AutoCAD vs SOLIDWORKS – Back to the Future of Design

In 1985, the year that Robert Zemeckis released his classic Back to the Future, AutoCAD’s first release was a little under two and a half years old, while SOLIDWORKS was eight years away from being founded using winnings from MIT’s Blackjack Team, which is a story at the center of the 2008 film 21. Drive your DeLorean into 2025, and you’ll find that SOLIDWORKS is celebrating its 30th anniversary. AutoDesk and Dassault Systèmes both now have a broad portfolio of CAD solutions to meet modern and complex challenges facing our world.

Comparing AutoCAD vs SOLIDWORKS

The point in diving into the past to make this comparison isn’t just to tie in some fun movies, but to show that these two popular CAD packages, despite their maturity, are still receiving enhancements and are used today in a wide variety of applications. Because of their aforementioned maturity and popularity, these are some of the first names to come up for users and businesses exploring systems to support their engineering and design documentation. But how do you decide which tool is right for you? Let’s answer that question by diving into some key functionality and facts surrounding AutoCAD and SOLIDWORKS.

What is AutoCAD?

AutoCAD is a 2D drafting tool that got many engineers off the drafting board and onto the computer when it was released. It is versatile in that you can draft a wide variety of things, make changes faster, and draw more precisely than you could with a pencil and paper. Commonly used entities on drawings can be saved as “blocks” to be reused in later drawings, and layers also allow you to group collections of entities by their purpose. This means your title blocks can be isolated from manipulation while you work in the main graphics area of your drawing. It’s evolved to even be able to model in 3D, although this is only included in AutoCAD and not AutoCAD LT. Purchasing the full AutoCAD software also gives access to their specialized toolsets for industries like GIS, Architecture, and MEP.

What is SOLIDWORKS?

Soon after CAD was popularized in 2D, drafters recognized that while it was faster than real drafting boards, there was still a lot left to be desired. Changes made in one view of a drawing didn’t propagate to the same edge in a different drawing view. On top of that, once it was finished, it could still be difficult to visualize parts as a wireframe against a black background. This led to a need for 3D CAD, not only to help with the visualization of parts and assemblies, but to create designs that were parametric, meaning the model could contain relationships, constraints, and formulas for dimensions to propagate a change to multiple places at once. Being able to design in 3D allowed engineers to anticipate issues and adapt their designs digitally before they became real-world problems. Of the emerging 3D CAD programs, SOLIDWORKS stood out for a user-friendly experience and comparatively low price point.

SOLIDWORKS Large Assembly Drawing

Today, SOLIDWORKS is the most widely used professional 3D CAD software worldwide, allowing users to rapidly design parts, place them into assemblies to understand the physical layout and interaction between components, and create 2D drawings by simply dragging and dropping the projections of 3D models. Part design is accomplished by drawing 2D sketches that drive 3D features, which get stored in a list of operations called the FeatureTree, to make your model. Turning multiple parts into a system that works together in an assembly is accomplished by simply placing those parts into space and defining their relationships to one another. From both of these 3D file types, SOLIDWORKS can generate the 2D and 3D documentation that many businesses require for manufacturing, such as a bill of materials (BOM), cut list, engineering drawing, or STEP file.

Why use AutoCAD?

AutoCAD’s 2D file creation has come a long way since it was first created, and with a user base that has been active for a long time, there are a lot of experts who can create complex sketches quickly from the command line interface. While many industries have seen a sea-change from 2D to 3D, several alluded to before have applications far more suited to 2D. The Architectural Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry and GIS industry, for example, have very limited applications for parametric modeling in 3D. Another such area is electrical schematics and P&ID documentation, but as time has gone on, other 2D tools have been created to cater specifically to that design process, like SOLIDWORKS Electrical, which creates supporting documentation as schematics are built and can interface with SOLIDWORKS CAD.

Some machines in manufacturing, like waterjets or laser cutters, also require DWGs or DXFs as inputs, which are native file formats for AutoCAD. For creating basic parts, using a 2D CAD software like AutoCAD to create those files may not be a problem, but for many sheet metal applications, definitely consider using SOLIDWORKS to help take the guesswork out of bend calculations and allowances, as the flat pattern can be exported to DXF/DWG.

SOLIDWORKS exporting a DXF from a folded sheet metal part

Many companies also have a lot of legacy data in AutoCAD, even if they’ve made the transition to 3D, and so keeping a license around to view and edit legacy data makes sense in many cases. While you may have changed to 3D, AutoCAD also changed to a subscription-only model recently. If your company wasn’t grandfathered into owning your software, or if you’d just like another popular 2D CAD alternative, I’d recommend evaluating DraftSight. DraftSight can recognize your same commands from AutoCAD, read the same files, be purchased perpetually, and even save a file two further releases back compared to AutoCAD.

DraftSight on a tablet

Why Use SOLIDWORKS?

SOLIDWORKS eliminates a lot of the complexity that comes with creating multi-view 2D drawings, allowing for fast creation and editing. It has built-in tools to handle transitions from programs like AutoCAD, so that DXF/DWG files can be brought in as 2D sketches and made into 3D models. Being in 3D allows us to validate form, fit, and function of parts and assemblies using tools like interference detection, draft analysis, and mass properties. From CAD, we can also step into integrated CAE functionality with SOLIDWORKS Simulation for FEA and SOLIDWORKS Flow for CFD. Parameterization lets us drive designs from global variables to make changes to the model as easy as editing cells in a spreadsheet. This can even be taken as far as web hosting online configurators for your design using 3rd Party Add-Ins like DriveWorks.

Stress analysis on a gripper component

SOLIDWORKS can also be purchased perpetually. This means you can own your license and not lose access if you stop paying the subscription, which entitles you to a whole host of benefits like technical support from a local VAR and certifications. While SOLIDWORKS desktop continues to receive updates, including features like an AI command predictor, Dassault Systèmes also continues to expand its portfolio of powerful CAD/CAE tools on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. This collection of tools that can connect to your SOLIDWORKS installation makes more possible in areas where SOLIDWORKS may not have had a use case previously.

To learn more about using SOLIDWORKS as your design ecosystem, visit our dedicated landing page here.