SOLIDWORKS - use for heavy equipment design and production
February 09, 2019
SOLIDWORKS - use for heavy equipment design and production
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with SOLIDWORKS
SOLIDWORKS was being used to create our engineering production drawings to fabricate large equipment in the wastewater treatment industry. It was used only in the engineering design group. It addressed not having to make hand drawings to pass onto production as well as creating the 3D models of parts that were able to be put together into assemblies. By assembling the rendered parts we could see what spacing to expect and if we had incorrectly modeled any parts prior to actually making them and trying to put them together.
- 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.
- Drawings are made much faster and require a lot less effort to do so.
- Being able to assemble parts rendered from what will be the final production drawings allows you to see mistakes without actually building the parts.
I have always preferred SOLIDWORKS, but may be partial because it was the original program I learned to do 3D modeling with and the only one I had any formal education in. I think the products overall are fairly similar and the preference for either is going to fall into specific use cases or user familiarity with one or the other.