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Product Design, Production, Support, Marketing, and Education with SOLIDWORKS
January 25, 2019

Product Design, Production, Support, Marketing, and Education with SOLIDWORKS

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SOLIDWORKS

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.
  • Improved accuracy in both models and drawings compared to our old 2D drawings.
  • Quicker setup for machine shops incorporating SolidWorks with their CAM systems.
  • Fuller products with support and marketing built in with the design. Less wait on outside sources and less costly.
  • Quicker and easier communication to go over designs or customer requests to get new products through faster and more efficiently.
There are a lot of similar software titles out there, but I've found that SOLIDOWORKS contains such a full package solution that it is constantly growing at a great price, and easy to learn for those coming into new areas. The support system has also been wonderful in pushing through necessary customer requests to SOLIDWORkS and constantly adding new features that their customers request. It was really an early adapter in the 3D modeling community for and uncomplicated software. Pro-E has been around a long time and definitely has it's purposes, but for price, easy of use, and ability to easily find a trained workforce, SOLIDWORKS definitely fits the bill. And I've been known some to ask about cheaper or free software such as Google Sketchup. These are great for personal use, but they just don't have the capabilities of what you would need for products in the industry.
This is fantastic for manufacturing and product design. Like I said, you can go from an idea or concept that someone suggest to not only a full product, but also a full product line or series of parts or assemblies. It works well to see if your concept will even work before ordering costly parts to test. It is also easy to 3D print or use stereo-lithography to hold and really feel you product quickly before mass production or testing. It can really help sell your product too, with rendering capabilities and animation capabilities. Sell it to a board or backers, sell it to your customer. You can also use this for designing things for the manufacturing/testing process itself such as brackets or fixtures. Or you can send you 3D model through your CAM system for an easier set up. I would not recommend this though for things like shop for layouts. I think it can be a waste of time modeling all the small tedious items in a shop with very little gain from it. 2D is more suited for quick floor layouts.