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Ive been working with SolidWorks everyday for about 4 years now. Every once in a while I run into this issue where highlighting a part to view its midpoint, endpoint, or center results in said point floating away from the object. And now just when I thought it couldn’t get any weirder, a line with a horizontal relation is now apparently a vertical line as seen in the last picture. I have tried creating new drawings, restarting my computer, end task and restarting SolidWorks, everything I can think of… This ONLY happens in the drawing file. Part and assembly sketches are completely fine. Cant seem to find any help online. Anyone else experience this issue or have any suggestions?

This is SolidWorks 2023 by the way.

I coordinate a team of 3 mechanical engineers. We use SOLIDWORKS + PDM. A recurring problem: parts come out wrong on the shop floor, and production blames the drawings — which, honestly, is often true.

My role is process improvement and work distribution, not design, so I don't know SOLIDWORKS myself. I need a review protocol/checklist that:

• Can catch common drawing errors (dimensioning, tolerances, views, GD&T, revision control in PDM) without me needing deep CAD knowledge to run it
• Could be applied as a formal step before a drawing is released to production (peer review, checklist, PDM workflow/approval state, etc.)
• Ideally reduces "he said/she said" between engineering and the shop floor by making the review traceable

Questions for the sub:

1. What's a solid peer-review or checklist process you use before releasing drawings for production?
2. How do you use PDM's workflow/approval states to enforce this (vs. just relying on people remembering to check)?
3. As a non-CAD lead, what should I specifically look for or ask my engineers to confirm, so I can sanity-check without knowing SOLIDWORKS internals?

Any templates, checklists, or "this is what fixed it for us" stories welcome. Thanks!

Hello,

Am curious what workstations people are using for solidworks? I regularly work with machinery assemblies and want enough headroom for say 5000+ component assemblies. I am on the go quite a bit so portability and battery life are hugely important for me. Ideally something about 14 inches with enough battery life to be modeling for roughly 6 hours. Not sure if this is something that exists at the moment but was curious what others use who prioritize these sort of specs. Thanks.

Hey all, pretty new to Solidworks and CAD in general. I'm doing an assignment for uni, and I need to mate two parts (provided) and then add smart fasteners. However, when I use smart fasteners, only one of the two bolts gets a nut. At first I thought it was my mates, so I did away with one piece of the component, and just stuck with the base (pictured).

Even so, when I use smart fasteners, only one bolt gets a nut. One of the two holes is mirrored - I don't know if this is a problem, but other people in the unit seem to be having the same problem. I also found a thread from about 10 years on a solidworks blog that described similar problems with smart fasteners and mirrored holes.

I tried opening the part and doing an extruded cut through it, but the program basically says you can't cut through nothing. I really am lost and would appreciate any help - I'm losing my shit (just a little) here 🙏 🙏 🙏

Cheers

(i have to say l-a-pp-t-o-p because genius mods think this is a hardware question so the bot auto deletes my post)

i recently graduated from uni and am now making fat stacks in petroleum and do not use cad at all. i want to keep using it for my epic robot projects. Istill have my solidworks on my L-A-Pp-T-O-P, on whatever the free license thing is.

If i entirely disable my L-A-Pp-T-O-P from the internet while SW is running, will this prevent the license from expiring (or rather, prevent my access to the software from expiring?)

also, how do i know when the student access expires

My current workstation is 10 years old Dell Precision Tower Xeon 3.5ghz/64gb/windows 10. Its still ok but thinking of upgrading. I use solidworks/keyshot/adobe. Any recommendations that wont break the bank around 3500$?

I already have my CSWP and am trying to get the prerequisite certs so I can try for the CSWE. I’ve purchased a solidworks CSWPA practice book and have worked through all the exercises and have watched many YouTube videos but I feel like I don’t have a strong grasp on surfacing. If anyone has recommendations of in-depth videos or resources I would greatly appreciate it.

Can some one help me understand the flattened surface deformation plot. How much is the deviation as its shown as a percentage of what exactly and is 0.047% even going to matter?

Its for a 4.4m aluminium boat

i tried making the base that looks as it is a triangle with arcs connecting the lines, however I have no clue on how to calculate their length so now i'm thinking that maybe there is some details missing which is unlikely since it is in the 15th edition of technical drawing with engineering graphics.

Do you have any ideas guys.

Guys, if youre given a drawing of a tube with coordinates and raiduses. How do you make a full contour fixture?
Ive manage to do it on my own but it ends up taking to long and want to know if anybody knows a good way of doing it. I based my method on a random video I found on youtube but you can barely see whats happening.
Also, do you guys know how to make surface cuts normal to a base thats not aligned to the UCS? It would help to do the cuts on the full contour.

Hey everyone,
I’m looking for a SolidWorks assembly of a human manikin/dummy that has a full range of motion. Ideally, I’m looking for something similar to one of those wooden artist’s mannequins, where the individual body parts are jointed and can actually be moved/posed.
I’m not looking for a static human model or an assembly where everything is fixed in place. I’d like the arms, legs, torso, head, etc. to be independently movable, ideally with realistic joint limits/range of motion.
Does anyone know of an existing SolidWorks model/assembly like this, or have one they’d be willing to share?

Thanks!

There was a way but I can't remember for the life of me. I am trying to pattern as hole all along the out line of a slot. Please help o wise people of Reddit

The annoying part is how inconsistent it is. I don't think it's a memory or CPU issue since I can open a similarly sized and designed STEP file with no issues. Hell, I have a STEP file that's 20 MB more and it opens fine.

It goes through the process of opening and loading, no issues, no "Failure to make empty documents," etc.

I've already tried turning off the 3D Interconnect with no added success.

Any advice?

I have started learning sw since a week and iam able to make some easy parts so far is there any way I can get better faster ?

wall screwed holder for the AC remote

Hey guys, Im a beginner. Could anyone give some pointers on how I should extrude//cut these 4 parts out? They are kinda like hollowed in curved patterns. Thanks yall.

Ps: This is a blender jar.

**Disclaimer** This is to let you know about a FREE add-in I made that I think will be helpful for this community. If that is considered an "advertisement of your product" then I will remove it.

Getting a macro onto a toolbar means going through Customize > Commands > Macros, creating the button, browsing for the .swp, assigning a bitmap. Fine once. Tedious for twenty macros, worse if you're repeating it for everyone on your team.

This add-in I made "MacroShelf" does it automatically. Point it at a folder of macros and it builds a CommandManager tab from what's in there:

• Each subfolder becomes a button, using the icon and description file you put next to the macro
• Nested subfolders become drop-downs
• Add a macro to the folder later, hit Scan, no restart needed
• Toggle individual macros off if you don't want them on the bar
• Up to 10 libraries

Tested with SOLIDWORKS 2022, 2024 and 2025, it should also work on other versions. MIT licensed, no signup, no paid tier.

Repo: GitHub - james-debono/macroshelf-sw-addin: SOLIDWORKS add-in that turns folders of macros into a toolbar tab - icons, drop-downs and per-macro toggles. · GitHub

There's also a collection of ten macros already structured as a MacroShelf library so you can see it working without writing anything:
GitHub - james-debono/macroshelf-collection-sw-macro-library: Every macro from my SOLIDWORKS projects, packaged as a ready-to-use MacroShelf library. · GitHub
Transparent-background PNG screenshots, UI theme switching, per-body colour tools, rounded rectangle sketch tool.

Fair warning, the installer is unsigned so SmartScreen will throw a warning. Source is all there if you'd rather build it yourself.

Happy to take bug reports or feature requests here or on GitHub. If there's something obvious I've missed, I'd rather hear it.

For anyone working through the CSWA practice problems, I need help clarifying something on a practice problem. I just did practice problem 6.12 and there's one part that confuses me. With the dimensions provided, it doesn't seem like there is enough info to get a fully defined sketch for the revolve. You kind of have to assume the vertical relationship between a few points to get the right answer but there are 2 valid sketches with only 1 of them being the correct answer.

At first, I fully defined the sketch by assuming the 2 end points on the 2mm radius were vertical and got 5003 cubic mm, which is wrong. Later I changed to having the endpoints of both 4mm radii vertical and got the correct answer of 4630 cubic mm. The confusing thing is all 4 endpoints on the 4mm radii cannot be vertical, otherwise the sketch would be invalid so the correct answer requires the endpoints of the 2mm arc to not be vertical, but you would not really be able to tell based on the drawing.

My question is when you actually take the CSWA, how would you know that this is actually the case, since both results produce valid sketches and the information isn't specified by the drawing. Is there some knowledge I'm missing? I know there's a measurement that says R4 TYP, but I assume that just means that both the radii shown in the drawing are 4mm, but only 1 is dimensioned. There is no way for all 4 endpoints on the arcs to be vertical because that would create an invalid sketch.

For the experienced users or the people that have modeled this problem, how would you handle this? Thanks!

Designed this transmission assembly for offset-shaft power transfer in a compact housing. Chose helical gears over spur here specifically for lower noise and smoother engagement at speed, which meant adding thrust bearings to handle the axial load component. Ran motion simulation to check for mesh interference before finalizing the tooth profile.

Curious how others here handle the helix angle tradeoff — I went with a moderate angle to balance thrust load against contact ratio. What's your default starting point?

Failed the cswp exam segment 1, which I prepared for 2 weeks where I tried different models, and I am frustrated, I've tried all the model mania and other models, where I nailed 70% of them, but in the other ones I always have an error of ~0.2 % or smth, that inflates in the next questions when modification is needed. And the same happened in the exam, how to prepare again (14 penalty) to pass it

It seems like every year I update it crashes more frequently.

Always used certified systems etc but each year Solidworks seems to get worse.

Curious to hear how some of you might attack this project. I'm going to be putting together a ton of standardized part assemblies for building up a library of components my company uses. There are so many ways to handle configurations, I'm struggling to choose the smartest way that will work for me.

Case in point: I have a sprocket assembly modeled. It will be the exact same model for many projects, with only a few key items that vary: bore size, keyway size, set screw size. The kicker is that we will have different versions of these sprockets (teeth count and/or chain type will vary), but they will all have the exact same bore and key geometry. So I want to have a single assembly for each model, with configurations that are basically named by the bore size.

I've done configurations in so many different ways over the years, but I'm trying to "work smarter not harder" for this endeavor. I have a gut feeling that trying to use an external Excel configuration table makes the most sense, particularly since much of the bore size parameter info would be reused across many assemblies. I've just had struggles in the past trying to get the Excel thing to work right (if at all), probably due to incorrectly setting things up from the start. Interested in any suggestions and experiences you all might be able to provide.