SolidWorks Premium

It’s rare that an add-on earns the right to be dubbed as a separately recognized entity. But the added capabilities that SolidWorks Premium gives the Solidworks Professional package ACTUALLY WARRANTS THE NAME “PREMIUM.” Premium adds the following to Professional: Linear Static Analysis for Parts and Assemblies, ECAD/MCAD Collaboration, Reverse Engineering, Advanced Surface Flattening, and much more.

Unless you really need more functions and capability than the SolidWorks Professional package, the learning curve to achieve expertise in the advanced additional bells and whistles of Premium is not worth it. This is one thing that I find almost funny. Some functions in Premium do not follow Professional’s usual shortcuts and normal schematic pathway and procedures.

Until user-proficiency occurs in your employees, the value-added benefits you envisioned may not materialize. The higher price (as compared to other alternatives in this space) is the “premium” paid to increase your firm’s product quality, decrease planning to production times, hasten product completion, increase quality control while decreasing pass/fail processing, and save precious budgetary and human resources.