SolidWorks PCB Pros and Cons

The user interface is intuitive and it makes PCB deisgn easy. It can handle any basic PCB design and can even support rigid flex designs. However it is not nearly as comprehensive as it's paid counterpart Altium. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Solidworks PCB does not have all of the controll features that Altium has. It does not allow for complete custom hot keys, fancy quiries, etc. Also the online support community is small. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Having the full workflow in one application. Component creation, schematic, and layout can all be happening in parallel in tabs. I like that you can use multiple windows on multiple monitors.

The "PCB Inspector" feature is powerful and lets you edit many components at once. Integrated version control is a big time saver and I have never lost any work. The ability to deactivate/reactivate license is handy for working on multiple computers. Good features for complex schematics and PCBs with many layers, like the ability to click stacked items and pick one out of the middle is nice. Really great UI for building curved traces.

The query builder for design rules is fantastic, it can really pull off some elegant solutions. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There were a few obvious hotkeys that are sorely miss. For example, the most frequently used tool in schematics (the Wire tool) is missing. Every other PCB software I have used has this shortcut (Eagle, DipTrace, even free Android or browser based circuit sandbox apps have this).

Switching tabs is painfully slow. Like go get a drink and come back slow. I have a modern custom PC whose resources all stay below 10% when switching tabs in Solidworks. The horsepower is there, Solidworks PCB just doesn't use it for switching tabs. Other than that performance is great.

The UI can be ambiguous about whether wires are connected or not. Most editors let you view the "top" of the pcb or the "bottom", but in solidworks PCB you have to laboriously turn the 6 or so bottom layers off to get a full view of the top, and vice versa. Or settle for just viewing one layer at a time. This really gets in the way when trying to reconcile collisions between say, silkscreen and solder mask layers. You're constantly switching between top and bottom as you go through the design rule check, but you have to turn off 6 or so layers every time you jump from top to bottom.

Only 20 "undos" is stingy. I hit that limit all the time, and look at my many GB of unused RAM, and think, "why?"

I was really turned off when Solidworks canceled the online licensing for Solidworks PCB. I had tried multiple times over a year to get it set up, but the process to set it up was so convoluted and the documentation failed to provide working steps. I reached out to my distributor for help and they said the feature was being phased out because no one was using it. Well duh, no one is using it because no one can figure out how to set it up. But I'm really hurting for this feature. I have a long commute to work and its super stressful that if I forget one time to go through the extra dance of manually deactivating the license, I could have to drive for an hour just to go home and deactivate the license so I can come back to work and actually work. If I'm going to pay premium price for design software, this is a feature I expect. All competitors that I know of (Altium, Eagle) offer this feature, and it is industry standard (think Adobe, Office, Autodesk). It's also tone deaf to be canceling this remote work feature when more people are working from home than ever.

I was not impressed by the Solidworks integration. We chose Solidworks PCB specifically because my boss is a mechanical engineer who designs in Solidworks, and we wanted the seamless sharing experience. But when he imported my PCB into solidworks, it was an uneditable block of geometry. So we can't see any value over the typical workflow where the circuit board 3D file is exported as a .step and imported into Solidworks. We stopped using the integrated PCB tool and just share .step files now because it's easier.

Solidworks PCB has this very bulky PCB Services server that is a lot of work to set up, but I honestly can't see any benefit to it. If you're going to make me set up a server, I at least expect to be able to share my component libraries across multiple machines. But no, you have to go into Tortoise SVN and manully pull out each component library, open it in Solidworks PCB, and compile it locally. Repeat for every library, multiply by every time the library is modified. There's also no warning if you're using an out-of-date version of a component. It would have been easier for me just to put the libraries in a shared folder.

Documentation and community are poor. Can't get answers in the Solidworks PCB forum. I'm always having to google the steps for "Altium" instead of Solidworks PCB"

If you are going to have your PCB populated by automated SMT equipment (pick and place machine) definitely avoid solidworks PCB. The pick and place export dialogue is the absolute bare minimum. There are no options to customize the columns, origin, suffixes, etc. We had to write custom python scripts to post-process the solidworks PCB pick and place files so that our pick and place machine could use them. Contrast that with free PCB software like Diptrace that gives you a full page of settings to format in detail and achieve compatability with picky pick-and-place machines. Altium as well gives you a full page of settings.

There are much cheaper alternatives, which will get the work done much faster, and with much less banging your head against the wall by yourself. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Esay of use and ECAD/MCAD collaboration. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The product was dismissed from SOLIDWORKS since August 2021. No migration plan to any other tool. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I found it quite handy for designing my circuit board. The facility of schematic entry and solidwork file support is helpful for PCB design. The collaboration with solidworks helps me to modify my design easily as solidworks generates unified bill of materials automatically. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

This tools are very heavy and need a lot of space in your device. Again there is lac of online support as we expect. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Version controlling is implemented and it supports with previously designed PCBs using altium designer. footprints and the 3d models of the components can be easily designed. this supports the libraries that were used in the altium designer. And also it supports earlier PCBs that were designed using Altium designer. When we do the final production the synchronization between the mechanical design can be done easily. The best thing is Solidwork PCB comes with version controlling which helps to keep the track on development process.

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Solidwork PCB consumes lot of resources from the computer. Compared with kiCad PCB this creates lags on the using computer. It requires minimum ram of 8GB to work properly. For the rapid prototyping projects I tend not to use this but for production level PCB designs this tool is great. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

At my company, I was using a in house CAD program to export 3D models for use in Lightwave which was a least tedious and at most unbearable when it came to oil and gas machinery with thousands of parts.

Using Solidworks has made it so much easier to export thousands of parts in such a way that organizing and remedying them is much easier. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's still a little confusing sometimes to newcomers. The help section doesnt seem to have some of the info I might need. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's somewhat easy to use the basics, it's a smart tool and flexible. If you use others SolidWorks products, it's really great, because you can integrate with all other softwares. For example, in case your company does the whole project and uses SolidWorks products in other step, it will help a lot. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The software is really heavy for the computer, also the files. It's not easy to import or export the file and you are really limited about the schematics. Thus, if you plan to use it for great projects, it might not be a good idea. Or, if you dont have experience with that or are not a professional, which was my case. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Our company had some real problems sending our designs back and forth from solidworks to the Altium program. This program helped us to bridge that gap and use much less storage space. May not be a good fit if you have a full blown PCB software already. This will duplicate a lot of those features. however, If you are passing back and forth between solidworks and alitium (or similar program) this can really fix a lot of the problems you experience with the back and forth. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I think this package should be part of solidworks instead of an addon. Smart devices are such a big thing everyone is using a circuit board in almost every object. I am not sure it provides enough of a service to pay for the price of this software. You can send files back and forth between the two programs now, but it isn't as easy as it is using this program to do it. The files can stay in their native format instead of being converted to .step files. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

This is a really a user friendly PCB design software. SolidWorks PCB has lot of inbuild tools to make it easy for beginners in PCB design. Easy to make multilayer PCBs Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The is a bit costly software. But I would say, it is worthy to pay that cost for the Best PCB design software, if you are designing professional PCBs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

collaboration between electrical and 3D mechanical design teams, ECAD-MCAD collaboration Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

none, such a great tool for mechatronics. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.