One of the most important considerations in evaluating a 3D CAD system is how quickly new users can get up-to-speed and begin doing productive work. Extra time means extra cost, which cuts into your profit.
With SOLIDWORKS, users learn fast, and work fast. Our extensive feature set, intuitive, easy-to-use design experience, and broad range of customization options saves design time on every project. And whether you design every day or only occasionally, that means better productivity as your 3D CAD tools work for you — not against you.
SOLIDWORKS worldwide community brings passion and knowledge to design. When questions arise, you’ll have quick access to people and resources to gain the knowledge and support you need.
Save time and development costs, avoid redesigns, and increase productivity by continuously checking your designs against cost targets with automated manufacturing cost estimation tools fully integrated with SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD software.
Handle all aspects of your part and assembly modeling with SOLIDWORKS 3D design system. Effective product design involves a wide range of tasks that demand flexibility in your software. 3D solid modeling offers several advantages over traditional 2D design, but you want 3D CAD tools that you can use every day while being powerful enough to handle all the aspects of your design process.
With SOLIDWORKS, you get an intuitive 3D CAD system that combines ease-of-use with powerful modeling capabilities that can handle your most complex design projects. SOLIDWORKS accelerates your design, saving time and development costs, and making you more productive.
Use SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD to quickly create production-ready 2D drawings that are always current, and clearly communicate how your design should be manufactured and assembled. SOLIDWORKS associativity links a 2D drawing directly with a 3D solid model, so updates to the 3D model can be automatically reflected in the 2D drawing. SOLIDWORKS accelerates your design process, saving time and development costs while increasing productivity.
With traditional 2D CAD, drawings are often out of date and/or drawing views do not accurately reflect the design, leading to expensive manufacturing errors that slow down product delivery. Without an automated update system, all drawing views must be updated manually whenever a design change occurs. This becomes an even bigger problem when a component or assembly exists in many different assemblies or at many different levels of the same assembly, because it requires that all the drawing views containing the modified components be updated.
SOLIDWORKS drawing capabilities include:
Quickly and easily leverage existing engineering data to create new designs and speed up new product development using SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD software. With SOLIDWORKS, a range of tools helps you reuse existing 3DCAD models and 2D drawings, which accelerates your design process, saves time and development costs, and increases productivity.
New products are often variations of existing products, with current designs tweaked or reconfigured to meet a new customer’s need or requirement. At other times, major sections of one or several designs need to be reused in other designs.
SOLIDWORKS search, automation, and configuration tools simplify the reuse of existing design data to create new designs. Designers and engineers can find and configure design data and documentation quickly to create new designs, which reduces product development time so they can put their focus on developing innovative new products rather than manipulating a CAD system.
SOLIDWORKS design reuse and automation tools include:
Quickly and easily create powerful images and animations of your design from the 3D model with SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD software to more easily communicate your design intent and product functionality. SOLIDWORKS rendering and animation tools increase productivity, save time, and accelerate your time-to-market.
Moving from 2D to a 3D CAD system improves how your ideas and concepts are communicated inside and outside your company. It’s simply easier to understand a design when you see it in 3D, as opposed to a static 2D drawing. Potential customers and internal company decision makers want a virtual experience with a design that is as close to the “real life” experience as possible.
People want to see the design in action, moving and performing the tasks it is designed to do. They want to see the 3D model as they would the real life product, with its specific colors and materials—even the environment or setting of their choosing, be it sitting on a picnic table on a sunny day or on a coffee table in a lamp-lit living room. They also want to interact with, maneuver around, and even go through the design to gain perspectives impossible to capture in 2D.
The ability to experience the design as it would be in “real-life” helps win more business by providing a more engaging way to present proposals. It helps guide critical internal decisions earlier in the design phase, without a need for building costly physical prototypes. And it’s a faster, more cost-effective way to get feedback and confirmation from potential customers and buyers, ensuring you are making the right product decisions.
SOLIDWORKS visualization capabilities enable you to quickly and easily create powerful images and animations to clearly communicate your design intent:
Share your designs, manage design files, and work closely with your team and other stakeholders while protecting proprietary data with the multiple tools and applications in SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD software, saving time and development costs, increasing productivity, and accelerating time-to-market.
SOLIDWORKS product collaboration tools help members of your design team work closely with other project stakeholders. SOLIDWORKS software also provides ways to protect your designs before sharing them beyond your organization and to manage project data and control design revisions.
SOLIDWORKS product collaboration tools include:
Verify that your parts and assemblies will fit, assemble, and operate correctly with SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD software before going into production. Fully integrated with CAD, you can use Interference Check while you design to accelerate your product development process, save time and development costs, and increase productivity.
Component interference, misaligned and mismatched holes and fasteners, and incorrect tolerancing of manufactured parts are the main causes of high rework and scrap costs on the assembly floor. When using only a 2D CAD tool, it is very difficult to uncover these issues before going into manufacturing.
SOLIDWORKS tools help you verify your designs will fit, assemble, and operate correctly before you make any parts. Interference checking finds issues early in design, giving you more time to make less costly fixes.
SOLIDWORKS interference checking capabilities include:
SOLIDWORKS SimulationXpress is a first-pass analysis tool that comes with every SOLIDWORKS Standard and Professional software packages, giving you the ability to do basic stress analysis on individual parts. You can quickly determine effects of force and pressure, and generate reports to document results. When you are ready to test full assemblies, it is easy to upgrade to advanced SOLIDWORKS Simulation packages.
Check your design and verify manufacturability of your product early in the development process using SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD, saving time and development costs, improving productivity, and accelerating your time-to-market.
To ensure your product can be manufactured, SOLIDWORKS provides 3D tools to review your design early in the development process. It is much easier and less costly to correct issues found during the design stage than correcting them during manufacturing planning, or after your design is in production.
SOLIDWORKS capabilities to check for manufacturability include:
Ease of Use | SOLIDWORKS Standard | SOLIDWORKS Professional |
---|---|---|
Learn Fast: In-Context and Toolbar Menus, Command Search, Built-In Tutorials, Searchable Help Documentation | YES | YES |
Work Fast: Hot Keys, Customizable Commands, APIs | YES | YES |
Get Help Fast: Local and Worldwide Support Services | YES | YES |
Part & Assembly Modeling | SOLIDWORKS Standard | SOLIDWORKS Professional |
3D Solid Modeling | YES | YES |
Conceptual Design | YES | YES |
Assembly structure planning: SOLIDWORKS Treehouse | YES | YES |
Direct Model Geometry Modification | YES | YES |
Large Assembly Design | YES | YES |
Advanced Surface Design | YES | YES |
Sheet Metal Design | YES | YES |
Weldments | YES | YES |
Plastic Part Design | YES | YES |
Mold Design | YES | YES |
2D Drawings | ||
Automatic Drawing View Creation | YES | YES |
Automatic Drawing View Updates | YES | YES |
Drafting Standards: ANSI, ISO, DIN, JIS, BSI, GOST, GB | YES | YES |
Manual & Automated Dimensioning & Tolerance | YES | YES |
Annotations & Symbols | YES | YES |
Automatic Bill of Materials (BOM), Exploded Views, Balloon Notes | YES | YES |
Hole Tables, Weld Templates, Pipe Bend Tables, Cut Lists | YES | YES |
Sheet Metal Bend Notes | YES | YES |
Automation (DriveWorksXpress) | YES | YES |
Part and Assembly Configurations | YES | YES |
Reuse 2D and 3D CAD Data | YES | YES |
3D CAD Models from Suppliers (3DContentCentral.com) | YES | YES |
ANIMATION AND VISUALIZATION | SOLIDWORKS Standard | SOLIDWORKS Professional |
Move Assembly by Dragging Components | YES | YES |
Move Assembly with Motors | YES | YES |
CAD Videos | YES | YES |
Basic CAD Rendering (RealView) | YES | YES |
3D Walk Through/Fly Through | YES | YES |
INTERFACE CHECK | SOLIDWORKS Standard | SOLIDWORKS Professional |
Collision & Interface Detection | YES | YES |
Hole Alignment & Thread Checking | YES | YES |
Collaborate & Share CAD Data | SOLIDWORKS Standard | SOLIDWORKS Professional |
Read Printed Circuit Board Data as 3D Parts (IFC) | YES | YES |
Import/Export Over 30 CAD Formats | YES | YES |
Print Directly to 3D Printers: AMF and 3MF Formats | YES | YES |
MCAD to AEC: Prepare and export to AEC applications | YES | YES |
3D Models for CAD/CAM Integration with CAM Partners | YES | YES |
View eDrawings® Files | YES | YES |
3D Dimensioning and Tolerancing (Model Based Definition) | YES | YES |
2D DXF®/DWG® Data | YES | YES |
Maintain and Update Existing 2D Drawings – edit and view DWG® files in DraftSight | YES | YES |
2D to 3D CAD Conversion Tools | YES | YES |
Convert 3D Solid Parts to Sheet Metal | YES | YES |
Intellectual Property Protection (Defeature) | YES | YES |
Design Review Markup and Viewing (Large Design Review) | YES | YES |
ADVANCED CAD FILE IMPORT | SOLIDWORKS Standard | SOLIDWORKS Professional |
Interactive Feature Recognition and Conversion | YES | YES |
Automatic Feature Recognition and Conversion | YES | YES |
BASIC ANALYSIS TOOLS | SOLIDWORKS Standard | SOLIDWORKS Professional |
Power Selection Tools | YES | YES |
Symmetry Check | YES | YES |
Automatic Task Scheduling and Batch Processing | YES | YES |
Copy Feature Info into Other Features (Feature Paint) | YES | YES |
Find and Replace in Drawing | YES | YES |
DESIGN FOR MANUFACTURING | SOLIDWORKS Standard | SOLIDWORKS Professional |
Rules-based Manufacturability Checks (DFMXpress) | YES | YES |
Draft and Undercut Analysis | YES | YES |
Sheet Metal Checks and Flat Pattern | YES | YES |
CAD LIBRARIES | SOLIDWORKS Standard | SOLIDWORKS Professional |
Over One Million Standard Fasteners and Components (Toolbox) | NO | YES |
Beam, Bearing, and Cam Design Wizard | NO | YES |
Automatic Assembly of Fasteners and Components | NO | YES |
ADVANCED DESIGN FOR MANUFACTURING | SOLIDWORKS Standard | SOLIDWORKS Professional |
Compare Parts and Drawings for Changes | NO | YES |
Geometry Check for CAM | NO | YES |
Thickness Analysis | NO | YES |
DESIGN FOR COST & COST ESTIMATION | SOLIDWORKS Standard | SOLIDWORKS Professional |
Compare Manufacturing Costs | NO | YES |
Automated Manufacturing Cost Estimation | NO | YES |
Customizable Manufacturing Settings | NO | YES |
Output Cost Report | NO | YES |
ECAD/MCAD COLLABORATION (CIRCUITWORKS™) | SOLIDWORKS Standard | SOLIDWORKS Professional |
Import/Export of Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Designs | NO | YES |
Automatic Electrical Component Assembly | NO | YES |
Two-Way Data Exchange: ECAD to MCAD - MCAD to ECAD | NO | YES |
IDF, ProStep (IDX) or PADS (*.ASC) | NO | YES |
PCB Outlines, Keep-Out Areas, Maximum Heights | NO | YES |
Filter Display for Clarification | NO | YES |
Compare Board Designs for Differences | NO | YES |
Design Change Notes | NO | YES |
ADVANCED PHOTOREALISTIC RENDERING (PHOTOVIEW 360) | SOLIDWORKS Standard | SOLIDWORKS Professional |
Photo Quality Images and Animations | NO | YES |
Control Camera View, Lighting, Materials, Textures | NO | YES |
CAD STANDARDS CHECKING | SOLIDWORKS Standard | SOLIDWORKS Professional |
Verify Designs against Company Standards | NO | YES |
Automatically Correct Non-Conforming Issues | NO | YES |
Customize Design Check Rules | NO | YES |
AUTOMATED TOLERANCE STACK-UP ANALYSIS (TOLANALYST) | SOLIDWORKS Standard | SOLIDWORKS Professional |
Worst Case and RSS Maximum/Minimum | NO | YES |
Identify Highest Contributing Tolerances | NO | YES |
Automatic Update of Analysis when Design Changes | NO | YES |
SOLIDWORKS FILE MANAGEMENT | SOLIDWORKS Standard | SOLIDWORKS Professional |
File Vaulting | NO | YES |
Secure Check-in and Check-out | NO | YES |
Automated Revision Control | NO | YES |
REVERSE ENGINEERING (ScanTo3D) | SOLIDWORKS Standard | SOLIDWORKS Professional |
Import, Edit, Evaluate, and Create Solid Geometry from Point Cloud and Mesh Data | NO | YES |
Import Adobe® Illustrator® Files | NO | YES |
Import Image Files and Convert Raster to Vector Data | NO | YES |
eDrawings® PROFESSIONAL | SOLIDWORKS Standard | SOLIDWORKS Professional |
Create and Publish eDrawings Files | NO | YES |
Allow Measurement in eDrawings Files | NO | YES |
Enable Markup of eDrawings Files | NO | YES |
Exploded Views Support for eDrawings Files | NO | YES |
View Assembly Animations | NO | YES |
Password Protect Intellectual Property | NO | YES |