SolidWorksReviews of solidworks.com

I paid for SOLIDWORKS xDesign for Makers, received the “Get started” email, and still cannot access the platform due to an “Access denied” error. To make it worse, even the official support form does not work, so I cannot report the issue. This has been a complete waste of money and valuable time. Very frustrating experience and a terrible start with a paid product.

I have been a user of SolidWorks for more than 25 years. It is excellent software that lets you be creative and design what you want. Unfortunately, over the last 15 years, the useful features for the average mechanical engineer have remained the same, while the price has rocketed. At the same time, the user interface has become unstable, it crashes frequently (especially when using STEP or non-SW files), the online platform requires multiple updates every month, and it takes 10 clicks and many minutes to load. In short, it is the epitome of enshittification.

I've een using Solidworks professionally since 2006 - so 20 years. In recent years it seems to have got worse & worse. I was forced to update to 2026 SP 2 as one of my clients was using it - and sorely regret it. There are so many small but annoying bugs & glitches that just shouldn't occur in software I'm paying £2k per year for. Unfortunately Dassault seemingly don't care. There are bugs which have existed for years if not decades. By SP 5 many of the problems will have been fixed - but why do they come back in the first release of the next version? Other CAD software has it's problems too - but it feels like SW is losing ground to them more & more as time goes by. I use OnShape personally (I can't use cloud software professionally due to ITAR etc) and it's amazing by comparison. It feels like they do care about the users.

fa assolutamente schifo, ogni singolo feature cad è meglio

The program is unusable way too often, every other week SW is out of service and I cant use it, the web verification is just a nightmare that works sometimes. When I get to actually use SW its amazing except for when it crashes and it didn't want to autosave. I've used SW for ~5 years and the first 3 years of SW student version worked flawlessly but now with maker I need to verify it to the internet every time I open it. This new year the program deleted itself but thankfully my models were ok. Just today I've had 8 attempt launches and I'm not able to use it yet, it wants me to use the link "solidworks_dot_com/support/downloads" and download the newer version but the thing is that the link on this support page doesn't work

Dont get me wrong the simulation side is awesome but its about as intuitive as trying to bowl a semitruck down a mountain and trying to get it to fly. the user interface is terrible and it always does the opposite of what you want

This software is simply not worth the investment, especially when there are far superior alternatives available. It’s difficult to understand how it became the industry standard, given the frustration it causes. Businesses and universities should seriously reconsider their reliance on it. In most cases, Inventor, Catia, NX etc are a far better choice.

Solidworks Maker or Design. It´s a pain. Don´t save the documents even if you ask to. Forces you to update more than what you use the program. Fails all the time. Really bad application.