Features and Benefits

Focus on Design, Not CAD

SWIFT™

3D CAD provides tremendous power for the design engineer. Along with that power comes complexity and users are forced to become experts to leverage this power. The goal of SWIFT™ SolidWorks Intelligent Feature Technology – is to eliminate the need for users to learn how 3D CAD software thinks, and to make every user an expert from the start. SWIFT™ technology has mastered 3D CAD's most frustrating details, techniques and workarounds on behalf of all users, whether novices or experts. Now users can focus on what they want to accomplish, not on the rules of 3D CAD software. SWIFT™ powers a series of tools that diagnose and cure problems in feature order, mates, sketch relationships, and dimension application.

Shortest Learning Curve

Instant3D

Improve visualization with Heads-up User Interface, a complete set of visual display and mouse-driven control capabilities that reduce design steps, minimize the need for dialog boxes, and lessen visual clutter. All design properties and parameters are within easy reach with Instant3D.

Online Interactive Tutorials

SolidWorks has a series of tutorials integrated into the product. These tutorials make new users more productive by providing visual queues and highlighting tools in the UI when clicking on graphics in the tutorial. This combination makes learning the basics in SolidWorks easier than any other 3D CAD product.

Easy, Safe use of 2D and 3D Data

Leverage Existing 2D Data

Preserve the value of existing data with the best available transition tools, including help documentation for AutoCAD® users, the ability to drag 2D drawings into SolidWorks, support for reusable 2D geometry, and view folding, a tool that lets you build 3D models more easily from DWG data.

Edit Existing DWG Files with DWGeditor®

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

Search

SolidWorks can search all design files whether locally, in the Design Library, on the network, in PDMWorks, and even user content in 3D ContentCentral on the web. This search can mine metadata like title blocks in drawings or file attributes. SolidWorks users find what they are looking for the first time.

Automate Repetitive Tasks

The productivity enhancing drag-and-drop and snap-to-fit functions of SolidWorks software simplify the entire design process. Save time with Smart Component Technology, an innovation that automates assembly tasks such as selecting and inserting standard bolts into holes and adding washers and nuts in the correct sequence.

Download Components from Leading Suppliers Directly into Your Designs

Save design time with 3D ContentCentral®, an online directory that lets you download 3D models and 2D drawings of components from major suppliers directly into your designs. Benefit from the underlying capabilities of 3D PartStream.NET®, an online catalog solution that allows you to visualize components from all angles and configure them to meet your requirements, as well as enabling convenient downloading of CAD files in a variety of file formats.

Maintain Compatibility with Built-in Translators

Exchange CAD data using a wide variety of file formats including: DWG, DXF™, Pro/ENGINEER®, IPT (Autodesk Inventor®), Mechanical Desktop®, Unigraphics®, PAR (Solid Edge™), CADKEY®, IGES, STEP, Parasolid®, SAT (ACIS®), VDA-FS, VRML, STL, , TIFF, JPG, Adobe® Illustrator®, Rhino®, IDF, and HSF (Hoops).

The Most Complete Functionality for your Industry

Machine Design

Gain Speed and Flexibility in Managing Large Assemblies

Design and change components easily from within the assembly to ensure optimal fit. Gain unparalleled performance for designing large assemblies with tens of thousands of parts. Drag and drop parts and features into place. Speed assembly design with incomparable ease and performance.

Mechanism Layout

Sketch designs using 2D blocks that allow you to quickly design and manipulate multipart mechanisms in 2D before generating 3D assemblies. Users can add relationships to better simulate advanced mechanisms including cams, gears, and belts. Once the concepts have been proven in 2D a new 3D assembly can be generated automatically.

Integrated Weldment Design and Analysis

SolidWorks has an intuitive sketch based way to created welded frames. You only need to sketch the layout of the frame and choose the structural cross section for each member.  Tools are provided to trim members, as well as to create welds, end caps, and gussets. SolidWorks is the only system that can design and analyze welded frames. Weldments created in SolidWorks can be automatically analyzed using efficient beam elements. COSMOSWorks Designer will automatically analyze a welded frame allowing for better frame design with the right amount of material.

Create Better Designs by Simulating Assemblies in Motion

Avoid potential design flaws with unique, built-in physical simulation capabilities that allow you to study part and assembly movement in detail. The resulting motion can feed the forces and boundary conditions to COSMOSXpress to validate the structural integrity of a component.

Create Multiple Design Variation with Configuration Management

Reuse previous design work and reduce repetitive design tasks with Configuration Management, a unique capability that lets you create multiple variations of a product in a single document. Develop and manage families of parts and models with different dimensions, components, properties, or other parameters.

Product Design

Enhance your Designs with Advanced Shapes and Complex Surfaces

Improve the aesthetics and ergonomics of your product designs by generating advanced shapes, complex surfaces, and interactively manipulate surfaces using the Freeform feature. Save time when creating new geometry or using imported surfaces with a variety of built-in tools such as drag handles that make surface manipulation easy and intuitive.

Leverage Concepts to Power 3D Design

Many products start out as concept sketches or hand crafted models. SolidWorks allows users to leverage these concepts to complete the product design in 3D. Users can scan physical concepts into SolidWorks using ScanTo3D. Design concepts created in Rhino can be natively imported into SolidWorks. Sketches created using Adobe Illustrator can be imported directly into SolidWorks and used as a reference to compete production designs.

Mold Design

Easy Core and Cavity Extraction from Imported Files

Mold designers are always working with part geometry imported from other CAD systems. SolidWorks provides unmatched tools to import and heal geometry from other CAD systems to make downstream tooling. SolidWorks provides specific tools to identify draft and undercut problems. Designers can automatically identify parting lines and surfaces in order to quickly and easily extract any core, cavity, and side core geometry.

General Tools for All Industries

Create Complete Drawings Automatically

Construct production-ready detailed drawings without drawing a single line or arc. SolidWorks software does it for you, eliminating time-consuming drawing view creation, manipulation, and maintenance. Show your design from multiple angles and enlarge details of specific components easily with a few mouse clicks.

Revise Drawings Easily

Each modification that you make to a 2D drawing or 3D model created with SolidWorks software is reflected accurately throughout all associated views, sheets, and drawings. All drawing views, dimensions, and annotations update automatically. You never have to redraw a complicated section, detail, or isometric view by hand.

Increase Flexibility and Eliminate Guesswork with Truly Associative Dimensions

Adding, referencing, or changing a dimension value in a drawing or part model is easy with SolidWorks software.  You have the flexibility to add or change dimensions at any point during the design process. The geometry updates automatically to accommodate each change, eliminating inconsistencies, so you can always be confident in the accuracy of SolidWorks drawings.

Generate Bills of Materials Automatically

Speed the development of drawings for designs that contain hundreds or thousands of parts by automatically populating bills of materials (BOMs) with a description and quantity for each component.  SolidWorks software minimizes the time required to create production-ready drawings, complete with up-to-date BOMs and balloons.

A Timesaving Tool for Ensuring Compliance with Your Organization's Design Standards

Streamline your organization's design release process with SolidWorks Design Checker, a new productivity tool that automatically identifies elements that may be inconsistent with your organization's design standards

Routed Systems Design Software and Fitting Library

Perform routed system design tasks easily and automatically with SolidWorks Routing. Speed up the process of routing tubes, pipes and electrical cable harnesses. You will enjoy greater design efficiency, better designs, improved BOM accuracy, faster time-to-market, and lower costs.

Achieve Greater Efficiency Through Data Management

Securely manage and share engineering design data, eliminate lost files, prevent unauthorized changes and enable concurrent design. PDMWorks lets you easily vault, search for, and retrieve design data while maintaining complex file relationships and design history.

The Only Integrated Analysis Tools That Anyone Can Use

Built-in Design Validation

Gain basic insight into how parts will function under real-world conditions with COSMOSXpress™, a point-and-click stress analysis Wizard built into SolidWorks 3D modeling software. COSMOSXpress guides you step-by-step through the design analysis process to help improve the integrity of your designs.

Compare Alternative Designs Easily and Quickly

COSMOSWorks Designer lets you study different design configurations created with SolidWorks software and choose the optimal design for final production. COSMOSWorks Designer includes several types of loads and restraints to represent real-life situations, such as forces, pressures and torque. All loads and restraints are associative with the geometry and automatically update with changes in your design.

Simulate Real-world Operating Conditions

COSMOSMotion works inside the SolidWorks window and uses existing assembly information to build motion simulation studies. For example COSMOSMotion will automatically map SolidWorks mates to derive motion joint conditions. By combining physics-based motion with assembly information from SolidWorks, COSMOSMotion can be used in a broad span of industry application like estimating peak motor torque, understanding robotics performance during operation, optimize or minimize the force imbalances in rotating systems, etc.

Transfer Loads Seamlessly into COSMOSWorks to Perform Stress Analysis

With the seamless transfer of loads from COSMOSMotion to COSMOSWorks, you can visualize stress and displacements on a component at a single time instance or for the entire range of motion. This automation means designers don't have to spend time identifying loads and restraints to perform an analysis. The transfer of these from COSMOSMotion lets any designer find structural problems simply by understanding how they assembly moves.

The Best Tools to Share 2D and 3D Designs

Share Product Designs with Innovative eDrawings Files

Supply accurate representations of 2D and 3D models that everyone can understand through the unique capabilities of eDrawings. Animate 2D drawings with exciting 3D effects. Share designs more effectively with your entire product design team, including engineering, product managers, and manufacturing specialists.

Generate PDF Files

Generate 2D or new 3D PDF files directly from your SolidWorks designs. Extend your design data to share with marketing, management, suppliers and even customers using Adobe Acrobat Reader. By generating the new Adobe Acrobat 3D files from your designs you can provide a new level of visualization in your proposals and project documentation that your competitors cannot match.

Show How Products Look and Perform

Demonstrate how products look and perform with integrated motion tools. Combine with PhotoWorks photo realistic rendering capabilities to communicate designs and ideas before creating prototypes or working models.