I love finding quirky items to display in my home office. But I seem to always find things that aren't quite complete. Like this iconic HAL 9000 replica I picked up recently (from 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was released 58 years ago this week). The model kit included a stand, but no wall-mount provisions, nor anything to secure the 9-volt battery. Luckily, the future is now - with access to SOLIDWORKS and a 3D printer, I have everything I need to remedy this situation. Here's how I did it!
The SOLIDWORKS SolidNetWork License Manager (SNL) supports multiple license clients by distributing licenses to clients on the network. This allows the number of users to exceed the number of licenses by floating licenses. Understanding how to navigate and work in the SolidNetWork License Manager can be very confusing; this guide will cover the basics.
SOLIDWORKS can use API (Application Programming Interface), which is a COM programming interface for SOLIDWORKS software. API is used to access SOLIDWORKS files without opening them, automate redundant and time-consuming tasks, and create engineering applications that can run in and outside of SOLIDWORKS. To use this tool, you must have a Document Manager API Key.
Animation Motion Studies, available in all SOLIDWORKS packages, allow us to create presentation-worthy animations of our models. In this article, we’ll be covering some basic techniques you can use to create animations that rotate and zoom in and out on your model.
While learning the “picks and clicks” of CAD is a necessary rite of passage, it has often come at the expense of actual engineering education. Every minute spent troubleshooting a broken mate is a minute lost to discussing design intent, manufacturability, or optimization. With the release of SOLIDWORKS 2026, that paradigm is shifting. By integrating meaningful, practical AI tools directly into the interface, the software is moving from a passive drawing tool to an active design partner. For educators across North America, this means a fundamental shift in the classroom: moving the focus from where to click to how to engineer.
At some point, every software needs to be upgraded to a newer version. Fortunately, SOLIDWORKS offers two relatively simple methods. This blog contains the instructions for upgrading SOLIDWORKS to either a new Service Pack (SP) or a new version.
Nowadays, AI is everywhere. It feels like artificial intelligence is transforming every industry. But what does this mean for SOLIDWORKS users? The truth is, AI in SOLIDWORKS doesn’t include a “magic design button” that does all your work for you. Instead, it’s about helping you work smarter by automating repetitive low-value tasks, speeding up tedious processes, and providing useful suggestions to ultimately free you up to focus on the high-impact portions of design.
The CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework) is a component installed by the SOLIDWORKS Installation Manager to show content for SOLIDWORKS Applications and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Without it, SOLIDWORKS will not run properly. CEF is an open-source software framework for Chrome used by many other applications (e.g., Adobe, Spotify, Steam, Inventor, Microsoft Power BI, etc.)
Is your hardware living up to its potential? Learn how to optimize your graphics card settings to eliminate "low resource" warnings and achieve the seamless, lag-free SOLIDWORKS experience your complex assemblies require.