Overview
What is SOLIDWORKS?
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.
A student's perspective on SOLIDWORKS
Solidworks ! Best to use for Parametric modelling & Configuration based Products.
SOLIDWORKS - Best Companion for Mechanical Engineers
Solidworks is a good choice
Solidworks and Injection Molding Analysis Review
My experience with SOLIDWORKS as a mechanical design engineer
Solidworks - solid modeling functions and features that work great
SolidWorks is the leading standard in 3D parametric solid modeling!
SOLIDWORKS works good
Solidworks is easy to use with great functions
SOLIDWORKS for the future generations
Sketch feature should be like DraftSight
SOLIDWORKS and its Capabilities
SOLIDWORKS Review
Awards
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Video Reviews
1 video
Pricing
Solidworks Annual Subscription
1,295
Solidworks Standard
3,996
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is SOLIDWORKS?
SOLIDWORKS Video
SOLIDWORKS Technical Details
Deployment Types | On-premise |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Windows, Mac |
Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(407)Community Insights
- Recommendations
Users of Solidworks have made several recommendations based on their experiences with the software. The most common recommendations include evaluating other products to consider their benefits, especially for CAD software. Users also recommend utilizing Solidworks for 3D design work, highlighting its user-friendly interface and easy learning curve for new users. Additionally, users praise Solidworks for its active community and available support resources, which they recommend taking advantage of. Overall, these recommendations emphasize the importance of exploring different options, leveraging community support, and considering Solidworks for 3D design purposes.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 28)A perfect software for 3D modeling and large assemblies
- 3D modeling
- Manage of large assemblies
- Quick rendering without much knowledge
- Further improve the large assemblies management
- Quite a lot of requirements for the workstation
SOLIDWORKS - Best Companion for Mechanical Engineers
- Simple Modelling and Assembling of parts
- Contains large database of materials
- Design Library to import every important standard parts, hence reducing time in designing the same
- Allows every simulation, with results as per the real time scenario
- Animation wizard, to view the deformation and stress occuring in a precise way
- No need of manual calculation in calculating the weight and inertia of the component, SOLIDWORKS can do the work for you
- With increase in complexity of the mechanical components, the solving time also increases exponentially.
- With SOLIDWORKS, I can't do manual meshing by selecting the face of the components, unlike Ansys
- SOLIDWORKS is a high end software, hence requires system which can support the software.
Solidworks is a good choice
- Design solid model
- Generate 2D drawing
- Check parts fitment
- Sketch can be easier to use by adding more features
- Rotation by reference would be useful feature to be added
- Welding simulation would be helpful
Solidworks and Injection Molding Analysis Review
- While SOLIDWORKS has many features to learn, it is quite easy to start modeling if you're new to software.
- The UI has always been one of my favorite reasons to use it, as other 3D modeling software provides a more "industrial" feel to the process of CAD modeling.
- From the administrator side, managing licenses needs some major improvements. They offer 2 ways to manage: 1) per machine 2) online. Both are painful and need some feature development to improve both methods.
All in all, if you're not planning to design an entire airplane with large assembly files, then Solidworks is your tool!
- Comprehensive standard parts library (such as bearings, fasteners, etc.)
- Easy to work with (intuitive)
- Comprehensive and easy to use hole drilling and tapping options
- The GD&T options could be updated to latest ASME standards
- PDM interface could be modernized
- Simulation for static finite element analysis could be expanded to provide more contact options.
Mainly used in the mechanical department
- Great interface
- Intuitive menus, tool bars and features
- Import many file types
- Large assemblies and complex part are slow to load
- Limited collaboration ability
- Needs a powerful PC to run it
[SOLIDWORKS] is less appropriate for single users that could get similar results from a lower priced product. Also less appropriate for teams that only need the modeling basic features.
- Top of the line parametric solid modeling
- Intuitive interface
- Expansive feature set
- Excellent handling of both large and small design projects.
- Fantastic support network
- Stable and reliable
- Solidworks is continually improving its product, however, more focus could be put into traditional drawings as opposed to MBD.
- Crashes can at times happen without warning or symptoms.
- The newer focus on cloud-based applications is a bit late to the game and needs some work to bring it up to enterprise-class.
Solidworks is easy to use with great functions
- Review and measure model files.
- Convert sheetmetal model file to flat patterns.
- Create in-hose drawings.
- Export model characteristics more easily.
- Easily convert surfaces to extrusions.
SOLIDWORKS for the future generations
- Heal corrupt 3D models.
- Feature recognition is invaluable to correcting corrupt models.
- Drawing 3D models made easy.
- Some 3D models are completely impossible to repair via feature works and healing. Understanding all the different 3D modeling software and convincing customers to set standards for all models drawn by employees would be ideal even though it is outside of SOLIDWORKS control, some people that model parts are plain and simply not suited or managed properly to ensure the end customer has the ability to work with their model.
Sketch feature should be like DraftSight
- Opens many file types.
- Easy to convert into 2D DWG files.
- Fast 3D rendering for complex assemblies.
- 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.
Powerful tool for 3D design
- Visualisation
- Clash detection
- Easy modification
- Resource hungry
- Time consuming to load models
- Fault correction is difficult
- SOLIDWORKS offers solid support through 3rd party vendors. I've yet to find a time where I wasn't able to find a satisfactory answer for an issue I was having.
- Stable releases with continuing improvements in the software.
- Communication with us on a yearly basis to see how the software is working for us and what improvements we would like to see.
- SOLIDWORKS is extremely particular is what video cards and versions of Windows they will support. It seems as though they are looking for reasons to not have to support their software.
- Missing functionality would be the stress analysis portion that requires additional licenses. Aside from that, everything is pretty good with it.
Easy to learn
- I have been using the Weldments feature recently, and I was surprised by how easy it is to make a weldment using a simple 3D sketch.
- Our product contains over 200 components, and many of them have lots of details in them. SOLIDWORKS loads and runs smoothly.
- There are extensive online forums to help you build whatever you need to. It is very useful.
- Getting the right parameters set when doing an FEA is always challenging for me. Attaching conditions to a face, for example, covers it with little arrows. On complex assemblies, I can't tell what is even selected.
- The license management software could use an update in UI. It seems like some tabs are unnecessary and it is not immediately clear what is and isn't checked out.
SOLIDWORKS is the top of the line 3D modeling software
- Creating models in steps that are easily modified later
- Assembling part files and keeping them organized
- Drawings need some flexibility on creating annotations in a certain way
- Sometimes there are unexplained crashes
3D CAD design software
- 3D modeling for mechanical designs.
- SOLIDWORKS has an excellent photorealistic rendering that helps you so much to see how your final product will be.
- Interface: I think they should make a friendlier interface to look more sophisticated. This is not a con; actually, it’s just an improvement.
SOLIDWORKS is a solid choice for 3D CAD
- Makes changes fast. It adapts the assembly to part modifications and then saves the changes back to the part models.
- Interface checking and analysis are simple yet effective.
- Parts and template lists are quick and easy to generate.
- CAM is only 2.5 axis.
- The import of scanned objects should require less work.
- Adding features could be more intuitive. Tube trims and weldments take too much tinkering.
It is too complicated to learn for simple sketches where precision is not important. For example, I was drawing a stepstool that would fold and it was faster to sketch it out on paper.
SOLIDWORKS Review
- 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
- SOLIDWORKS gets very slow when using large assemblies, parts with many features, and sketches with many fully-defined entities.
- Saving can become extremely slow when there are STL files inserted into your part file. Has taken up to 10 minutes to save one part file. However, using the Save As option and giving the same part a new name will reduce save time by 10x. Seems to be some room for improvement here.
- When using the loft command without guide curves, there are two orbs that can be moved to determine how the profile twists from one face of the loft to the other(s). However, you cannot constrain these points and they can change position in different configurations. These points should be able to be constrained.
- Solidworks has simple modeling and sketching.
- Solidworks has good conversion to drawings.
- Solidworks has adequate assembly control and mates.
- Solidworks could improve on collaboration tools.
- Solidworks needs to fix bugs before releasing features.
- Solidworks is a resource hog, and the resource monitor is constantly going off.
- Solidworks could have better assembly controls.
- File Organization
- Hot Key Programming
- Rendering through Visualizer
- The user interface can look very busy sometimes compared to Inventor
- There are annual updates and sometimes the redesign of the interface is difficult to get used to
- Very expensive and you have to be on a subscription
SOLIDWORKS: A legend in the making.
- Having built themselves as the premier desktop CAD package, SOLIDWORKS has tools for almost every design-related.
- Learning SOLIDWORKS is very straightforward and there exists a large body of free tutorials and on-line help forums.
- SOLIDWORKS' partner program means having access to world-class software applications that run native within SOLIDWORKS.
- The FEA and CFD tools (Simulation) are best-in-class in-CAD analysis softwares and have helped shape that particular landscape since their adoption inside SOLIDWORKS.
- The reseller channel may, perhaps, be the greatest strength of SOLIDWORKS. It means guaranteed help/support, access to updates, a a vibrant user community.
- To date, the baked in surfacing tools lack power compared to dedicated surfacing software.
- In a similar vein, the core modeling kernel is not owned by SOLIDWORKS themselves and so there exists limitations with regards to implementing certain modeling/math.
- SOLIDWORKS is playing catchup to other online vendors of CAD (notable Onshape); instead of being the once leader, they are being forced to compare themselves. This, however, may work to their advantage and in turn allow them to produce a better on-line CAD tool.
First Class Design Software
- For starters, it is easy to learn compared to other solid modeling software platforms. SolidWorks has great learning tools and an easy to follow interface.
- The Weldment design environment is very robust and flexible.
- Working with model configurations is much easier to manage than other software platforms.
- FeatureWorks makes easy work of importing CAD geometry from other modeling packages. It recognizes the features and provides a feature-based model, unlike other programs that simply allow you to import block geometry without access to the model base features.
- More flexible options for renting or leasing the software.
- Provide small firms with older versions of the software with credits toward software upgrades. The current system penalizes those who have chosen not to upgrade over time. Many small firms can't afford to do so as often.
SOLIDWORKS - use for heavy equipment design and production
- Creates detailed renderings of parts.
- Production drawings can be made from renderings.
- Assemblies allow you to see if all the pieces fit together prior to production.
- We were not using a CNC for any parts now, but I do remember back in school we had to use AutoCAD for the CNC we had at school. I don't know if that was a SOLIDWORKS or a CNC issue, and I would assume this has been done in the last 5 years, but if not, that integration would really be my only complaint.
Incredible software for 3D designing
- The GUI of SOLIDWORKS is extremely comfortable, every tool is arranged in a way that makes the workspace a well-organized place, and makes the learning process (which tends to be complex) a bit simpler.
- Moving from 3D to 2D models is extremely easy with this software and this makes the modeling process more streamlined.
- It is universally used so we have never encountered compatibility issues between the models we create and the software used by our clients.
- This software is extremely demanding, our high-end PCs tend to suffer and lag when this software is being used with pdf readers or other software.
- This is not an easy to use software, it has a steep learning curve and since it counts with a vast amount of tools it can sometimes feel overwhelming.
- This software is really expensive.
SOLIDWORKS is the industry leader in 3D software
- 3D layouts of systems.
- Verify equipment fits in the environment, access to other equipment, ergonomics of the system, etc.
[It's] Used by the engineering department. We do not use the majority of the software's features at this company. When I was with another company, we used it to its full potential. This company does not need some of the features it has. Still the best software for the company.
- Very user friendly
- Easy and quick to sketch simple designs
- Very powerful software for FEA and CFD
- Basically universal software used by our customers as well.
- Cost for new users, which they seem to be addressing
- Not many other issues I can think of.
Review of SOLIDWORKS
- Interface is easy to use
- Software updates are readily communicated, and installed with limited to no bugging in the system
- Easy to roll out to a global user group with a centralized shared license server
- Memory usage when exporting form one format to another, specifically high resolution renderings and .stl files for additive manufacturing
- More standard file format capabilities both to import and export in the basic licensing plans
- Easier interfacing and more adaptive feature recognition to reverse engineering software and scanning devices