Sketch feature should be like DraftSight
April 10, 2021

Sketch feature should be like DraftSight

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SOLIDWORKS

We are an OEM so we do not design our own products. We use SOLIDWORKS to open our customer's files, and it has a wide variety of supported 3D files it can open. This is very useful since we cannot control what file types our customers create, but we need to be able to open and convert everything to use within MasterCAM and design tooling for these parts.

Pros

  • Opens many file types.
  • Easy to convert into 2D DWG files.
  • Fast 3D rendering for complex assemblies.

Cons

  • Save DWG 2D files in inches or metric easily, defaults to metric and has to be manually converted to inches
  • When using the sketch feature, the ability to disable ALL references. If I don't know the exact shape and I want to draw/adapt my design, it harshly interprets the references which have no value to me. The easiest exact is to think about when you have a Microsoft Word document that has a lot of formatting, photos, tabs, etc. If you accidentally hit the "enter" key, you can explode the formatting and everything goes crazy. SW does this to me, I just want to "doodle" my sketches, edit/delete/etc and not be bound by arbitrary references.
  • For the sketch feature, ability to use a DraftSight plugin of some sort. I'm super fast in DS, if I could draw using the commands in SW then I would probably never open DS again and convert to SW full time. Currently, I only use SW as a way to convert 3D files so I can build everything in DraftSight.
  • Ability to convert multiple file types into DWG files.
  • Ability to look at 3D files.
  • Hard to answer directly. Given our customer's needs, we absolutely have to have SW to open their file types.
  • Given the relatively limited use we need at our company, it would be useful to have a cheaper option that was more stripped down but still had some capabilities. Something in-between SW and eDrawings, for example. SW is very capable and expensive, eDrawings is free and super limited. Would be nice to have a middle option.
We use both actually. SW is great for 3D, but given we do not design products, just tooling/processing to make products, we use SW to convert 3D into 2D then do all the work in DraftSight.

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

Specifically for me at my company, the only people that need SOLIDWORKS are in my team. So there wouldn't be a need for anyone else to be recommended the product or eDrawings would satisfy anything else my department would need. If a peer from another company asked me, I would certainly recommend the software as it is simple and everyone across multiple industries uses it as the standard.

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