support, and have been successful for all these years, I know excellent support. Siemens support for Solid Edge, "GTAC", is the definition of support for a product in every aspect.
Sketchup is so intuitive; I can't recall ever looking for official support. However, there are many user forums online that can answer more questions. The usefulness of the online forums is, however, tempered by the fact that there have been many versions of the software under different ownership and support regimes, and thus finding the right information for the right version of the software can be a challenge.
We have an unusual arrangement. We don’t pay for support, but we’re partnered with a VAR for second-tier support.
I work with other users if I have questions but when we’ve had to ask the VAR, they always have answers. It appears that all of the VARs have access to a support platform from DS SOLIDWORKS that helps them answer most questions.
FreeCAD is often better than Solid Edge 2021 when converting files, but I hope this changes with 2023 NX is overall more powerful, but that is to be expected (and you cant add it above because it is too short for whatever reason).
We have not evaluated any other competing software to this one. I heard about this software from a friend who teaches how to use it. She showed me in just a few minutes and I was HOOKED. I saw immediately the possible help it would be to my business. Thank you.
Onshape is a direct competitor. It has great entry level pricing and it is easy to access with no installation required. Being a web based app there is sometime some lag being based in NZ. Management also have concerns over where the data is stored on the cloud. With SW we can control where it is stored
It took about 20 hours of use to get the basics of Synchronous Technology, and with just a basic competency I was able to make useful changes to the design. One of those changes was impossible to do our other CAD program.
My use lately has mostly been on personal time and self-driven, so learning other aspects and features of Solid Edge has been slower. Creating a drawing for a part required a few hours to learn and do the first time, but luckily there were YouTube videos for examples. With practice, I would expect the time to reflect what it takes in SolidWorks (about 30 minutes).
