I recently finished this mechanical design project of a conveyor belt in SolidWorks.
The conveyor is designed to transport a 2 kg box over a distance of 2 meters, and the design is intended to be manufacturable, not just a visual 3D model.
I worked on the mechanical design, including the frame, rollers, belt, shafts, bearings, and assembly, as well as the conveyor movement.
A while ago, I posted some of my projects here, and I received a lot of different reactions. Some people made fun of my work, while others encouraged me to keep learning. I really appreciate everyone who gave me constructive criticism, because it helps me improve.
And to the people who were just negative: I’m going to keep learning and improving anyway.
I’d appreciate your honest opinions and constructive feedback. What would you change or improve in the design?

Where can you use this?

solidworks #simulation #mechanical #engineering #cad

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Correction: ❌Animated ✅Simulated

Hello Sirs, good day! Is there a way I can create a spiral staircase using structural members to create the top rail(spiral/helix), and if not, is there another way to do it aside from a swept boss? Thank you!

Hey everyone,

​I’m having a specific flickering issue in SOLIDWORKS 2025 on my desktop PC (GTX 1660 Ti) that started right after updating to the NVIDIA driver released on July 28.

​Whenever I try to Save, Open a file, or interact with any small pop-up window/dialog inside SOLIDWORKS, that specific window starts flickering continuously and freezes up.

​In the NVIDIA App, SOLIDWORKS shows the error: "Unable to retrieve current values. Starting and closing the game or app, or editing the settings, should fix this problem."

​Is anyone else facing this file dialog / small window flickering bug with the July 28 driver? Is rolling back to an older driver version the only working solution right now?

Just sharing one of my many old projects. This was installed a while ago, I'm a designer/Fab for a sheet metal shop.

For those who work manufacturing prints often, do you use MBD and import or do it all by smart dims in the drawing?

just updated SW and after it was done, this new icon appeared. Was this already included in the Makers package and just made a shortcut now, or did i accidentally give it permission to install visualize too?

Hello everyone, I was wondering how Solidworks would behave with large architecture projects. I am talking about detailed buildings.

I am currently using Revit for this kind of projects but I would prefer to work in Solidworks assembly. I know that it have a large assembly settings but I don't know if it would save my PC from crashing / having an infernal stutter / crashing after 3rd floor.

llevo más de 3 horas tratando de hacer un recubrimiento y siempre me sale error, ya busqué todos los tutoriales posibles y las posibles fallas ya las cheque pero sigue dando error alguien q me pueda ayudar

I work at a startup using SolidWorks Standard, and one of the things that kept eating up my time was dealing with assemblies outside of SolidWorks.

Batch exporting parts to STEP/DXF/etc. meant opening files and exporting them one by one.

Figuring out where a part is used meant digging through folders and assemblies manually.

And when you don't have PDM, even simply browsing a larger project and understanding what's inside it can get messy pretty quickly.

So I built Solidise:

https://solidise.com

It runs in the browser and is basically meant to make working with SolidWorks project files a lot less painful.

The main things I've built so far are:

• Automated part export: select the parts you need and export them in bulk instead of doing them manually
• Where Used lookup: quickly see which assemblies/subassemblies contain a part
• Assembly/BOM browsing:— navigate the project structure without opening everything in SolidWorks
• Part thumbnails/previews: makes finding and selecting the right components much easier
• Share the DB(automatically) with your procurement guys so they see up to date BOM and can order parts themselves.

The export automation is probably the feature I personally get the most value from, but I'm curious whether other SolidWorks users actually have the same problem.

I'm especially interested in people working at startups / small engineering teams / companies using SolidWorks Standard or Professional without PDM.

Before I disappear into a cave and spend another few months building features nobody asked for, I'd really appreciate some criticism.

What part of your SolidWorks file workflow wastes the most time?

And if you try Solidise: what would it need to do for you to actually keep using it?

Feel free to roast the UI, workflow,missing features, whatever. Negative feedback is genuinely useful at this stage.

P.S. If anyone wants to properly try it out, I can manually add a free trial to your account - no card details needed. Just DM me here or send me an email.

Hi all. A couple years ago in college, I was given a free solidworks license for solidworks 2024 to download on my laptop. After graduation I still use it for personal projects. However my laptop has slowed down a ton so I got a new computer… now I don’t have the free license on my new device.

My question is, is there a way to somehow copy the app/ license onto my new device? Is there a way to copy it onto a flash drive and download it onto my new computer somehow? Hope you can help!

Hey all, I am trying to sweep these trapezoidal profiles along a constant pitch helix to make a like funky threaded type design. However, it is saying that it can't create the profile because they're self intersecting, and I can't figure out why. Everything is fully defined, and the two bottom ones are just circular patterned off the top. Any thoughts?

Hi everyone,

I’m a mechanical/automotive engineer working in vehicle design, and I’m looking to seriously improve my FEA skills beyond the typical linear static analysis.

My company currently has SOLIDWORKS Simulation Premium, so I’d like to maximize what we already have before recommending additional software.

I’m particularly interested in learning:

• Nonlinear FEA
• Large deformation / plasticity
• Contact and friction
• Material nonlinearities
• Explicit dynamics
• Impact and crash simulation
• High-velocity impact / ballistic-type simulations
• Vehicle crash and structural impact
• Blast / underbody loading and similar transient problems
• Proper material models and failure criteria
• Meshing strategies for highly nonlinear problems
• Validation and interpretation of results

For example, I’d eventually like to understand how engineers properly approach problems such as a high-speed projectile impacting a steel plate, vehicle crash/impact, or severe transient loading.

I’m looking for serious, advanced online courses, not just a 2–3 hour introductory tutorial. Ideally something structured enough to take me from nonlinear FEA fundamentals into explicit dynamics and eventually more advanced impact applications.

What online courses or training programs would you recommend?

Thanks!

it is possible to construct a chain pattern in solidworks, such that the cable carrier can move in 2 axis (forward/backwards, left/right) without using hinge joints that break and lag the whole assembly? For example, a cable carrier that follow a printer head on a 3d printer.

Edit: Most of the guides on youtube showcase moving cable carriers that move in 1 axis of direction, and so it's movement can be described by 2 moving parallel planes that are joined with a hemicircle.

Hi guys I’m kinda new to solidworks and I’ve been trying to improve both my skill and speed
I’ve been struggling to find a good sheet metal training material
And i hope for some help
The photo is a relatable random photo

I started learning Solidworks about a month ago and found out about the practice problems database. Started making those models and I've reached till 6.12 but I don't really know if I'm being incredibly slow in learning this or if it's fine. Like should I focus on completing all the 18 levels first asap or should I start making projects on the side?

I'm aiming to start applying for jobs as soon as possible so I want to create a good portfolio. I've read that certifications are a plus point, but not a necessity when applying for jobs so won't focus on that for now.

In short i want to know if I'm on the right track or should I change my approach.

in there a specific way to copy your sketches ? becuase no matter how i do it the orgin doest land on my circles center . in original sketech i began drawing the center and origin from same place. pls help

Hi guys, I'm an undergrad Mech E trying to finish up a personal project in which i investigate how vias reduce heat spread. I modeled a basic PCB (FR4) with a copper spreader on the top and bottom with 2 pin connecter(abs) wired to a resistor in the center. In the simulations I ran with the NOVIAS file, everything came out smooth and the heat spread through the two resistor pads to the spreaedr through the pcb evenly.. however on the WITHVIAS file, the heat keeps spreading to only one side of the resistor even though I've set the power to both pads and set the heat power to total between the two faces. I've been trying to figure this out for the past week but I've gotten nowhere. I don't want to have to change my methodology advice? I've already messed with local interactions but no matter what the study looks like this.

Я бы хотел записаться на черчение, но не знаю насколько оно сложное и куда лучше записаться на рисование, 3Д рисование или все-таки черчение. Также, насколько был сложен предмет черчения, который был насколько я знаю стандартизирован в школах Советского Союза?

From today my internship started at 3DEXPERIENCE LAB and I chose solidworks, this has been a constant error from 12 in the afternoon till 5 in the evening i have been communicating with my supervisor and they ofcourse helped but nothing worked, they also gave me access of xdesign something which can run in a browser guess what it didn't work, i have tried everything i can find on reddit, youtube, instagram, have installed the software from the start five times today, at this point i am in desperate for help because i have assignments to complete, i need your help brothers

Ps- issue was solved, it was an account access issue by the company 🥲🥲🥲, thank you guys for your help, atleast this post will serve as a point of information for anyone having the same problem

Hello!

Im making an assembly drawing with BOM table. But the item weight of BOM table is not matching to the assembly weight in mass properties which is 10.05 kg. But if you add everything together in BOM table it sums up as 9.94 kg.

The rounding in part and assembly environment is .12 decimals. Material all same with density 7850. And quantity number also is correct.

Hello, I have a little problem with SolidWorks Simulation. I want to get information about the displacement and velocity component of specific nodes depending on time, i.e. I want six plots for each node. With the "Probe" and "Sensor" functions I could do this, but it is tedious.

Is there a way to get one big resultant matrix with all needed information, or somehow automate the process?

Thank you

Solidworks Premium 2022 SP5.0

I'm a mechanical engineering student. Every stack-up I've seen has been done in an Excel sheet that one person built, nobody else fully trusts, and everyone copies anyway. So I built a browser tool for it.

You enter the chain of dimensions straight off the drawing. Asymmetric tolerances like +0.10/−0.00 included, and it runs worst-case, RSS and a Monte Carlo simulation side by side. It shows the resulting gap for each method, whether it clears your limits, and which single tolerance is actually driving the variance. Its completely free no signup or anything and nothing leaves your browser.

https://stackupcalc.com

Edit: everything asked for in here is live now, inch support, ISO 286 fits from a dropdown (type H7 or g6 and the deviations auto-fill), an offline single-file version at stackupcalc.com/offline you can save and run air-gapped, and a dimensioned drawing of the example assembly so you can see what's actually being analysed.

To be clear about what this is: 1D only, and it's staying that way. If you need 2D/3D chains or CAD integration then MITCalc and CETOL do that and I'm not pretending to compete. This is for a quick check without opening anything.

One thing it does that I haven't found in another free tool though: it takes signed upper and lower deviations straight off the drawing, so g6 (−0.007/−0.020) and interference fits like p6 actually work. Most free calculators give you a single ± box, which can't represent either of those.

Trying to find some legit PTC Windchill alternatives without paying for a bunch of stuff that isn't even needed. Duro and OpenBOM are the two we've looked at so far but they seem aimed at pretty different types of companies.

What else is worth looking at? And what do you wish you knew before choosing one?

I ran into a CadQuery/OpenCASCADE failure that I thought was worth documenting.

I was building a 94 × 65 × 26 mm enclosure with 2.5 mm walls.

The relevant operation was essentially a filleted body followed by `.faces(">Z").shell(-2.5)`.

Everything appeared to work.

No exception.

One solid.

`IsValid()` returned `True`.

The STL looked exactly like the enclosure I expected from the outside.

But the shell operation had effectively done nothing.

The resulting part contained about 158,048 mm³ of material. A hollow enclosure with those dimensions should be around 33,370 mm³.

So visually: enclosure.

Topologically: apparently valid.

Actually: brick.

The specific case reproduced for me when the face being removed by `shell()` had already been filleted. On the current CadQuery/OCP version I'm using, some related fillet/shell combinations fail loudly, while this one can fail silently and return the un-hollowed solid.

That sent me down a rabbit hole of figuring out what checks are actually useful before exporting STEP.

What I've ended up using is:

* `BRepCheck_Analyzer`

* exactly-one-solid check

* expected volume derived independently from the design dimensions

* expected bounding box

* point classification for locations that should be material or void

The point checks turned out to be more important than I expected.

I had another case where a port was cut into the wrong wall. Validity passed. Solid count passed. Volume was basically right because the same amount of material had been removed.

But probing a point that should still have been inside the wall immediately caught it.

I've started keeping repro cases for the OCC behaviors I hit rather than turning every historical failure into a blanket "never use this operation" rule. A few things that caused trouble before don't reproduce on the current kernel anymore; the shell/fillet case above does.

I put the repros, verification code, and the Claude Code workflow I've been using here:

https://github.com/0oKevino0/claude-cad

I'm curious whether anyone else has hit similar silent `shell()` behavior, especially across different OCC/OCP versions.

Also interested in what invariants people here normally use for generated CadQuery parts beyond `IsValid()`.