Item: SOLIDWORKS
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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

Return on Investment

Especially useful when building complex sheet metal parts, such as hoppers and tanks - saves a lot of time!
Allows you to view and build 3D parts that you can move to other view points to make construction and manipulation easier
SOLIDWORKS is a bit expensive and doesn't come with a good way to manipulate the 2D files you can export from it.

Alternatives Considered

Autodesk Inventor

I only used Inventor for the 30-day free trial, which admittedly is not enough time to really give it a fair shot, especially since I had almost no 3D drawing experience before I used Inventor. There were two main things that pushed us toward SOLIDWORKS.
First was the support from the community. There are many people using SOLIDWORKS, which was very apparent every time I searched for a SOLIDWORKS issue on Google, I got an answer, usually a lot of them. While there are also a lot of people using Inventor, there didn't seem to be as many results when I looked up an issue or was trying to figure out how to do something. Also, the support from AutoDesk in the form of education (tutorials) seemed to be lacking. I didn't get the feeling AutoDesk wanted to help me get better at using their program so I'd purchase it.
The second reason we chose SOLIDWORKS was the payment plan. You buy SOLIDWORKS and you have it. You must have a subscription to continue getting updates, but you own the original version of the program you bought. With Inventor, it's all subscription-based. If you stop paying the subscription, you lose access to the program.

Support Rating

SOLIDWORKS as a company seems to want you to be good at their program to encourage you to continue using it and tell others of the experience. There is a ton of support from the community, as well as from the reseller (we use GoEngineer). There is an official forum that is very active, as well as tutorials built right into the program to help you get started, and even into some advanced features.

Key Insights

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?

Yes

Did implementation of SOLIDWORKS go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy SOLIDWORKS again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

SOLIDWORKS seems to be very popular as there are a lot of resources on the internet to help teach you how to use the program. So even if you don't want to or aren't able to pay for formal training, YouTube will get you through a lot of issues that might come up.
SOLIDWORKS has a very good sheet metal system, as well as a weldment feature for building tubing structures. And on top of the default sheet metal thicknesses and tubing sizes, you can make your own custom sizes that will fit your specific needs.
We use SOLIDWORKS mostly to build sheet metal parts. In SOLIDWORKS, you can build the part in 3D, in its finished state, then export the part to a .dxf file as a flat pattern so that you can cut/form the piece.

SOLIDWORKS Review

Overall Satisfaction with SOLIDWORKS