SolidWorks Frequently Asked Questions

General

What is SolidWorks Office Premium?

SolidWorks Office Premium is a complete 3D product design solution, providing your product design team with all the mechanical design, verification, and data management, and communication tools that they need in one package.

What is COSMOSWorks Designer?

COSMOSWorks Designer is the first validation software created for nonspecialists, enabling any designer or engineer to improve product quality and safety by testing 3D CAD models under real-world conditions prior to manufacture.

What is COSMOSMotion?

COSMOSMotion is virtual prototyping software for engineers and designers interested in understanding the performance of their SolidWorks models. COSMOSMotion enables engineers to size motors/actuators, determine power consumption, layout linkages, develop cams, understand gear drives, size springs/dampers, and determine how contacting parts behave.

What is SolidWorks Routing?

SolidWorks Routing enables you to quickly and easily design pipe, tube, and electrical routes in your product designs.

What is TolAnalyst?

TolAnalyst is a tool for automating analysis of tolerance stack-up. TolAnalyst automatically identifies tolerances that have the greatest impact on the tolerance stack-up. You can then make the necessary tolerance changes and recalculate maximum and minimum tolerances until you have achieved the desired stack-up results.

What is DriveWorksXpress?

DriveWorksXpress is a design automation tool that allows engineers and designers to automate repetative design tasks by capturing valuable design rules inside SolidWorks enabling them to automatically generate parts, assemblies and drawings by filling out a simple form.

What is DFMXpress?

DFMXpress is an up front design validation tool that helps identify geometry that is difficult, expensive or impossible to machine by conventional methods (Milling, Drilling and Turning)

What is PDMWorks Workgroup?

PDMWorks Workgroup is an easy-to-set-up-and-use product data management (PDM) solution that is uniquely adapted to managing SolidWorks product data for the individual or workgroup. PDMWorks Workgroup enbales you to control file revisions and manage project data more securely and efficiently.

What is PhotoWorks?

PhotoWorks is a best-in-class rendering solution that allows creation of photo realistic images from 3D CAD models. PhotoWorks is fully integrated with SolidWorks 3D mechanical design software and all other components of SolidWorks Office Premium.

What is 3D Instant Website?

3D Instant Website is a single-click web-publishing tool that allows users to share 3D models customers, coworkers, and suppliers. Users can instantly create pass-word-protected web sites that enable visitors to view 3D models in detail and provide comments.

What is eDrawings Professional?

eDrawings Professional is the first email-enabled communication tool that dramatically eases the review of 2D and 3D product design data. eDrawings Professional gives users the ability to generate accurate representations of 2D and 3D product designs that anyone can view, mark up, and measure. It provides extended design teams with the tools necessary to visualize, interpret, and collaborate on product design projects more effectively using 2D and 3D design data.

What is FeatureWorks?

FeatureWorks is feature recognition software that lets users make changes to static geometric data, increasing the value of translated files and reducing time spent rebuilding models. With FeatureWorks, users can preserve or introduce new design intent when bringing 3D models created in other software into SolidWorks.

What is SolidWorks ScanTo3D?

ScanTo3D is a utility for capturing physical objects (via a scanner) and representing those objects inside of SolidWorks that can then be referenced for building a solid model. ScanTo3D significantly reduces the time and resources to build complex CAD models. Unlike using calipers or outsourcing, ScanTo3D quickly creates 3D mesh that in which 2D and 3D sketches can be built on top of or you can choose to use ScanTo3D's Surfacing Wizard to automatically extract surfaces or a solid model.

What is SolidWorks Toolbox?

SolidWorks Toolbox is a time-saving library of standard parts, fully integrated with SolidWorks Office Professional and SolidWorks Office Premium. Only SolidWorks Toolbox allows you to take advantage of SolidWorks' Smart Part Technology, a unique capability that automates assembly tasks.

What is SolidWorks Utilities?

SolidWorks Utilities is productivity enhancement software that allows users to easily find differences between two versions of the same part or locate, modify, and suppress features within a model.

How does SolidWorks Office Premium help AutoCAD users migrate to 3D?

SolidWorks Office Premium allows AutoCAD users to become rapidly productive using the 3D mechanical design and 2D detailing capabilities of SolidWorks, as well as leveraging 2D data. SolidWorks Office Premium provides tutorials specifically developed for the AutoCAD user, using familiar terminology to help speed the learning process. SolidWorks Office Premium provides a data migration wizard and innovative 2D to 3D tools that allow AutoCAD users to maintain their legacy data or build 3D models from 2D drawings.

How do SoldiWorks users edit existing DWG files?

SolidWorks software includes the DWGeditor™. The DWGeditor is for SolidWorks customers who use AutoCAD® to edit or maintain existing DWG files. The DWGeditor provides a low risk, low cost alternative for editing DWG files in their native format, using a familiar user interface.

How does moving to SolidWorks Office Premium benefit AutoCAD users?

SolidWorks Office Premium provides AutoCAD users with the ability to construct production-ready detailed drawings without drawing a single line or arc, eliminating time-consuming drawing view creation, manipulation, and maintenance. In addition, AutoCAD users benefit from the ability to visualize and capture design intent easily; quickly verify form, fit, and function; revise designs and drawings easily; reuse 2D design work more effectively; eliminate guesswork with truly associative dimensions; and generate Bills of Materials automatically.

Does SolidWorks Office Premium have a CAM package?

SolidWorks provides CAM solutions and a wide variety of other engineering and manufacturing solutions through its partnership with over 300 Solution Partners. SolidWorks Corporation and its Solutions Partners offer over 45 best-in-class Certified Gold Products that supply single-window, fully associative integration. With Certified Gold Products, all the tools users need work together using the same design data and each change is updated automatically across all applications.

What languages are supported?

SolidWorks supports the following languages: Chinese, Japanese, English, Korean, French, Polish, Russian, German, Spanish, Czech, Brazilian Portuguese and Italian.

Does SolidWorks Office Premium include tools for surface design?

Yes. SolidWorks Office Premium is truly a hybrid design software. Users can work with both surfaces and solids in the same environment. Surface tools include: loft, sweep, radiate, offset, fill, extend, trim, untrim, and knit. SolidWorks Office Premium provides all surfacing tools to users at no additional cost.

Are mold design tools included with SolidWorks Office Premium?

Yes. SolidWorks Office Premium core/cavity functionality is second to none. Additional mold tools included 'Radiate Surface' to assist in the production of core/cavity using complex parting lines. Mold designs can be taken a step further with add-on applications for mold base creation and mold flow analysis.

Does SolidWorks Office Premium have a sheet metal design module?

Yes. SolidWorks Office Premium contains sheet metal design functionality as part of the core product. Edge flange, mitre flange, selective fold/unfold, rip, tear, and auto relief functionality are all here. Design in the flat or bent states with the utmost in flexibility and associativity.

What is contained in the software updates of SolidWorks Office Premium?

These are updates for Subscription Customers to upgrade the latest Major Revision of software. Service Packs consist of fixed customer problems and minor enhancements.

Computer-Related

What are the system requirements for SolidWorks Office Premium?

A list of minimum system requirements, hardware support notes, a listing of tested graphics cards and drivers, and other related information is available by clicking here.

Data Exchange

What can I do with my DXF/DWG files after they are brought into SolidWorks Office Premium?

You can leverage your 2D legacy data by reading in and exporting out DXF/DWG data for reuse in a SolidWorks environment. SolidWorks Office Premium further eases data reuse by allowing you to create 3D parametric solid models from the imported 2D data by turning it into sketch geometry. SolidWorks Office Premium can also import 3D DXF/DWG data as curves in the part environment that can be used to create solid models. 3D DXF files are also supported for import within SolidWorks Office Premium.

Does SolidWorks Office Premium have any way to read in data from Pro/ENGINEER?

SolidWorks Office Premium includes a feature-based converter for Pro/ENGINEER files. The SolidWorks Pro/E Converter recognizes most features in parts and assemblies created with Pro/ENGINEER version 17.0 - 20.0.

Does SolidWorks Office Premium have any way to read in data from Mechanical Desktop?

Yes. A converter for Mechanical Desktop files is available for SolidWorks Office Premium. This is a feature-based converter for files created using Mechanical Desktop 4.0 and higher. The conversion utility provides direct translation of files created with Mechanical Desktop into the SolidWorks environment, complete with feature information. In the past, users migrating from Mechanical Desktop had to export data to a neutral file format and import the data. The Mechanical Desktop Converter is a free plug-in available for SolidWorks Office Premium.

Does SolidWorks Office Premium have any way to read in data from Unigraphics?

Yes. SolidWorks Office Premium includes a translator which allows for the import of native Unigraphics part and assembly files. SolidWorks Office Premium and Unigraphics use the same modeling kernel – Parasolid®. Instead of sending the data through translators such as IGES and STEP, the Parasolid file format (usually *.xmt_txt) is available for import and export. This capability allows you to bypass IGES and STEP, providing you with a cleaner data exchange between SolidWorks Office Premium and Unigraphics products.

What data exchange tools are supplied with SolidWorks Office Premium?

Data Exchange Table