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Easy to learn
May 04, 2020

Easy to learn

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

Overall Satisfaction with SOLIDWORKS

Our company designs and manufactures mechanical batteries for energy storage. SOLIDWORKS is primarily used by the design teams. They use it to design components and assemblies, make engineering drawings, and conduct finite element analyses (FEA). I work in the manufacturing department, and we use SOLIDWORKS to design equipment, fixtures, gauges, or other custom tools for the manufacturing process.
  • 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 an integral piece of software for our company. It has allowed us to design, analyze, and test our product before we spend money building it physically.
AutoCAD, in many ways, still looks and feels like you are designing something in the 1980's. It definitely caters more to the generation of people who are used to drafting. SOLIDWORKS is much more visually appealing, which counts for a lot when you will have lots of engineers using it as an everyday tool. Also, SOLIDWORKS is the standard among many companies.
SOLIDWORKS doesn't even have to provide its own support. It is so ubiquitous that there are countless YouTube videos, online classes, forums, etc. that can answer all of your questions. When I was making my first weldment, I looked up a 5 minute YouTube video showing me exactly how it is implemented, and I was able to apply it myself immediately.

Do you think SOLIDWORKS delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with SOLIDWORKS's feature set?

Yes

Did SOLIDWORKS live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of SOLIDWORKS go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy SOLIDWORKS again?

Yes

SOLIDWORKS has become the industry standard from what I can tell from the tech jobs I have worked at. It is pretty easy to get acquainted with and has lots of functionality. Since it is so widely used, you can easily solve all of your problems with a simple Google search.