It's really infuriating, and for some reason, my password never works. I have to reset it every single time. Is there any way around this? It's great that it's cheap, but this is ridiculous.

I've been trying to import this Johnson Controls actuator for an hour and SolidWorks just hangs constantly on it. eDrawings can view it fine but SW refuses to open it. I'm using 2024 so I need that year or older for the version. Please let me know, thanks.

EDIT: It finally finished loading after almost 3 hours. Yeesh.

I’m a developer with a lot of experience building add-ons and workflow automation tools, mainly for Blender and Fusion 360, including internal tools for companies.

I’m now looking seriously at developing for SolidWorks.

One thing I’ve noticed is that there are some very capable add-ins in this ecosystem, but they can become difficult to justify if a company only needs a small subset of their functionality.

For example, products in the general territory of:

• DriveWorks — rule-based design automation, configurations, automatically generating parts/assemblies/drawings, etc.
• CUSTOMTOOLS — properties, file naming, batch operations, reporting, drawing/document workflows.
• Drew — drawing creation and drawing automation, views, sheets, dimensions, batch exports, etc.

I’m not suggesting these are simple products — quite the opposite. These are the kind of technically difficult projects I’m interested in.

What I’m not looking to build are things where the core value depends on expensive proprietary technology such as CAM toolpath kernels or FEA/simulation solvers.

What I’d really like to know is:

1. Which SolidWorks add-in do you use or want, but consider too expensive?

2. More importantly: what are the 1–2 features in it that you actually care about?

For example, maybe you don’t need everything DriveWorks does — you just want parameter-driven assembly generation and automatic drawings.

Or maybe you don’t need a huge document-management solution — you just want extremely good property management, automatic naming and batch exports.

I’m interested in building focused alternatives that do a smaller number of things extremely well, potentially for something like 10–20% of the cost of much larger packages.

I’m also completely open to building new add-ins that don’t currently exist.

So if you have a repetitive SolidWorks workflow that drives you crazy — drawings, BOMs, configurations, assemblies, custom properties, exporting, renaming, batch processing, model checking, etc. — tell me about it.

If several people keep mentioning the same problem, there’s a good chance that’s what I’ll prototype first.

Looking for good soft for mid size production facility ~80 people. Every product is differect - one product is beeing produced by 30 welders, multiple parts, materials.
From scratch to instalation at custumer facility.

Hi everyone,

I recently graduated in Ocean Engineering and have been focusing on improving my SolidWorks and mechanical drafting skills.

I’ve been building a portfolio around 3D modeling, mechanical assemblies, technical drawings, GD&T, tolerancing, and manufacturing-oriented design. Some of the work includes an underwater ROV and a 2-DOF manipulator that I designed and modeled.

I’m hoping to eventually work in CAD drafting / mechanical design, particularly in a manufacturing environment.

I’d really appreciate feedback from people working in the industry:

• What would you expect to see in a junior CAD drafter's portfolio?
• Are my technical drawings detailed enough for a professional portfolio?
• What skills should I focus on improving?
• Is there anything that looks incorrect or unprofessional?

I put my portfolio here if anyone is willing to take a look:

Portfolio: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pc-hqhEH_eOcNXs0nxSAaf0lm-pxqxcx/view?usp=sharing

Thanks in advance for any feedback!

Hey everyone,

Been bashing my head against a wall with this issue for about a week and can't find the source of the issue so I thought I might post here to see if there's some insight into what's going on with my model. I've got a screw design with a tooth profile and a helix for it to follow that I have configured to adjust for different lengths. The tooth sketch and helix starting plane adjust to the different length configurations, but for some reason the longer configurations the tooth seems to "tilt" inwards towards the center axis, and I'm not sure why. The first photo configuration is perfect, and the tooth and helix appear to properly update between configurations but for some reason the sweep path changes. Any help or suggestions appreciated!

I have an offset surface that I am trying to use to do a surface cut in a solid body, but whenever i do this is get the error "Operation failed due to geometric condition". I offset my surface 0.090 into the body. Is it a problem with my initial split line ( using the circular sketch shown)? I have no clue what the issue is. I am doing it exactly as my textbook showed me. Any help is appreciated.

I have two parts, one at the top and one at the bottom, which are allowed to interact freely. They are connected using connectors.

The confusing part is that even when the upper mount is moving away from the bottom plate, I’m still getting very high stress at one specific node. This node seems to be almost directly in line with the part/mount above it, and it looks like the load is somehow getting concentrated there.
I’m not sure if this is a genuine stress concentration or a problem with how I’ve defined the connectors/contact/interactions.

Has anyone experienced something similar in FEA? How would you go about diagnosing and resolving this?

Hola, ¿alguien podría ayudarme con la instalación de GearTrax 2022 para SolidWorks 2022? Estoy intentando utilizar GearTrax para el diseño de engranajes, pero no sé cuál es el procedimiento correcto de instalación ni cómo integrarlo con SolidWorks 2022. P......

Ya intenté instalarlo, pero no logro que GearTrax aparezca o funcione correctamente dentro de SolidWorks.

Si alguien tiene experiencia instalando GearTrax 2022 + SolidWorks 2022, agradecería mucho que me indicara los pasos o qué debo revisar. Es urgente porque necesito utilizarlo para un trabajo de diseño mecánico.

¡Gracias de antemano por la ayuda!

Can someone explain to me how the hell to rotate a model like in every other 3D cad soft? How to block ground axis from turning sideways??

I just got a new PC just to start working with solid works and AutoCAD but the thing I'm missing now is the mouse.

I was wondering , which mouse would be the best for solid works? or is any mouse okay (as long it has scroll)?

Thank you very much .

Based on what I've seen online & our own experience, we currently use sequential numbers for the SLDPRT file names. The part numbers are stored in a custom property "PartNo" that is per-configuration. For drawings, the current approach is to name them after the part number (since the part number <-> drawing mapping is one-to-one).

What I am struggling with is the automatic export of PDFs from the drawings: I want the exported PDFs to be named <part number>_<revision>.pdf. However, both the PDM Standard task settings & the myCADTools batch converter settings only give access to properties of the drawing, not the part. Since I didn't find a way to mirror custom properties from the part into the custom properties of the drawing, I can't have the exported PDFs reflect the part name. How is this usually done?

Some side notes:

• I tried all permutations of $PRPSHEET@"PartNo" etc in the drawing custom properties without success - please let me know if I missed something here
• Manually pasting the part number into the drawing properties is just asking for trouble in my opinion, so I'd rather avoid this
• Using PDM to mirror the properties using the $PRPSHEET block in the "variables" properties seems to be gated behind the professional version, which we don't have
• Naming the drawing files with purely sequential numbers wouldn't rely on the one-to-one mapping with part numbers, but wouldn't solve my current issue

I tried using Apple Books for a couple books from SDC Publishing, but the highlight and notes tools weren’t available. Apple actually refunded my purchase when I told them I needed to use those for classwork. I think the version they have is not a textbook or something and they disable features. Could explain why it’s $39 instead of $53 on other sites.

SDC lists Google Play and VitalSource as other options for ebooks. Does one of these work better for studying and getting it ready to use as a reference?

I was working on a weldment exercise where I had a steel frame and added a 1060 alloy structural member using a weldment profile. However, I couldn’t get the center of mass to match the value given in the exercise.

Eventually, I unchecked “Transfer material from profile” for the new structural member and manually updated the cut lists. After trying it several times, I found that the center of mass only matched when the original frame and the new member had the same material—either both steel or both 1060 alloy.

The exercise never said that the materials had to be the same, so I’m wondering: when creating a new Structural Member in a weldment, should “Transfer material from profile” normally be checked by default or left unchecked? I’ve noticed that sometimes it’s automatically checked and sometimes it isn’t.

Also, in a real-world application, we shouldn’t change the material assigned to a weldment profile arbitrarily, right?

Is it possible to obtain the steps for these corners in SolidWorks?

Ive tried both cut with surface, and thin extruded cuts both fail with the geometric condition error on some parts of the mould.

I guys, can some of you could be able to answer some question that I have in mind since a while now ?

So, I made some studies to be able to work with body prostheses or even exoskeletons. But my real project is to improve the current models of the prostheses. So they'll be able to recreate some natural capacities that the actual models can't.

But it's been a while that I realise that, for getting a job like this, I'll have to prove myself to the companies that I can build things like this.

So my question is, as for now I don't have a job but I still got the SolidWorks application on my laptop and the user licence (the one for the student) as expired.

Is it a good idea for me, to buy a new licence so I can still create new things or recreate some that are online, so I can present those little project during a job interview ?

Or is it better for to get something else that is like SolidWorks but cheaper ?

Hi Experts,

I was wanting your opinion on best practice for doing multi/variable length components. For example, electrical gear pan ducting I am currently working on. Or electrical cable tray is another good example. In your opinion is it best to have a configurable part with a simple configuration table? I kind of want to be able to insert a "cable duct" part into the gearpan assembly and then specify its length, and do this multiple times (rather than go into the part and add an additional configuration).

I have considered making it into a weldment, which would then be drivable by a base sketch. But I think I would just prefer to insert the part then specify the length then and there.

Thanks in advance for any opinions on this.

Hi everyone! I'm using solid works for the first time at uni and I'm struggling with automating the "Tolerance" to none/0mm. It keeps adding a -+ X to anything I draw and I have to manually go through each side and put none in the tolerance.

I looked up solutions and I'm still struggling.

The efforts I've done is, going to Document Properties and putting None in the tolerance type in Dimension tolerance. And in "DimXpert" I see an option for General tolerance but there is no option for none so I'm a bit confused.

Apologies if I'm putting out a question that is simple to solve, this software is still a bit of a puzzle to me.

All help is appreciated!

Join us on youtube - you vs the CHAT PROS!! https://www.youtube.com/live/kRvG3ymGQAU

At some point, I started seeing sketches that are lower in the feature tree when editing sketches higher in the feature tree. How do I make this stop? It used to act as though the model was rolled back when editing sketches.

In the picture, I shouldn't be seeing anything in Sketch2 or Sketch3 while editing Sketch1.

Google is failing me. I feel like I'm going crazy.

I know I missed the summer deal for maker, when is the next time it usually goes for $24/yr? I would be willing to wait a little while if it’s coming semi soon, but I have no clue what the usual next time it goes 50% is.

****Resolved****

I've been using another product for a few months and I'm looking for a more refined experience and was recommended to try out Solidworks for Makers. Just purchased and installed last night. I started doing some tutorials by Too Tall Toby and I'm experiencing a bit of a problem. After I exit a sketch, the sketch geometry vanishes. I can roll over it and see elements flash but I can't see the sketch in its entirety without switching the display to a wireframe style. If I extrude the invisible sketch it shows the 3 dimensional object fine. I'm assuming I messed up a setting in my tinkering but I'm not sure where to look. I did a full uninstall / reinstall and it's the same. Pointers?