A perfect software for 3D modeling and large assemblies
We use SolidWorks for 3D design of mechanical components and assemblies. We sometimes use SolidWorks also for rendering creating the …
Starting at $1,295 per year
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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.
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User Review: Efficiency Excels When Robotics Developer Can Depend on Solidworks For Accuracy
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Pricing
Solidworks Annual Subscription
1,295
On Premise
per year
Solidworks Standard
3,996
On Premise
per standalone license
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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What is SOLIDWORKS?
SOLIDWORKS Video
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SOLIDWORKS Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, Mac |
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 5.2.
The most common users of SOLIDWORKS are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
- 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.
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Reviews
(1-25 of 27)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
September 16, 2022
A student's perspective on SOLIDWORKS
SOLIDWORKS is used at my institution in order to help 3d model complex objects or new designs that are being conceptualized. For example, my formula hybrid team has used SOLIDWORKS for the past 7 years in order to design entire race cars from scratch and model every single part that is used on the car.
- User Interface
- Accessibility
- Creating Drawings
- Ease of Use
- Battery Consumption
- Time taken to Start
- File Sharing
March 09, 2022
SOLIDWORKS - Best Companion for Mechanical Engineers
I have started using SOLIDWORKS during my college days, and from the experience I can say that it is the first software that a Mechanical Engineer requires to study for different mechanical components due to it's simple user-interface and placing of all the features in a concise manner that even a fresher can start without any prior experiecne. Using SOLIDWORKS we can make 3D design of parts from 2D, can make orthographic views from 3D model, we can make assembly by combining different parts. SOLIDWORKS also support various types of analysis like Static, Thermal, Flow, Fatigue, Linear, Non-linear, Drop test, Buckling, as well as Mold Simulation. With SOLIDWORKS Design Library, we can also import different standard mechanical components as per our design requirements based on different codes like ANSI, DIN, ISO, BIS, etc. Plus, we can also use the animation wizard of SOLIDWORKS to view the live results of deformation or stress distribution in the parts, hence allows us to study as per real time scenario.
- 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.
November 04, 2021
Solidworks is a good choice
SOLIDWORKS is being used in engineering department to create solid models for our product, parts and assembly drawings later generates from solid model. Both 3D models and 2D drawings are used by other departments, and some times shared with external supplier. In certain situation, 3D model will be analyzed using SOLIDWORKS add-ons, such as simulation.
- 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 is being used in my company for designing parts, modelling of assemblies, and preparing 2D production drawings.
- 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.
[SOLIDWORKS] is being used to create 3D models and 2D drawings. We use 3D models to create plastic parts for molding and sheet metal parts for stamping. The 3D model allows us to see how parts in assemblies interact with each other, allowing us to control the fit and feel of the assembly. 2D drawing allow us to communicate with suppliers for tool creation and QA.
Mainly used in the mechanical department
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
April 15, 2021
Solidworks is easy to use with great functions
Solidworks is used to review 3D model files by estimating and engineering. Also used in production to create flat patterns from customer-supplied sheet metal model files and create in-house shop drawings to define limited dimension drawings from customers.
- 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.
April 11, 2021
SOLIDWORKS for the future generations
SOLIDWORKS is utilized solely by the Engineering Department to evaluate, measure, and flatten customer 3D models so we can turn them into 2D drawings and fabricate the parts on our laser and brake presses. A lot of our customer models are very lackluster and must redraw the parts with SOLIDWORKS to be able to create the 2D prints. We also will use it in conjunction with customer prints to get missing dimensions on the customer-supplied prints to ensure we meet quality requirements.
- 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.
April 08, 2021
SOLIDWORKS Review
SOLIDWORKS is being used to design skid mounted, pre-piped, water systems - for labs, manufacturing companies, and industrial buildings. Not only is it used to just design the skid frame, which we send to an outside welding company, but actually all of the components that make it up. It helps drastically which manufacturing and knowing how parts fit in addition to being able to show customers what they'll be receiving. As a small company only I use it.
- Generate bill of materials that can be sent to Microsoft Excel
- It has a very user friendly interface
- It gives the ability to visually depict a design
- Large assembly load time could be improved
- Importing .dwg files is fairly clunky
- File management without having to buy an add-on program
April 07, 2021
Powerful tool for 3D design
We use SOLIDWORKS to model our product from individual components up to full assemblies and how they will fit in with our customer's product, especially when we have to design bracketry for installation. As our customers provide us with the models of their vehicles, we can see that our signs will fit and line up with mounting positions and viewing apertures.
- Visualisation
- Clash detection
- Easy modification
- Resource hungry
- Time consuming to load models
- Fault correction is difficult
SOLIDWORKS is used as our primary 3D rendering software for design and development. It is used by our engineering department only and suits our needs perfectly fine.
- 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.
July 02, 2020
SOLIDWORKS Review
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I am currently the only person in our company using SOLIDWORKS. We mostly use 2D drawings for our jobs, but with more and more companies going to 3D modeling, it was important for us to be able to decipher what those customers are sending us. SOLIDWORKS has been very handy in that it allows us to not only open individual part files, but we can open an assembly file and see how exactly the parts are going to fit together.
- Allows you to rotate a 3D part to see any angle you need
- Can easily generate a 2D drawing, showing each face of a part
- You can view entire assemblies from any angle you want
- Dimension based drawing so you can change a dimension without redrawing an entire part
- It's a little bit complicated when you're used to simple 2D drawings
- The program crashes quite frequently - SAVE OFTEN!
- Updates are tied to a subscription that must remain active
I first used SOLIDWORKS nearly 20 years ago (!!) while earning my engineering degree, and then later in my engineering consulting work. After a break of a few years, I've returned to using SOLIDWORKS for personal/entrepreneurial use, primarily for 3D printing of custom parts for radio-controlled aircraft.
The highly intuitive, visual UI and seamless backend integration into my 3D printing workflow, meant that alongside my familiarity from my earlier career, it was the obvious choice.
The highly intuitive, visual UI and seamless backend integration into my 3D printing workflow, meant that alongside my familiarity from my earlier career, it was the obvious choice.
- Highly visual and intuitive UI--my 10-year-old son can use it to create complex designs!
- Has very wide integration of CAD to all the other things you'd use CAD for (fluid dynamics, stress testing, CNC, 3D printing).
- It has very useful presentation modes to be able to present working concepts.
- Resource hungry (but then you should expect that!)
- So full-featured that sometimes it's a little confusing
- Community support is vibrant, but could benefit from more structure.
March 13, 2020
SOLIDWORKS! From a Solid User
Our R&D department uses SOLIDWORKS daily for design, validation and training. New products come to life in SOLIDWORKS, before being manufactured. Drawings are utilized in SOLIDWORKS to send parts out to suppliers or create instructions for the technicians. Tools and fixtures are designed and validated in SOLIDWORKS as well.
- Part design.
- Instructional drawings.
- Ease of use.
- Slow.
- Expensive.
- Buggy.
February 27, 2020
SOLIDWORKS for manufacturing ease
The Engineering department is using SOLIDWORKS. It is effortless to use, user-friendly and fast you can do a lot of things in it. Complex assemblies are easy to make, user-defined drawing paper, good quality rendering, realistic simulation, suitable for designing small parts, for 3D print, realistic-looking rendering, materials, scene, animation (motion) is good, and decent report of simulation.
- Focus on ease of use allows the user to produce a 3D design in a fastest and easiest way.
- Provides a seamless and integrated workflow
- Create, validate, manage, and transform ideas to produce an excellent product design.
- It can be slow, sometimes gets stuck while processing multiple parts.
- Its time consuming to form an object from different parts.
- File import from other software can be tricky and does not work very well.
February 10, 2020
Easy to use, easy to learn, does the job.
Our engineering department uses SOLIDWORKS for mechanical design and simulation needs for consumer electronic products. We design components and full assemblies, analyze the parts for manufacturability using inspection tools, and conduct simulation to determine thermal performance of products, which often include both active and passive cooling features (heatsinks and fans) designed as part of the component. We use SOLIDWORKS to communicate with suppliers and some customers within the SOLIDWORKS format.
- Ease of use.
- Flexibility.
- Compatibility for files with annual software versions.
- Load/startup time.
October 18, 2019
Opinion on SOLIDWORKS for product design
I'm gonna refer mainly to my previous job since now I only use SolidWorks for personal matters. I worked in a product design company so we used SolidWorks as a tool in the projects. It was the main resource to develop the product, from the first stages of creation through to the final product.
- It has the precision required for manufacturing that is necessary so that you can guarantee that the product can be produced in the end.
- SolidWorks makes it possible to visualize how the product is going to look in the end.
- It is intuitive, so you don't waste time looking for resources or tools in the program.
- It gives feedbacks about errors in the parts so that you can review and correct them.
- The rendering function "Photoview" could be improved in terms of realism.
- The metal sheet resources are not so intuitive and could be improved. I often get stuck in some errors that I can't figure out the solution or the cause.
September 03, 2019
Designing with SOLIDWORKS
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
As a long-time user of SOLIDWORKS, I have seen the progression from the beginning. In its infancy it was a good option at a good price for a stand-alone 3D program. It was occasionally unstable in the early years but has progressed to a very stable user-friendly platform for mechanical design applications. I have designed many complex progressive stamping dies using SOLIDWORKS Professional and continue to do so. The time saved by using toolbox and library features is one of the best benefits.
- 3D modeling.
- Automatic drawing creation.
- Integration with Mastercam.
- Needs more progressive die components in toolbox.
- Drawing layers and colors are difficult to work with.
- Complex sketches are still somewhat slow to rebuild.
July 17, 2019
SOLIDWORKS Review
SOLIDWORKS is used across out whole organization. It is used for design, FEA, rendering, and visualization purposes. In the design group, we use it to create, edit, and share parts and assemblies across a wide range of applications, including consumer goods, machinery, devices, etc.
- 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.
July 05, 2019
SolidWorks 2001-2018 experience
SolidWorks was used in my company since inception and I was using the software since 2002. As a mainstream 3D parametric software design tool it really made a huge difference in productivity and versatility in design process and drafting. Year after year customer-driven changes and improvements aligned with my advancements in career and my company's penetration to the markets. It is a must-have type of software in today's industry.
- 3D modeling.
- Assemblies.
- Drawing updates.
- Integration for parts, assemblies and drawings.
- Some software stability.
- Version conversion to earlier releases for file exchange.
- Subscription value for the money.
February 11, 2019
First Class Design Software
Up until 2007, I used SOLIDWORKS to design industrial equipment in the glass industry. We used it throughout the engineering group (about 10 designers). I used it for R&D including simulation work (FEA and Motion). I currently own a suite of SOLIDWORKS for my personal business (APECS LLC). I use it for small design projects. I currently use Autodesk Inventor in my full-time position with a company in the water treatment industry.
- 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.
February 05, 2019
A user-friendly modelling software
I am using Solidworks for my Ph.D. research. I have used it to make 3D models for various things which I 3D print later on and test in the laboratories at Iowa State University. I have used Solidworks for making 3D models of poles and transmission towers.
- It has very good graphical user interface and thus is very user friendly.
- It offers a lot of options to create your models and for each option, there are examples and suggestions as to how these options work.
- It can be easily integrated with any finite element software and allows the user to print the model which can be used for testing in labs.
- It enables the user to make very complex 3D parts with minimum effort. There are a lot of tutorials also available for the software.
- I would want Solidworks to add a library within itself where users can see examples and solve their problem.
- While working with very heavy models, the software becomes slow and leads to unnecessary lag while moving around the model.
- It should allow a person to easily integrate their models with models from other users.
February 01, 2019
Incredible software for 3D designing
SOLIDWORKS is being used by several areas in our organization. It is mostly used in our engineering department by our mechanical, civil and electrical engineers who are responsible for designing our pieces. We mostly use it for 3D modeling whether they are as easy as a screw or as complex as a car, solid works is the software we rely on most.
- 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.
January 30, 2019
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.
I've used SOLIDWORKS for 21 years now, both for in the industry and also for educating others. I've used it for general drafting, complex designing, pre-product testing to review stack ups, minwalls, assembly, and other items. I've used it to start a new product, through the production of the product, and marketing of product through website, brochures, manuals, instruction cards, and renderings and animations to further support those. It is a very useful, versatile, easy to use software to use from start to finish for manufacturing. I also teach all three levels of SOLIDWORKS at the local community college to pass on these skills to others.
- Quick learning curve so you can incorporate its use across different areas of your company.
- Low entry price for 3D CAD software.
- Great tool for designing new product and ideas from concept through production.
- Great marketing tool to allow digital images and animations to be used across the web, manuals, advertising, and support done in house.
- Supports different methods of modeling to really suit the needs of the specific industry that you work in.
- With so many newer users, possibly a guide towards better drafting standards for creating your designs. Some times it's so easy to make a part itself, but if you are not thinking of the end game WHILE making the part, you can kick yourself in the end for taking short cuts in the beginning.
- I know that they have tried to make each release of SOLIDWORKS more and more user-friendly, but I've noticed sometimes it actually make is more difficult. For example, when selecting a line by default it would select the line while you were over it, now if it is a shorter line and you are near the center, it will tend to grab the centermark over the line. If I wanted the center mark more often I would turn on filters for this.
January 24, 2019
Real World Solidworks Review
Solidworks is used as our primary design tool for the development of large articulating gangways, powered elevating safety cages, platforms, etc. The parametric capabilities give us a faster design cycle time and more accurate shop floor drawings. Previously, we were using AutoCAD LT and all work was done in 2D with the bill of materials counted by hand & any changes to a single part required a redraw of every instance of that part in a given drawing set.
- Ease of 3D modeling; in all honesty, no other modeling software is as easy to learn for basic 3D modeling.
- Once your users learn the basics the program offers extremely advanced parametric capability to design large complex systems & make changes to them quickly.
- My 2 favorite features are the use of configurations & design tables to customize an initial design to work in different scenarios.
- Make certain that you implement protection for parts & assemblies you don't want changed when breaking in new users. It's great to be able to quickly change the design of a single part and have every instance of it automatically changed. Just make sure everyone knows how not to do this when you don't want to do it.
- It will crash occasionally, especially when working with large assemblies, even when in large assembly mode. Save often and set up your autosave to protect your work. This problem is much better than in previous years.
- The required annual subscription is not something I am fond of on any software.