TrustRadius Insights for SOLIDWORKS are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Recommendations
Users of Solidworks have made several recommendations based on their experiences with the software. The most common recommendations include evaluating other products to consider their benefits, especially for CAD software. Users also recommend utilizing Solidworks for 3D design work, highlighting its user-friendly interface and easy learning curve for new users. Additionally, users praise Solidworks for its active community and available support resources, which they recommend taking advantage of. Overall, these recommendations emphasize the importance of exploring different options, leveraging community support, and considering Solidworks for 3D design purposes.
We use SolidWorks for 3D design of mechanical components and assemblies. We sometimes use SolidWorks also for rendering creating the images for out catalogues
Pros
3D modeling
Manage of large assemblies
Quick rendering without much knowledge
Cons
Further improve the large assemblies management
Quite a lot of requirements for the workstation
Likelihood to Recommend
SolidWorks is perfect for solid modeling of mechanical parts and assemblies, especially if there are not too many surfaces involved in the process
SOLIDWORKS is used by the technical office to design all of our tanks and by production to view the drawings in 3D in the workshop.
Pros
Simple to use.
Great for sheet metal.
Good training support.
Cons
Problems with large assemblies.
Sometimes crush.
Problems with the video card.
Likelihood to Recommend
SOLIDWORKS lends itself very well to carpentry design, has rapid prototyping, is excellent at drafting drawings, is very easy to use, and has many tutorials on the net.
We use it to design our new products. We mainly use Sheet metal / Large assemblies and plastic part modeling
Pros
Large community
Cons
Program Stability (Very Unstable)
User Interface is dated and impractical
Every new version introduces many new bugs and makes the program even slower
Insufficient official support despite the large cost of the program
Very Slow
Text Editor is dated and impractical
Solidworks Corp does not support customers
Likelihood to Recommend
It is one of the most unstable programs I have ever used. Despite having been using it on high-end PCs, the program gets slower with every new version and becomes even more unstable with every service pack. The user interface is dated and impractical. For example, there are separate buttons to perform a Boss-extrusion and a Cut-extrusion, where one could do the job (like in AutoDesk Inventor).
Text editor does not allow you to perform tricky tasks. Overall the program is very slow and crashes very often.
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
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
Cons
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
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.
VU
Verified User
Employee in Manufacturing (Construction company, 11-50 employees)
It is being used across the whole organization. Each department has access to it through EPDM and we can access all files each department has created using the shared folder. We use it to 3D model our parts. We also will create an engineering print from each 3D file so that our company has a standard print that they can use to build our parts.
Pros
Great at 3D modeling.
Great with FEA analysis.
Cons
Formatting has always been an issue for me.
Creating a mid-plane has always been frustrating.
Likelihood to Recommend
Solidworks is well suited if you want to create a 3D model or a part of an assembly. Every powerful and has a lot of custom features. It is less appropriate for creating threads on bolts and screws. They have a function that creates the image of a thread on a bolt, but it is not an actual thread cut into the part. They need to have some type of auto thread cutting function.
SOLIDWORKS is used for most of our engineering and designing needs. Having the ability to model and view our equipment in 3D is invaluable. To be able to see interactions with other equipment or to catch interferences visually provides that value. You can also save out to 2D to share layouts and designs with customers.
Pros
The interface is very user friendly and simple. Very minimal clicks are necessary to perform each task.
We primarily use weldments and sheetmetal features. They are extremely helpful designing within these realms.
Going from 3D to 2D prints is a breeze with SOLIDWORKS. Creating views and dimensioning is intuitive and simple.
SOLIDWORKS is great at listening to its users and doing its best to implement enhancement requests.
The feature tree is so useful. Being able to rollback and quickly modify your design is incredible. It also helps to capture design intent.
Cons
I wish that they would take a year off from all the new enhancements and just focus on fixing stability issues and other bug issues submitted. Although the software has been more and more stable as the years go by.
All software has its quarks. SOLIDWORKS is not free from that but can't really complain for what it provides.
Likelihood to Recommend
The great thing about SOLIDWORKS is that it fits well with any size of corporation. It's an extremely powerful and diverse tool for design and engineering.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Engineering (Civil Engineering company, 11-50 employees)
