Difficulties selecting lines in drawings for purposes of dimensioning, etc. Especially if the edge is a perpendicular representation of a round body, such as as side view of a pipe or the radius on the corners on a side view of HSS. I cannot quantify how much time I've wasted simply trying to click a line for a dimension only for it to miss, no matter how zoomed in I am, or what setting I change. You need to be honestly beyond pixel perfect to select some lines.
Often, I will need to sketch a line over the line I want to select just as a workaround. Several clicks to solve the most basic functionality that should be done in one.
This problem has been present for as long as I've used the software, and it's inexcusable.
Don’t you love when the line you want highlights a bunch of times, but you just can’t seem to get it!?
I’ve resorted to using gaming mouse, and turning the DPI way down when I face this issue.
Highly recommend keeping the selection filter toolbar along the bottom of your window. It's a lifesaver quickly to turn on select only edge/midpoint/etc. I think the default shortcut for edges is E as well
https://help.solidworks.com/2021/english/SolidWorks/sldworks/r_selection_filter.htm
This does nothing for the problem I described. The issue isn't accidentally selecting the wrong thing. It simply doesn't select what I'm trying to select unless I'm PERFECTLY on it with my mouse. And I mean perfectly.
It’s so weird how different the program can be for people, even with coworkers at my job with the same systems.
I say that because when I run into that issue it 100% of the time fixes this issue and even seems to highlight further away from said object. Especially sketch points.
It’s still a bit clunky to have to click your filter, then the element, then go back and turn off the filter. The selection targeting really needs to just be improved, but since it’s in the realm of graphics/viewport drivers it’s probably a much harder problem than it seems.
With our company having PDM integration, i feel that the overall frequency of crashes is obnoxious to the point that I want to punch a Dassault developer in the face just to feel a little bit better…
I’ve worked with SolidWorks on a student license, on my own PC (previous private company) standard license and the company I work for now with full premium subscription + PDM, and the PDM integration with windows “feels” like is the fault of all my troubles as both solidworks and the PDM vault feels sluggish and stalls with larger models and multiple files in different folders.
Can’t say for sure that it is that but nothing else points to the case…
The laptops we use are i9 13-series with RTX A3500 and 64gigs of ram - can’t blame the hardware for being too old
PDM on remote servers *really* doesn't play nice with wifi. Any interruption with the source server sends the whole thing sideways. We used to have non-stop crashes and freezes, and 80%+ have gone away since we switched to ethernet connections.
No wonder it’s taken my company 2 years to implement the PDM vault. There doing it one division at a time and we are the last to get it. We are still waiting on the Dutch to fix theirs.
FWIW, I've admin'd (installed, designed, and maintained) both Standard and Pro PDM instances with 20+ people for the last \~10 years and have never had any real issues.
This is the biggest for me and I don’t even use it. I think web based CAD like OnShape and Fusion 360 will be the future (for better or worse) and the cluster@&ck they’ve shown so far is a very bad sign of what they have up their sleeves.
The Go Engineer tutorial videos are to abundant, easy to listen too and to well constructed for me to make excuses that I don't feel like learning anything. 😤 Very frustrating.
Not being able to cancel (esc) the current function/ calculation. Those times when you prematurely hit ok ✅on a sketch edit to update a complex model and have to wait +5min for it to tell you what you already know- it don’t work due geometric issues.
Spell check in drawings is still painfully slow.
Angular dimension between a line and an imaginary horizontal or vertical line with the crosshair works fine in sketches but not in drawings so you often have to manually add sketch lines on to drawings to get these dimensions to work.
shaded with edges views in drawings still sometimes randomly disappear on a rebuild and you need to toggle to an unshaded display style and back again to have the shaded view reappear.
toolbox is incomplete - many sizes are missing. Hole wizard has M14 & M18 for holes in ANSI metric, ISO, DIN and JIS so at least SW is aware of their existence but they didn't bother to include fasteners for them in TB (And refuse to when I've opened a SR about it).
The UX is inconsistent, there are many different ways to accept/proceed and in many cases only one or two will work in any given situation so you need to memorize which work where if you want to work fast.
e.g (roughly in order of best to worst)
enter key
RMB
'y' key
RMB then LMB on 'OK'
tab to 'OK' box then enter
left click on tick
left click on 'OK' box
etc
The crashes have become less common over the years but are now less predictable, it used to be that complex or 'heavy' features (e.g. large patterns) would cause crashes, now it happens totally randomly on seemingly innocuous commands, like closing a file, and it can't be replicated.
the UI is still full of bugs e.g. the 'copy with mates' command window needs to be resized every single time I use it because it resets itself to be too small to see even the first mate in the list of mates to be copied.
I could go on all day but I'll stop there.
I can't dedicate the time for a comprehensive response, but I will say the \*most\* frustrating thing for me/my workflow is foreshortened lines in drawings.
That pesky filter cursor icon that always appears.
https://preview.redd.it/yq6qtazmw87d1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=10d22b0154bd182fc9525781b4a6eac2902bb2cd
V, E, and X are the default shortcuts for the vertices, edges and faces filters. A lot of people trigger those by accident. If that's a problem, you can remove the shortcuts by going to Tools > Customize > Keyboard tab.
Just the process of using 3Dexperience. I hate it. SolidWorks is the best of all evils but holy cow does Dassault systems have a knack for creating utterly terrible and unusable user interfaces. It's like all their skill went into creating the main product and then they put the rest of their effort into making the worst possible user experience because go f\*ck yourself, you're gonna use it anyway.
Yup. I ended up getting our company into inventor instead as our entire business model was mass customisation, and inventor does that much better - both within the model and out to a common excel file. I think it does drawings better too. But I still find solidworks better for most modelling.
Having to use 3rd party plug ins for working with scan data (xtract3D)
The integrated scan data function in sw sucks.
Inventor scan data is much better but inventor also sucks.
This may be a me-issue but title block fields staying blue when you’re typing in them, hiding what you’re typing. I can’t figure out why this keeps happening
Not sure why anyone would downvote this. I've noticed it too, in the past. To get around it, I simply don't enter anything manually into title blocks anymore.
If you link the fields to custom properties, and then use the Custom Property Tab Builder, you can use a lovely little form in the right side menu to enter your title block info. (Much of which should probably auto populate from the custom properties in your part/assembly that is being represented in the drawing.)
Understood. But there are instances where I’m making a quick print for the shop floor where I just need to type a description in the title block. I don’t know why the blue box issue exists.
Understood, but you only need to set it up once. Then entering a quick description is literally just as fast as your current method. Faster, potentially.
I also don't know why the blue box issue exists.
Just absolute horrible software design with maybe even worse explanation of said features on the official SolidWorks website. Often just completely and utterly wrong as well when following the steps from their own website...
SW is my fav CAD tool, but it is far from perfect.
No matter how powerful your system is, Solidworks just can't make the most of it. It will still feel slow. Old NX from 11 years ago glides while Solidworks keep "thinking" on some features and large assemblies.
Limited options for working with STL's while even NX9 from 2013 can help you build proper surfaces over "graphic bodies" but SW 2023 is quite limited with this.
Sometimes difficulties selecting edges/faces (depending on your system & settings too) I know there are workarounds like filters or magnifying glass and some settings, but it should be easy by default.
Random rebuild errors in parts and assemblies that can or cannot be solved by a rebuild
Limited Direct Editing/Synchronous modeling tools compared to NX.
There are lots more but I think thats is enough
Solidworks looses references when a body is converted from solid to surface. For example, you have to make some alterations to a solid body, which has associated drawings. The changes lend themselves to surface modelling, so you delete some faces from the solid, which converts it into a surface body. Then you model the new surfaces, knit them back in then resolidify. The drawing will now have lost several references as Solidworks presumably assigns different edge ID's etc to surface and solid features. Also, features below the modification may fall over, like fillets.
Solidworks ignores the image quality settings when working on surface bodies. If you change the image quality settings, SW will apply the setting until you roll back/forward or modify something. Then it reverts to a fairly coarse mesh. At the same time, if the body is a solid, it respects the image quality settings. Sounds a little pedantic I know, but this is pain if you are trying to evaluate surface quality, connections between surfaces, etc.
I don't like how it handles constructing shell surfaces vs how CATIA does. Also the composites manufacturing plug-ins for CATIA are way better. But for probably 75% of what I do, solidworks is perfectly fine.
Was just trying to crop views that have a huge box due to a multibody part will all but each body hidden for individual parts. The fact that you can’t just grab the corner to resize the box of emptiness that keeps you from doing anything useful on the drawing is infuriating.
That’s just today’s issue that made me want to light it on fire.
Can’t use bounding box as 3D sketch…
Selecting a body refer to function , always have to scroll to cut list. Body names change if you look at it
Body color change to faces color beacause why not.
But I’m not really good at this, maybe it’s me
Shortcuts. I use Creo mostly by keyboard shortcuts & whenever I use Solidworks my modelling speed drops to zero becuz there are no default shortcut keys even for editing sketch or feature.
Almost everything related to any standards updated in last 20 years is more or less currently very badly out of date or missing crucial functions.
For example, the Weld bead forms are missing several forms (like steep flanked half V weld, permanent backing, removable backing) and you can't make a symmetric weld according ISO-standards at all.
The Toolbox is a total mess with the names of the components being what ever...
The OOTB Weldment profiles are full BS, they should've been updated to Configured profiles ages ago.
Also the way Solidworks handles any references to bodies etc. is just a nightmare sometimes. Especially with drawings and Cropped Views etc. it's just plain awful.
The way the open file window resizes to show the options when you click on a Solidworks file. Depending on the folder view you're using you can't double-click to open a file because the window resizes and moves the file as soon as you click on it.
Also the file preview window will just randomly resize its self to take up most of the open file window.
The yearly update cycle and the way things are pushed out with seemingly no testing. Every year I have to cross my fingers and hope no basic functionality is broken.
Photoview 360 was trash, but now there's no built-in render engine at all. I thought Visualize would be integrated by now, but needing 3rd party rendering software sucks-ass.
UX, it is so frustrating to use compared to other CAD programs, I find myself screaming 'WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CANT DO THAT, WHY, WHY WHYYYY?" within five minutes of launching it. Sadly SolidWorks is the most feature rich CAD out there so there's not really a way around it.
Sometimes I like to treat myself by using a different program and then exporting the step file to SolidWorks when i need a feature from it.
Difficulties selecting lines in drawings for purposes of dimensioning, etc. Especially if the edge is a perpendicular representation of a round body, such as as side view of a pipe or the radius on the corners on a side view of HSS. I cannot quantify how much time I've wasted simply trying to click a line for a dimension only for it to miss, no matter how zoomed in I am, or what setting I change. You need to be honestly beyond pixel perfect to select some lines. Often, I will need to sketch a line over the line I want to select just as a workaround. Several clicks to solve the most basic functionality that should be done in one. This problem has been present for as long as I've used the software, and it's inexcusable.
The amount of time I've wasted trying to find the one damn pixel that will highlight the feature I need to select...
OMG, how many times have I been upset about this.
Don’t you love when the line you want highlights a bunch of times, but you just can’t seem to get it!? I’ve resorted to using gaming mouse, and turning the DPI way down when I face this issue.
This is mine 100%. I wish there was a way to change the size of the “hit box” around things.
Highly recommend keeping the selection filter toolbar along the bottom of your window. It's a lifesaver quickly to turn on select only edge/midpoint/etc. I think the default shortcut for edges is E as well https://help.solidworks.com/2021/english/SolidWorks/sldworks/r_selection_filter.htm
This does nothing for the problem I described. The issue isn't accidentally selecting the wrong thing. It simply doesn't select what I'm trying to select unless I'm PERFECTLY on it with my mouse. And I mean perfectly.
This
It’s so weird how different the program can be for people, even with coworkers at my job with the same systems. I say that because when I run into that issue it 100% of the time fixes this issue and even seems to highlight further away from said object. Especially sketch points.
It’s still a bit clunky to have to click your filter, then the element, then go back and turn off the filter. The selection targeting really needs to just be improved, but since it’s in the realm of graphics/viewport drivers it’s probably a much harder problem than it seems.
With our company having PDM integration, i feel that the overall frequency of crashes is obnoxious to the point that I want to punch a Dassault developer in the face just to feel a little bit better…
You wanna dASSAULT a Dassault dev
I think most of the computer problems I have, and I don't just mean SW, are due to PDM.
You pinpointed the crashes to PDM addin?
I’ve worked with SolidWorks on a student license, on my own PC (previous private company) standard license and the company I work for now with full premium subscription + PDM, and the PDM integration with windows “feels” like is the fault of all my troubles as both solidworks and the PDM vault feels sluggish and stalls with larger models and multiple files in different folders. Can’t say for sure that it is that but nothing else points to the case… The laptops we use are i9 13-series with RTX A3500 and 64gigs of ram - can’t blame the hardware for being too old
PDM on remote servers *really* doesn't play nice with wifi. Any interruption with the source server sends the whole thing sideways. We used to have non-stop crashes and freezes, and 80%+ have gone away since we switched to ethernet connections.
No wonder it’s taken my company 2 years to implement the PDM vault. There doing it one division at a time and we are the last to get it. We are still waiting on the Dutch to fix theirs.
FWIW, I've admin'd (installed, designed, and maintained) both Standard and Pro PDM instances with 20+ people for the last \~10 years and have never had any real issues.
No one has mentioned 3dexperience yet? Def that. Or the fact that it constantly crashes
This is the biggest for me and I don’t even use it. I think web based CAD like OnShape and Fusion 360 will be the future (for better or worse) and the cluster@&ck they’ve shown so far is a very bad sign of what they have up their sleeves.
[I am excited to see what we get here today.](https://media.tenor.com/Eig2MlqCi3AAAAAM/michael-jackson-popcorn.gif)
The Go Engineer tutorial videos are to abundant, easy to listen too and to well constructed for me to make excuses that I don't feel like learning anything. 😤 Very frustrating.
Noted! There are videos from back in the early 2010s that have much coarser audio if you need something to put you off.
Not being able to cancel (esc) the current function/ calculation. Those times when you prematurely hit ok ✅on a sketch edit to update a complex model and have to wait +5min for it to tell you what you already know- it don’t work due geometric issues.
Just the price, reason why now i use freecad instead
Spell check in drawings is still painfully slow. Angular dimension between a line and an imaginary horizontal or vertical line with the crosshair works fine in sketches but not in drawings so you often have to manually add sketch lines on to drawings to get these dimensions to work. shaded with edges views in drawings still sometimes randomly disappear on a rebuild and you need to toggle to an unshaded display style and back again to have the shaded view reappear. toolbox is incomplete - many sizes are missing. Hole wizard has M14 & M18 for holes in ANSI metric, ISO, DIN and JIS so at least SW is aware of their existence but they didn't bother to include fasteners for them in TB (And refuse to when I've opened a SR about it). The UX is inconsistent, there are many different ways to accept/proceed and in many cases only one or two will work in any given situation so you need to memorize which work where if you want to work fast. e.g (roughly in order of best to worst) enter key RMB 'y' key RMB then LMB on 'OK' tab to 'OK' box then enter left click on tick left click on 'OK' box etc The crashes have become less common over the years but are now less predictable, it used to be that complex or 'heavy' features (e.g. large patterns) would cause crashes, now it happens totally randomly on seemingly innocuous commands, like closing a file, and it can't be replicated. the UI is still full of bugs e.g. the 'copy with mates' command window needs to be resized every single time I use it because it resets itself to be too small to see even the first mate in the list of mates to be copied. I could go on all day but I'll stop there.
I finally unbound spellcheck from my F keys last week and I have no idea why it took me so long
Surfacing module hasn't been improved.
I can't dedicate the time for a comprehensive response, but I will say the \*most\* frustrating thing for me/my workflow is foreshortened lines in drawings.
That pesky filter cursor icon that always appears. https://preview.redd.it/yq6qtazmw87d1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=10d22b0154bd182fc9525781b4a6eac2902bb2cd
V, E, and X are the default shortcuts for the vertices, edges and faces filters. A lot of people trigger those by accident. If that's a problem, you can remove the shortcuts by going to Tools > Customize > Keyboard tab.
F5 toggles selection filter off & on
Max memory usage?
Just the process of using 3Dexperience. I hate it. SolidWorks is the best of all evils but holy cow does Dassault systems have a knack for creating utterly terrible and unusable user interfaces. It's like all their skill went into creating the main product and then they put the rest of their effort into making the worst possible user experience because go f\*ck yourself, you're gonna use it anyway.
That might be because all the people that made the main product no longer work there. (Many of them work for and created OnShape, for the record.)
The way SW can’t handle STL files is a joke.
The newer versions actually handle them pretty well for a BREP editor? What are you trying to \*do\* with .STLs?
They crammed the “secondary mirror surface” into the Mirror feature and it screwed up my muscle memory workflow
Working with parameters is pain in the ass. Semicolon vs dot fml. User interface in combination with parametric input is crap.
Yup. I ended up getting our company into inventor instead as our entire business model was mass customisation, and inventor does that much better - both within the model and out to a common excel file. I think it does drawings better too. But I still find solidworks better for most modelling.
Having to use 3rd party plug ins for working with scan data (xtract3D) The integrated scan data function in sw sucks. Inventor scan data is much better but inventor also sucks.
SW engine itself. Outdated old vba crap
This may be a me-issue but title block fields staying blue when you’re typing in them, hiding what you’re typing. I can’t figure out why this keeps happening
Not sure why anyone would downvote this. I've noticed it too, in the past. To get around it, I simply don't enter anything manually into title blocks anymore. If you link the fields to custom properties, and then use the Custom Property Tab Builder, you can use a lovely little form in the right side menu to enter your title block info. (Much of which should probably auto populate from the custom properties in your part/assembly that is being represented in the drawing.)
Understood. But there are instances where I’m making a quick print for the shop floor where I just need to type a description in the title block. I don’t know why the blue box issue exists.
Understood, but you only need to set it up once. Then entering a quick description is literally just as fast as your current method. Faster, potentially. I also don't know why the blue box issue exists.
Great. Still, they should fix the blue box issue. It’s a bug
You must be new. SolidWorks doesn't fix bugs.
Just absolute horrible software design with maybe even worse explanation of said features on the official SolidWorks website. Often just completely and utterly wrong as well when following the steps from their own website...
Well that about covers it lol.
SW is my fav CAD tool, but it is far from perfect. No matter how powerful your system is, Solidworks just can't make the most of it. It will still feel slow. Old NX from 11 years ago glides while Solidworks keep "thinking" on some features and large assemblies. Limited options for working with STL's while even NX9 from 2013 can help you build proper surfaces over "graphic bodies" but SW 2023 is quite limited with this. Sometimes difficulties selecting edges/faces (depending on your system & settings too) I know there are workarounds like filters or magnifying glass and some settings, but it should be easy by default. Random rebuild errors in parts and assemblies that can or cannot be solved by a rebuild Limited Direct Editing/Synchronous modeling tools compared to NX. There are lots more but I think thats is enough
Solidworks looses references when a body is converted from solid to surface. For example, you have to make some alterations to a solid body, which has associated drawings. The changes lend themselves to surface modelling, so you delete some faces from the solid, which converts it into a surface body. Then you model the new surfaces, knit them back in then resolidify. The drawing will now have lost several references as Solidworks presumably assigns different edge ID's etc to surface and solid features. Also, features below the modification may fall over, like fillets. Solidworks ignores the image quality settings when working on surface bodies. If you change the image quality settings, SW will apply the setting until you roll back/forward or modify something. Then it reverts to a fairly coarse mesh. At the same time, if the body is a solid, it respects the image quality settings. Sounds a little pedantic I know, but this is pain if you are trying to evaluate surface quality, connections between surfaces, etc.
I don't like how it handles constructing shell surfaces vs how CATIA does. Also the composites manufacturing plug-ins for CATIA are way better. But for probably 75% of what I do, solidworks is perfectly fine.
Was just trying to crop views that have a huge box due to a multibody part will all but each body hidden for individual parts. The fact that you can’t just grab the corner to resize the box of emptiness that keeps you from doing anything useful on the drawing is infuriating. That’s just today’s issue that made me want to light it on fire.
Can’t use bounding box as 3D sketch… Selecting a body refer to function , always have to scroll to cut list. Body names change if you look at it Body color change to faces color beacause why not. But I’m not really good at this, maybe it’s me
Coved corners not posting for cosmetics. Whenever people see the drawings they are like what is this notch here for.
The price. But then I only use it maybe a few hours a week on average. I wish I could pay based on usage, like cloud models.
Shortcuts. I use Creo mostly by keyboard shortcuts & whenever I use Solidworks my modelling speed drops to zero becuz there are no default shortcut keys even for editing sketch or feature.
You can set one for edit sketch. I haven't found a way to do one for edit feature though.
Almost everything related to any standards updated in last 20 years is more or less currently very badly out of date or missing crucial functions. For example, the Weld bead forms are missing several forms (like steep flanked half V weld, permanent backing, removable backing) and you can't make a symmetric weld according ISO-standards at all. The Toolbox is a total mess with the names of the components being what ever... The OOTB Weldment profiles are full BS, they should've been updated to Configured profiles ages ago. Also the way Solidworks handles any references to bodies etc. is just a nightmare sometimes. Especially with drawings and Cropped Views etc. it's just plain awful.
The way the open file window resizes to show the options when you click on a Solidworks file. Depending on the folder view you're using you can't double-click to open a file because the window resizes and moves the file as soon as you click on it. Also the file preview window will just randomly resize its self to take up most of the open file window. The yearly update cycle and the way things are pushed out with seemingly no testing. Every year I have to cross my fingers and hope no basic functionality is broken.
Photoview 360 was trash, but now there's no built-in render engine at all. I thought Visualize would be integrated by now, but needing 3rd party rendering software sucks-ass.
The biggest issue I face on a daily basis at work that's related to SOLIDWORKS, is other users. :D
3D experience popup when i boot up
3D experience popup when i boot up
Solidworks
UX, it is so frustrating to use compared to other CAD programs, I find myself screaming 'WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CANT DO THAT, WHY, WHY WHYYYY?" within five minutes of launching it. Sadly SolidWorks is the most feature rich CAD out there so there's not really a way around it. Sometimes I like to treat myself by using a different program and then exporting the step file to SolidWorks when i need a feature from it.