{"slug": "solidworks", "name": "SolidWorks", "category": "media", "category_name": "Media and creative", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 6, "warners": 0, "score": 2.776, "rising": 0.35, "first": "2025-12-31", "latest": "2026-08-28", "why": "That's exactly how I use Solidworks (and similar parametric CAD software) all the time.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 3, "compare": 1, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "That's exactly how I use Solidworks (and similar parametric CAD software) all the time.", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.solidworks.com", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["SolidWorks", "Solidworks"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 791205296, "item_id": 49450331, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49450331", "by": "asa400", "date": "2026-08-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The users don\u2019t care whether designing the bridge made me feel powerful and wizardly because I used a crayon rather than Solidworks.", "excerpt": "Completely agree, having worked with engineers and scientists for a large part of my career. Programming is still in this goofy phase as a profession/industry where lots of practitioners interpret suffering and complexity and difficulty as signals of underlying quality. There are still large numbers of programmers who see advances in human-computer interaction and tools as basically childish, because what matters to ", "context": "", "use_case": "engineering CAD", "switched_from": "", "story": "A curmudgeon tries a language server"}, {"id": 748675664, "item_id": 46792229, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46792229", "by": "rkagerer", "date": "2026-01-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "That's exactly how I use Solidworks (and similar parametric CAD software) all the time.", "excerpt": "With the ability to change one number and regenerate everything That's exactly how I use Solidworks (and similar parametric CAD software) all the time. It takes some discipline, but the key is for all your geometry and relations to be driven from sketches and equations. Then you just change a value (sketch dimension or global constant), hit rebuild, and everything regenerates fairly reliably. Don't get me wrong, this", "context": "", "use_case": "parametric CAD", "switched_from": "", "story": "Parametric CAD in Rust"}, {"id": 745690880, "item_id": 46605680, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46605680", "by": "robomartin", "date": "2026-01-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I would rank Solidworks way up there in usability and functionality.", "excerpt": "> I have a SolidWorks Students License and it's the most frustrating piece of software I have ever used. Yeah, you need to invest time to learn it. I do understand the frustration when learning something new. I get it. However, your sentiment on this isn't leading to the correct conclusion. A piano or or a guitar are frustrating instruments until you get past a certain level of mastery. Engineering tools do carry wit", "context": "professional in commercial, industrial and aerospace settings", "use_case": "CAD design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: AI in SolidWorks"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [{"by": "robomartin", "context": "works in hardware/engineering", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49484557", "date": "2026-08-28"}, {"by": "areoform", "context": "macOS / Linux user with a second-hand Windows PC", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46446021", "date": "2025-12-31"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["cad", "engineering work", "engineering cad", "3d parametric design", "parametric cad", "cad design"], "compared": [{"slug": "openscad", "name": "OpenSCAD", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "onshape", "name": "Onshape", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "fusion-360", "name": "Fusion 360", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "siemens-nx", "name": "Siemens NX", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46786196", "title": "Parametric CAD in Rust", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49473522", "title": "Judge rules Trump administration\u2019s blacklisting of Anthropic was illegal", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49448150", "title": "A curmudgeon tries a language server", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49301215", "title": "Show HN: LuaCAD \u2013 Parametric CAD Scripted in Lua", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46591100", "title": "Show HN: AI in SolidWorks", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46445491", "title": "2025 was a disaster for Windows 11", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 1}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {"compare": 1, "recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 791752912, "item_id": 49484557, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49484557", "by": "robomartin", "date": "2026-08-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "We use Solidworks, Altium Designer and JetBrains tools for our work.", "excerpt": "IANAL, so I can't comment on the legal merits of any of it. From a practical/business perspective, I can see the government's position. It's very simple and it makes sense. Here's an analogy that I think is apt: We use Solidworks, Altium Designer and JetBrains tools for our work. Imagine a scenario where each of these companies has license terms that restrict their use to certain domains or types of products they --f", "context": "works in hardware/engineering", "use_case": "engineering work", "switched_from": "", "story": "Judge rules Trump administration\u2019s blacklisting of Anthropic was illegal"}, {"id": 791205296, "item_id": 49450331, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49450331", "by": "asa400", "date": "2026-08-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The users don\u2019t care whether designing the bridge made me feel powerful and wizardly because I used a crayon rather than Solidworks.", "excerpt": "Completely agree, having worked with engineers and scientists for a large part of my career. Programming is still in this goofy phase as a profession/industry where lots of practitioners interpret suffering and complexity and difficulty as signals of underlying quality. There are still large numbers of programmers who see advances in human-computer interaction and tools as basically childish, because what matters to ", "context": "", "use_case": "engineering CAD", "switched_from": "", "story": "A curmudgeon tries a language server"}, {"id": 789030496, "item_id": 49314406, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49314406", "by": "adius", "date": "2026-08-15", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I've tried to get into Solidworks, Fusion, and FreeCAD several times, but every time I come back to programmatic CAD", "excerpt": "I've tried to get into Solidworks, Fusion, and FreeCAD several times, but every time I come back to programmatic CAD. It just better matches how I think about 3D design I guess. Also, I love that there can't be any hidden state or constraints -everything is fully defined by your code and fully visible. Just give it a try, I guess, and see if it works for your use cases!", "context": "", "use_case": "3D parametric design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: LuaCAD \u2013 Parametric CAD Scripted in Lua"}, {"id": 748735569, "item_id": 46795973, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46795973", "by": "alnwlsn", "date": "2026-01-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Solidworks all the time", "excerpt": "It depends. I use Solidworks all the time but I think OpenSCAD was a great choice to make this part: https://github.com/settinger/selectric_typeballs A bit like how you can edit images in MS Paint, Python, or Photoshop. None of these is or should be a one size fits all solution.", "context": "", "use_case": "CAD", "switched_from": "", "story": "Parametric CAD in Rust"}, {"id": 748675664, "item_id": 46792229, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46792229", "by": "rkagerer", "date": "2026-01-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "That's exactly how I use Solidworks (and similar parametric CAD software) all the time.", "excerpt": "With the ability to change one number and regenerate everything That's exactly how I use Solidworks (and similar parametric CAD software) all the time. It takes some discipline, but the key is for all your geometry and relations to be driven from sketches and equations. Then you just change a value (sketch dimension or global constant), hit rebuild, and everything regenerates fairly reliably. Don't get me wrong, this", "context": "", "use_case": "parametric CAD", "switched_from": "", "story": "Parametric CAD in Rust"}, {"id": 745690880, "item_id": 46605680, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46605680", "by": "robomartin", "date": "2026-01-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I would rank Solidworks way up there in usability and functionality.", "excerpt": "> I have a SolidWorks Students License and it's the most frustrating piece of software I have ever used. Yeah, you need to invest time to learn it. I do understand the frustration when learning something new. I get it. However, your sentiment on this isn't leading to the correct conclusion. A piano or or a guitar are frustrating instruments until you get past a certain level of mastery. Engineering tools do carry wit", "context": "professional in commercial, industrial and aerospace settings", "use_case": "CAD design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: AI in SolidWorks"}, {"id": 743136337, "item_id": 46446021, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46446021", "by": "areoform", "date": "2025-12-31", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "If I didn't have a Solidworks license and Solidworks wasn't Windows only, I'd have switched to Steam OS or another linux distro", "excerpt": "I'm a macos / linux user who bought a second-hand windows PC last year for CAD and games. Windows 11 is worse than you think it is. It's worse than the data harvesting (which required two hours to turn off), irritating ads (for an OS you pay for) and generally schizophrenic UX (don't get me started on the Start menu). The Windows team has gone far beyond typical bugs. They're introducing new classes of bugs; one day ", "context": "macOS / Linux user with a second-hand Windows PC", "use_case": "CAD", "switched_from": "", "story": "2025 was a disaster for Windows 11"}]}