I am learning CAD at the moment and we've been tasked with this sketch/problem. I have tried a few different ways to sketch it but my mass never comes out to one of the options. Seeing here if there's any advice on if I should do the webbing in the middle or the cylinders first. Thank you!!

I don't know how long the diagonal parts are supposed to be and I don't know how long the outer semi circle (AKA curved line or whatever you wanna call it) are supposed to be. Any ideas?

I'm the developer, and this is a personal project, not something I'm selling right now.

If you manage CAD standards for a SolidWorks team, you probably know the pain: a new hire needs a walkthrough of every rule, a senior engineer leaves and the knowledge goes with them, standards change and you email everyone hoping they read it, and the remote workers' settings are all different.

So I built ComplianceWorks, a CAD standards add-in that lives in the SolidWorks task pane:

- The admin defines design guidelines, required settings, templates, macros and resources once, in a password-protected control panel

- Everything (license included) sits in one database file in a shared network folder. Users import it once, and every update you publish reaches the whole team at their next SolidWorks start - no reinstalls, no mass emails

- Engineers get the guidelines as a checklist next to the model, plus a Quick Check compliance scan

- 15 built-in utilities (feature tree organizer, delete dangling dims, missing refs finder, configuration splitter, QR code generator, quick PDF and more)

- Runs your own macros from the task pane and can push news/notifications

- No license server, no cloud, no internet connection, no data collection

It's free to evaluate. The download includes the installer, user guide and a sample database with 29 example guidelines and a working proof-of-concept license (5 seats).

I'd really like honest feedback from people who actually administer SolidWorks standards:

1. What do you currently use to keep standards consistent (Design Checker, wiki/PDFs, macros, PDM rules)?
2. What would stop you from trying something like this?
3. What's missing?

Link: https://asilerguner.com/complianceworks.html

Happy to answer any questions.

I honestly don't understand why this is even a feature that can't be disabled.

Is it something Solidworks might add in the future? I don't want my views going to draft quality!!

Hi everyone,

I’m developer of OneCommander file manager and a few users asked about showing PDM data directly (I hope do it without referencing the SOLIDWORKS/PDM SDKs).

I’ve already contacted SOLIDWORKS/resellers but ended up being passed between distributors without getting an evaluation arranged. A browser demo or sales presentation won’t cover this test.

I’m looking for approximately 30-day SOLIDWORKS PDM evaluation that I can run entirely on my own Windows machine: a local vault/server plus a licensed desktop client.

Does anyone have a direct contact at a reseller, or on the SOLIDWORKS PDM team, who could actually arrange this? PDM Standard is fine if it supports the test; Professional isn’t essential.

Thanks

Does anyone know how I can fix it ?

My final grade was released last Thursday. I couldn’t have done it without the help from you lot.

Thank you so much!

The assignment was on a drill.

Hello,

I have 2 rectangles on planes 1 & 2. I drew a sketch to guide the loft, but I am only able to make the loft follow one side of it. If I click the other side, the sketch just unselects. Other youtube videos did not have this issue.

Thank you

Hello guys, I need to make an assembly for my university project with at least 10 parts. I am not able to decide what to make, if some suggestion from your side with some source can be provided i would appreciate.

My skills level are moderate in sense that I have done CSWA practice problems all

I am from mechanical engineering with passion for aeronautical engineering

The assembly must be of some industrial application

Any help would be great!!

So I have a flat surface with a design. I use the split line feature to separate the design from the rest of the surface but when I try and export it as a 3mf or stl for 3D printing the surface is flat without the split lines. So I can’t color the design I have. Does anyone know how to easily export the file with the split lines in there for 3D printing?

I have SW but, it's the 2016 version. I have been bouncing between that and Fusion for a few years.

My boss basically told me this month that he would get any CAD software I want. I've been messing around with OnShape for a couple weeks. I mostly like it and I assume some of the minor issues I'm having with it can be customized to my liking bout haven't explored the menus much. The file system confused me a bit at first, but once I got that in my head, it's a lot like SolidWorks when designing parts, and a lot like Fusion for handling assemblies. The price is certainly attractive compared to SW (even though it's not my money, it's something I take into consideration) So, kinda leaning toward OnShape right now. However, it's a bit Plain-Jane, interface-wise. I do somewhat miss the "nifty" aspect of SW.

I design machined aluminum and sheet metal parts for light electronic assemblies. Some 3D printing. I don't do any simulation stuff and I'm going to be the only user, so I would be looking at SolidWorks standard.

It would also be nice if I could collaborate with our Altium user. Do I need SW Electrical for that?

It looks like they make you jump through a couple hoops to get a 30 day free trial of SolidWorks. So before I contact their sales dept., I thought I'd see if anyone here can tell me what has changed in the last ten years? Since I'm not utilizing some of the advanced features, maybe it makes sense to keep using 2016?

Because I was asking for it in my previous post, here are some pictures out of Solidworks and Visualize

Can someone help me with my solidworks homework . I’m struggling in this class but I have to pass

When I try to install SOLIDWORKS for students, installer spits out this error first: 

Internal error: The Windows Installer for this product component did not run as expected:

Register_DocMgrDLL.A48C1CF2_EBF8_48E8_ACAD_68CA04F776.

Contact Technical Support.

,regardless I am still able to continue instalation. However, shortly after I happen to encounter an error that terminates my instalation:

Internal error: The Windows Installer for this product component did not run as expected: INSTALL.

Contact Technical Support.

When contacting Technical Support about installation issues, you will need to provide the installation log files available in this directory. Use the button below to save your logs as a zip file for sending to your support representative.

I am new to SOLIDWORKS, so any help will be greatly appreciated!

Hey solidgangs! I have a question. I have a personal project where I designed a VAWT (wind turbine) and I want to optimize some parameters based on my actual measured wind speed (average wind speed/wind velocity) in our place. My problem is how can we get the RPM and torque of the turbine prior in doing the flow simulation. What are your suggestions or approach on this kind of project.

Hey everyone!
I’ve been quietly following this community for quite a while, and I just wanted to say thanks for all the great content, help, and support you guys share here. I thought it was about time to introduce myself and share some of my own work with you.
I’m a mechanical engineer and have been working with SolidWorks since 2008. I’ve pretty much taught myself everything over the years, from standard part modeling and sheet metal to weldments and surface modeling.
But my real passion is rendering, especially vehicles!
Both vehicles you see here are based on real vehicles that existed in the past. I modeled and rendered both of them entirely myself.
If you have any questions about my work or workflow, feel free to ask. I’ll do my best to answer them!
Looking forward to sharing more of my work with you all!

Edit: First of all, thanks for the great feedback. Since I was asked, here are the images directly from SolidWorks and Visualize. I can't add pictures to this post, so I had to make a second post.

Hi everyone!

I’m currently learning SOLIDWORKS, and I want to start learning GD&T (Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing) as well. I understand that GD&T is an important topic in manufacturing, engineering drawings, and quality inspection.

However, I’m a complete beginner when it comes to GD&T, and I’m not sure where to start.

Could you please recommend any good websites, YouTube channels, free courses, books, or practice materials that teach GD&T from scratch, step by step?

I would especially appreciate resources that explain the concepts with practical examples and engineering drawings, rather than just theory.

My goal is to understand GD&T properly and learn how to apply it to engineering drawings created in SOLIDWORKS.

Any suggestions, learning roadmaps, or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Has anyone actually looked into reverse engineering the drivers for an consumer card so they work similar to an enterprise card?

I currently use a enterprise graphics card simply because Solidworks has a built-in "Enhanced Performance" which only works well with enterprise drivers.

From what I understand, the hardware is super similar, but NVIDIA just locks out certain features on the consumer side to force you into commercial cards. In theory, couldn't that be bypassed with custom or reverse-engineered drivers? Curious if anyone's gone down this rabbit hole.

Firstly, apologies if this breaks a rule. I read them, but saw nothing specifically against this.

We've been developing our CAD engine since 2010. Our flagship workflow was always easy design followed by a native SolidWorks export (fully featured .sldasm and .sldprt files). If some of you have worked with T-Slots, you may be familiar with it.

That being said, we've been tinkering with LumberCAD since about 2020, really got into it in 2022, and released the Beta today.

Does it come with everything SolidWorks does? No, obviously not.

However, it is an absurdly easy to use dimensional lumber configurator with heavily automated documentation and a pre-made catalog of products.

This question is probably better posed to the SketchUp community, but we would love to hear your feedback nonetheless.

One thing we're proud of is we already crash less than SolidWorks ;)

If you're interested in playing around with the open Beta, you can find it at https://lumbercad.com/

Mods, please message me if the link should be removed.

Thank you in advance!

I got a STEP file from an OEM and converted it to a Solidworks 2026 file. However, there is a little bit of the surface missing that I think is causing all of the edges to be highlighted in blue. What's the best way to go about fixing this? I have tried a few of the surface modeling tools (extend, knit, trim) but everything has thrown errors for me.

Here's a 24 hour link to the model: https://wormhole.app/bbd0DP#BPvXZPzzlBqPFx-tsuCh3w

I have always used Plasticity as my modeling program for rc mechanical and body parts but I feel limited as I dont have mechanical animations and cant model gears as well.

I have the full version of solidworks given by a friend and Free version of Fusion 360 Am hesitant to fully commit and switch because I've tried to bear the steep learning curve of either one of these programs but I feel so slow and frustrated by how everything is overly complicated.

Is it actually worth spending all the time learning and how much difficulty should I expect in the first week? when will it get easier?

And Which and what should I learn? Fusion seems vastly easier by other people accounts but I have the full disposal of Solidworks in which I would have more capabilities like stress simulations that I wish to do in the future.