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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.
As more SOLIDWORKS PDM users continue to make the leap from Windows 10 to Windows 11, our Technical Support Team has noticed a rise in reports of extreme slowness when loading a new File Explorer window.
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.
By default, the measurement tool in 3DPlay on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform will display distance measurements with only the direct distance. But it can be helpful to see more information, such as the dX, dY, and dZ components of the distance (i.e., the distance along the X, Y, Z directions) in addition to the direct distance.
We’ve all been there: you attempt to pattern a feature around a complex curve, and your CAD software suddenly decides "not today." Patterning is often treated as a necessary evil, a finicky tool that seems to break at the slightest hint of a design change. Here are 5 SOLIDWORKS and 3DEXPERIENCE patterning workflows to get you started.
In CATIA V5 Drafting, the default settings and drawing actions are not always apparent. This article provides some tips for drafting settings and command options to reduce drawing modification time.
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.
If you use the tools built into SOLIDWORKS Electrical to produce non-CAD documents and you use SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional, AND you are planning an upgrade soon, this article is for you. While add-ins are (and have been) available to integrate SOLIDWORKS Electrical with PDM, this article refers specifically to the options that don't require those tools. These are found under SOLIDWORKS Electrical Tools > Link to PDM Configuration.
The default unit of measurement in 3DPlay on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is set to millimeters. However, you can easily change it to inches or something else, but the setting to do this is a bit hard to find.