# SolidWorks PCB Reviews **Vendor:** Solidworks **Category:** [PCB Design Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/pcb-design) **Average Rating:** 3.8/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 14 ## About SolidWorks PCB SOLIDWORKS PCB enables the productivity you need to design Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) quickly along with unique, collaboration between electrical and 3D mechanical design teams. It offers a clear advantage where ECAD-MCAD collaboration is critical for overall success of electronic product design ## SolidWorks PCB Reviews ### 1. Paid Version of Circuit Maker **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Josh L. | Electrical Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 05, 2023 **What do you like best about SolidWorks PCB?** 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. **What do you dislike about SolidWorks PCB?** 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. **What problems is SolidWorks PCB solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use Solidwoks PCB for schematic capture and PCB design. However we are fasing it out and transitioning to Alitum due to the premium features Altium offers. However we have many designs in SW PCB. ### 2. Does the job for the most part, but overpriced and missing features (Solidworks PCB 2018) **Rating:** 2.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jonathan H. | Embedded Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 04, 2022 **What do you like best about SolidWorks PCB?** 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. **What do you dislike about SolidWorks PCB?** 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. **What problems is SolidWorks PCB solving and how is that benefiting you?** It does the job. It does enough right that it's fine. They inherited some very polished features from Altium that are powerful and a joy to use. After using free PCB design programs in college, it feels awesome to use high-end design software. But knowing the price and what else is out there, it's not a compelling option to me. The key selling point of Solidworks integration was disappointing. They didn't follow through with some features like licensing, pick and place export, and community which just got under my skin after a while. ### 3. Product dismissed **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gianluca L. | Account manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 17, 2021 **What do you like best about SolidWorks PCB?** Esay of use and ECAD/MCAD collaboration. **What do you dislike about SolidWorks PCB?** The product was dismissed from SOLIDWORKS since August 2021. No migration plan to any other tool. **What problems is SolidWorks PCB solving and how is that benefiting you?** PCB Design in mechatronics environment. ### 4. It is a good option for PCB design **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Bapti Niloy B. | Head of Corporate Alliance , Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 07, 2020 **What do you like best about SolidWorks PCB?** 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. **What do you dislike about SolidWorks PCB?** This tools are very heavy and need a lot of space in your device. Again there is lac of online support as we expect. **Recommendations to others considering SolidWorks PCB:** Highly recommended **What problems is SolidWorks PCB solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am solving my engineering designing problem using this device. As an energy engineer we need to fabricate some simple circuit. As we need to use solidworks , it is handy for us to work with this tool for designing. ### 5. The collaboration with altium makes Solidwork PCB full featured PCB tool **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Aruna J. | Research Assistant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 20, 2019 **What do you like best about SolidWorks PCB?** 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. **What do you dislike about SolidWorks PCB?** 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. **Recommendations to others considering SolidWorks PCB:** If the designing products are more focussing on marketing as an final product. this product is the best. This tool is not for the prototyping because it contains all the features to put a product in to final production. Since it supports all the libraries that were designed to altium designer it is very convenient to use. It supports backward capability with older PCBs that were designed using altium designer. Familiers UI and features for the professional PCB designers. **What problems is SolidWorks PCB solving and how is that benefiting you?** Component design, PCB design, PCB simulation, 3D simulation of PCB ### 6. Solidworks Works. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nathan M. | Multimedia and Audio Visual Developer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 24, 2019 **What do you like best about SolidWorks PCB?** 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. **What do you dislike about SolidWorks PCB?** It's still a little confusing sometimes to newcomers. The help section doesnt seem to have some of the info I might need. **Recommendations to others considering SolidWorks PCB:** I would definitely consider it over some of the other CAD programs. **What problems is SolidWorks PCB solving and how is that benefiting you?** It has made my workflow much smoother in the pipeline from engineering model to exported 3D model. It exports much cleaner models than my old CAD program. ### 7. Excelent, for SolidWorks Users **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Leda R. | Costureira, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 25, 2018 **What do you like best about SolidWorks PCB?** 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. **What do you dislike about SolidWorks PCB?** 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. **Recommendations to others considering SolidWorks PCB:** Well, it's a good ideia if you have a huge company that works with a lot of SolidWorks projects.. If it's simple, I recommend EasyEDA! **What problems is SolidWorks PCB solving and how is that benefiting you?** PCB development ### 8. Great colaboration tool **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Oil & Energy | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 07, 2018 **What do you like best about SolidWorks PCB?** 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. **What do you dislike about SolidWorks PCB?** 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. **Recommendations to others considering SolidWorks PCB:** Great program if you pass PCB designs back and forth between mechanical and electrical units. **What problems is SolidWorks PCB solving and how is that benefiting you?** Processing times of file conversion. Mistakes from mechanical to electrical handoffs are kept to a minimum when both disciplines are using this software to collaborate on each project together. Is a great program if those groups are across the country and just not across the hall as it is at my employeer. ### 9. Best PCB software ever **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Yasitha L. | Graduate Student, Higher Education, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 29, 2018 **What do you like best about SolidWorks PCB?** 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 **What do you dislike about SolidWorks PCB?** 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. **What problems is SolidWorks PCB solving and how is that benefiting you?** I used it in my undergraduate research project. ### 10. Great mechatronics/electronics design solution **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 24, 2019 **What do you like best about SolidWorks PCB?** collaboration between electrical and 3D mechanical design teams, ECAD-MCAD collaboration **What do you dislike about SolidWorks PCB?** none, such a great tool for mechatronics. **What problems is SolidWorks PCB solving and how is that benefiting you?** SOLIDWORKS PCB enables the productivity you need to design Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) quickly along with unique, collaboration between electrical and 3D mechanical design teams. It offers a clear advantage where ECAD-MCAD collaboration is critical for overall success of electronic product design. ### 11. A very useful tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Mechanical or Industrial Engineering | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 25, 2019 **What do you like best about SolidWorks PCB?** Very versatile software. Enables real time simulations in an AutoCAD environment. **What do you dislike about SolidWorks PCB?** Occasionally crashes when used for long durations. However, this might well have been a problem with my computer **What problems is SolidWorks PCB solving and how is that benefiting you?** Have designed numerous parts and assemblies to enhance productivity at my workplace ### 12. Serves the purpose. But there are better tools out there **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Darshan S. | Lab Manager, Mechanical or Industrial Engineering, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 21, 2018 **What do you like best about SolidWorks PCB?** I am used to the GUI of solid works 3D CAD modeling software. And PCB designing tool isn't much different. **What do you dislike about SolidWorks PCB?** Gerber files generated are not compatible with my PCB Mill **What problems is SolidWorks PCB solving and how is that benefiting you?** Handy tool for designing PCBs. ### 13. Best design technology software **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Architecture & Planning | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 02, 2018 **What do you like best about SolidWorks PCB?** It truly meets all the demands of the design process including complex circuit boards **What do you dislike about SolidWorks PCB?** How uncommon it seems to be among other regular solidworks users **What problems is SolidWorks PCB solving and how is that benefiting you?** Printing circuit boards for all purposes of our design development ### 14. Solidworks works **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Packaging and Containers | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 20, 2018 **What do you like best about SolidWorks PCB?** Perfect CAD tool and fun, takes practice but I teach it now, and that's fun too **What do you dislike about SolidWorks PCB?** Some tutorials don't match up with icons, and don't features don't show clear usage instructions **What problems is SolidWorks PCB solving and how is that benefiting you?** I've completed models and drawings of products ## SolidWorks PCB Discussions - [Would you be interested](https://www.g2.com/discussions/33535-would-you-be-interested) - 1 upvote - [View SolidWorks PCB pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/solidworks-pcb/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-05-13+09%3A27%3A54+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=b57cdcb2-88e6-482c-bc29-b9f8071efe67&secure%5Btoken%5D=a25bf5172ea5752b545d382ca8cd877a8336df17abcc7006e2ecf450bc513946&format=llm_user) ## SolidWorks PCB Features **Design** - PCB layout editing - Schematic editor **Tools** - 3D modeling tools - Component placement **Library** - Component libraries **Platform** - Board size - Layers **Customization** - Custom commands - Custom interface ## Top SolidWorks PCB Alternatives - [Altium Develop](https://www.g2.com/products/altium-develop/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (974 reviews) - [Autodesk EAGLE](https://www.g2.com/products/autodesk-eagle/reviews) - 4.0/5.0 (75 reviews) - [KiCad EDA](https://www.g2.com/products/kicad-eda/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (62 reviews)