Thread: Solidworks 2020 Review

A little OT maybe..

I have been using SW for 10+ years. Owned my own copy now for 3 years I think. I don't know any other and have really been happy with SW. I don't really understand for a business that makes money on it not keeping up the license. I guess maybe if I had 4-5 copies it would be much tougher. I look at it as a cost of doing business and something that allows me to make money I would not otherwise be able to make.

Anyway, I just switched VAR's again, for the second time now. One thing that's rarely mentioned is that when you do buy Solidworks make sure the seller has the proper support. The first outfit I bought it from knew almost nothing about SW CAM/Camworks. And what made me mad was they seemed much more interested in selling 3d printers than supporting SW/CAM. Then the second was better but then a guy called me and gave me a sales pitch. They have been a CAMworks vendor for many years. I spoke with one of the tech support guys and he came from a machine shop background and seemed to really know his stuff. So again I switched VAR's. The knowledge base for SW is so big support is no big deal since if I have a question google seems like the easiest way to get it answered. But for SW CAM/CAMworks there is not much beyond the basics in google. Hopefully that will change as the user base for SW CAM increases.

Originally Posted by Pete Deal

I don't really understand for a business that makes money on it not keeping up the license. I guess maybe if I had 4-5 copies it would be much tougher. I look at it as a cost of doing business and something that allows me to make money I would not otherwise be able to make.

Solidworks doesn't make us money. Our CAM software makes us money. I already gave my example of why it's absurd that our annual maintenance on 10k of SW licenses is about the same as maintenance on nearly 100k in CAM software.

I gave up in December. Tired of getting hit for another $1500 every 4 months for software I already purchased.

Pete, as a SW CAM user, I think you are the type of customer they are now after. Basically trying to make their own version of Fusion 360 I guess.

Well, Solidworks and their CAM both make me money- not nearly enough but... Some of what I do is design work that i charge for. I also design and make my own products.

Originally Posted by Pete Deal

I don't really understand for a business that makes money on it not keeping up the license.

For me the reason is stability. I fought with stability for a few versions (mostly 2016 and 2018) so I locked in to the most stable version for my gear which happened to be SolidWorks 2017 SP5. It just didn't make any sense for me to keep upgrading due to the stability issues with the new releases so I got off maintenance. The few times I did call into my VAR it was an absolute waste of time as they would screw with my computer and then a few days later notify me that other users were having the same issue and that SolidWorks was aware (we are talking full crash and sometimes blue screens when rendering). I don't have a ton of patience for SolidWorks crashing as I'm responsible for thousands of design files for various clients. Stability is king for me. I read some good things regarding 2020 so paid my fines for going off maintenance to get the latest and greatest. Good news is SW2020 SP5 appears to be the most stable I've used thus far.