AutoCAD vs. SOLIDWORKS

AutoCAD

559 Reviews and Ratings

SOLIDWORKS

430 Reviews and Ratings

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
AutoCAD	Score7.8 out of 10	N/A	AutoCAD is a CAD product from Autodesk. It allows designers to work in 2D and 3D, and is available on Windows and Mac, but with extensive online collaboration tools.	$245 per month
SOLIDWORKS	Score8.3 out of 10	N/A	Dassault Systemes offers SOLIDWORKS, a computer-aided design (CAD) system for education and manufacturing supporting 2D or 3D design, electrical design, simulations, and product development with collaboration tools.	$1,295 per year

Pricing

AutoCAD

SOLIDWORKS

Monthly Subscription: $245
per month per user
Yearly Subscription: $1975
per year per user
3-Year Subscription: $5925
3 years per user

Solidworks Annual Subscription: 1,295
per year
Solidworks Standard: 3,996
per standalone license

Pricing Offerings
AutoCAD	SOLIDWORKS
Free Trial
Yes	No
Free/Freemium Version
No	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

No setup fee

No setup fee

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Community Pulse
Key User Insights
	AutoCAD	SOLIDWORKS
Considered Both Products	Autodesk Ronit Jain Mechanical Design Engineer in Research & Development at Epiroc (Machinery, 10,001+ employees) Chose AutoCAD PTC Creo and SOLIDWORKS have a separate module wherein we can create 2D drawings of the parts and assemblies modelled in them. But they generally created problem in creating circuit diagrams where in we need to manually sketch using different option. And when it comes to … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose AutoCAD We use SOLIDWORKS almost exclusively, mainly for 3D modeling and simulation efforts. We cannot use AutoCAD drawings for the engineering work we need to accomplish for our products without a 3D add in - the main benefit to AutoCAD over SOLIDWORKS is that SOLIDWORKS does not do … Incentivized Helpful? Bob Diaz Professor at College of Southern Nevada (Higher Education, 501-1000 employees) Chose AutoCAD AutoCAD has been around for over 30 years. AutoCAD was one of the first CAD programs that ran on a PC. Intergraph ran off a mainframe until MicroStation came in a PC version at a later date. By this time, AutoCAD had a market on smaller companies because of the cost and colleges … Incentivized Helpful? DHIRAJ PATEL Floor Manager in Engineering at lasertech cutting solution (Mechanical Or Industrial Engineering, 51-200 employees) Chose AutoCAD AutoCAD is improving day by day and update by update. Making their [features] smooth and more [efficient] with every update and it is very efficient in the things that it does. [The] functions that they provide are very useful and easy to use. [The] interface of AutoCAD is … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose AutoCAD AutoCAD is still the top choice although the software subscription is more on the costly side. Time saved on every mouse stroke justifies the value of AutoCAD. After using AutoCAD for a while, other competitors' less expensive copycat versions feel very inefficient and not … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose AutoCAD AutoCAD is definitely a more robust program than DraftSight. It provides much more stable features and flexibility with configuring the program. The support is much better as well, both from the official Autodesk support but also from community groups online. This is mainly to … Incentivized Helpful? Saransh Dikshit Graduate Research Assistant in Engineering at Iowa State University (Higher Education, 5001-10,000 employees) Chose AutoCAD AutoCAD is better suited in scenarios where you want to show very fine details in your drawings. That is where it helped me. Incentivized Helpful? Tyler Grudowski Product Development Engineer in Engineering at NoMo Diagnostics (Medical Devices, 1-10 employees) Chose AutoCAD AutoCAD is better than both of these programs because it is cheaper, simpler, and a smaller program. It also makes it easier to print files you draw straight to a laser cutter, shopbot, or other shop machine. Fusion 360 is a great program for 3D drawings, but it does not … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose AutoCAD Modeling 2D structures in AutoCAD is more straight forward and easier to start with than other products above, and online tutorials of AutoCAD are everywhere. Incentivized Helpful?	Dassault Systemes Verified User Chose SOLIDWORKS AutoCAD is great for 2D detailing, but I like having the additional features of SOLIDWORKS. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose SOLIDWORKS AutoCAD, in many ways, still looks and feels like you are designing something in the 1980's. It definitely caters more to the generation of people who are used to drafting. SOLIDWORKS is much more visually appealing, which counts for a lot when you will have lots of engineers … Incentivized Helpful? Sean Nutley Mechanical Designer in Engineering at Kadant Carmanah Design (Mechanical Or Industrial Engineering, 51-200 employees) Chose SOLIDWORKS SOLIDWORKS has the advantage on Autodesk Inventor due to the amount of users and support that SOLIDWORKS has. The help you receive from resellers and 3DS themselves is much better. Also the other users on the internet in community forums provide a wider range of solutions. The … Incentivized Helpful? Tracy Burton Network Administrator in Information Technology at Insight Lighting (Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing, 51-200 employees) Chose SOLIDWORKS SOLIDWORKS seems to be the choice from my engineers in terms of the 3D aspect vs AutoCAD. If the software meets the needs of the users, I try not to change things. Incentivized Helpful? Manuel Aguilar Geophysical Coordinator in Engineering at GMA Proyectos Siglo XXI C.A (Oil & Energy, 51-200 employees) Chose SOLIDWORKS While AutoCAD really shines as a 2D drawing software I believe that the quality produced with SOdefinitelydefinetly outperforms AutoCAD for 3D designing and modelling. While SOLIDWORKS is not an easy software to use (as I have already mentioned) its 3D modeling tools are … Incentivized Helpful? Floyd Finch National Field Representative Coordinator (volunteer) in Engineering at VJMC North America (Mechanical or Industrial Engineering, 51-200 employees) Chose SOLIDWORKS Solidworks & Inventor are actually pretty evenly matched in terms of design & modeling capability. I will say in my experience that Solidworks is easier to learn the basics of 3d modeling on but at the advanced level both are very capable pieces of software. Inventor has the … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose SOLIDWORKS I have used the 3D side of AutoCAD (not Inventor) and it doesn't even come close to touching SOLIDWORKS. Incentivized Helpful? Kevin Skariah Quality Assurance Engineer in Quality Assurance at Av-Tech Industries, Division of Fastenal (Aviation & Aerospace, 11-50 employees) Chose SOLIDWORKS The ease of using it and smooth transition from any software, Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose SOLIDWORKS Creo is basically focusing on pure solid 3D modeling, while on the other hand the SOLIDWORKS' modeling approach is more parametric type and it is suiting for my purpose of use. Easy to use interface of SOLIDWORKS as compared to Creo. Features are easy to use. Just one click … Incentivized Helpful? Mark Jackson Mechanical Engineer in Research & Development at Hanover Displays (Mechanical Or Industrial Engineering, 201-500 employees) Chose SOLIDWORKS SOLIDWORKS is simple to use and new users become proficient in a short amount of time. Operation is intuitive and with the aid of the built-in tutorials, most of the skills required for day-to-day use become second nature. The ability to collaborate and communicate ideas to … Incentivized Helpful? Chris Bartch Product Development Lead in Engineering at Rockmore International (Mining & Metals, 51-200 employees) Chose SOLIDWORKS In many scenarios, SolidWorks and Inventor actually compare fairly evenly to each other. However, I believe that where SolidWorks really stands out is the fact that it was designed from the start as a 3D parametric solid modeling application whereas Inventor comes from a … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose SOLIDWORKS SOLIDWORKS provides not only aesthetic appearance of a product but also provides the capability to analyze behavior of structural and material components. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose SOLIDWORKS SOLIDWORKS enables manufacturers to become more productive in a relatively short amount of time. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose SOLIDWORKS SOLIDWORKS is better in terms of design speed of 3D parts. It is also better for pieces of high technical detail. Other CAD programs do not have a simulation of forces, SOLIDWORKS does. The user interfaces are, in my opinion, friendlier and easier to use than other programs. In … Incentivized Helpful? Alan Tillman Process Engineer in Engineering at OTR Leasing (Aviation & Aerospace, 51-200 employees) Chose SOLIDWORKS I have always preferred SOLIDWORKS, but may be partial because it was the original program I learned to do 3D modeling with and the only one I had any formal education in. I think the products overall are fairly similar and the preference for either is going to fall into … Incentivized Helpful? Saransh Dikshit Graduate Research Assistant in Engineering at Iowa State University (Higher Education, 5001-10,000 employees) Chose SOLIDWORKS Due to the very user-friendly interface offered by Solidworks, I decided to use it for my work. Incentivized Helpful? Jonathan Kweder, Ph.D. Aerospace Product Manager, Technical Product Expert in Research & Development at Technetics Group (Mechanical or Industrial Engineering, 501-1000 employees) Chose SOLIDWORKS We chose SOLIDWORKS based on previous experience and relationship with the authorized vendor, as well as internal experience in SOLIDWORKS already existing with some of the engineering base. Cost, value and ease of implementation also were factors that led us to make the … Incentivized Helpful?
	Would buy again
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Delivers good value for the price
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Happy with the feature set
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Lived up to sales and marketing promises
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Implementation went as expected
No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic

Features

AutoCAD

SOLIDWORKS

Comparison of Computer-Aided Design Software features of AutoCAD and SOLIDWORKS
Feature	AutoCAD 6.1 3 Ratings	SOLIDWORKS 7.6 2 Ratings
3D Modeling	6.03 Ratings	9.22 Ratings
2D Drafting	9.23 Ratings	7.72 Ratings
Rendering and Visualization	5.13 Ratings	7.52 Ratings
Parametric Design	4.83 Ratings	6.01 Ratings
Collaboration and Sharing	5.73 Ratings	8.01 Ratings
Compatibility with other software and formats	8.33 Ratings	9.22 Ratings
Assembly Design	5.33 Ratings	6.92 Ratings
Simulation and Analysis	1.02 Ratings	7.01 Ratings
Documentation and Annotation	7.83 Ratings	7.01 Ratings
Customization and Extensions	8.23 Ratings	7.72 Ratings

User Ratings
	AutoCAD	SOLIDWORKS
Likelihood to Recommend	7.3 (84 ratings)	9.1 (57 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	8.0 (2 ratings)	10.0 (2 ratings)
Usability	8.5 (5 ratings)	8.5 (4 ratings)
Support Rating	6.9 (13 ratings)	5.2 (16 ratings)
In-Person Training	- (0 ratings)	9.0 (1 ratings)
Online Training	- (0 ratings)	9.0 (1 ratings)
Implementation Rating	8.0 (2 ratings)	- (0 ratings)