SOLIDWORKS for Education
The CAD software your students will use on the first day of their careers, licensed and priced for the classroom.
Why SOLIDWORKS belongs in your classroom
Every engineering and design program wants to teach their students to be career-ready upon graduation.
And for most students, that includes being proficient in SOLIDWORKS Design. It is the most widely deployed 3D CAD and mechanical design tool in the world, used by manufacturers, shops, OEMs, and design firms. When a student walks into an interview and says they have modeled parts, built assemblies, and produced manufacturing drawings in SOLIDWORKS, they have a leg up over other applicants who haven’t.
SOLIDWORKS Design increases your program’s employability. Students graduate with a verifiable skill, directly applicable in their industry. SOLIDWORKS also scales from middle school to a college capstone, allowing continuity with your students’ career path.
How does SOLIDWORKS fit my program?
SOLIDWORKS fits any program, from early education to post-graduate work.
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Sketching, simple parts, and 3D printing. The goal is to get a student from idea to a physical object in one class period so the concept sticks.
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Full part and assembly modeling, drawings, and the CSWA certification. This is where SOLIDWORKS starts producing a credential a student can put on a resume before they graduate.
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Design plus manufacturing. Students move from modeling to toolpaths, sheet metal, weldments, and cost-aware design decisions that map directly to shop floor work.
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Multi-disciplinary team projects, simulation, senior capstones, and formula and baja competition teams. Complexity goes up and collaboration becomes the bottleneck, which is where the platform tools start to matter.
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Funded work, IP development, and published results. This is a different license entirely. See below.
Which education license do you need?
This is a common question we get from instructors, so here are 2 distinct license types, and who they are a best fit for.
SOLIDWORKS Education Edition
Designed for institutions, meant to be installed on campus machines for classroom instruction. Files saved in Education Edition carry a watermark. It makes the files unsuitable for commercial work, but supports programs that do paid outside jobs.
It is available to accredited schools, colleges, universities, and recognized educational institutions.
SOLIDWORKS Student Edition
Designed for the individual student completing coursework on a personal laptop. It is the same software you run with Education Edition, but allows your students to work on a project after they leave the lab.
What comes with it beyond the software
A SOLIDWORKS license is only part of the package. In addition, SOLIDWORKS provides schools with curriculum, certification, and a collaboration tools.
Curriculum and courseware
Lesson plans, tutorials, and structured teaching material built for classroom delivery, so you are not writing a CAD course from scratch on top of a full teaching load.
Certification
SOLIDWORKS Academic Certification gives students an industry-recognized credential. Schools that are Academic Certification Providers and on subscription can offer exams to students at no cost. That turns a semester of coursework into a line on a resume employers actually recognize.
A portfolio, not one product
The Education Edition includes more than a dozen products spanning design, simulation, documentation, manufacturing, and visualization. Programs can grow into simulation or CAM without renegotiating the whole agreement.
Cloud and collaboration
SOLIDWORKS Education is now powered by the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, which brings browser-based CAD, shared project data, and real classroom collaboration into the mix. That side of it is covered on its own page below.
Two directions to take your program
Most education conversations split into one of two problems. Start with whichever one is yours.
Collaboration Tools for Education
The access and teamwork side. Cloud CAD that runs in a browser, shared project data, teacher visibility into student work, and how to let students pick up a project at home on whatever device they own.
SOLIDWORKS Design for Education
The modeling side. Curriculum, certification paths, lab deployment, what students actually build, and how to structure a course that gets them from first sketch to CSWA.
Why work with SWYFT Solutions
We are an authorized SOLIDWORKS reseller, but there are others too.
Schools choose SWYFT Solutions because we right-size every quote to fit fixed education budgets, including telling you when a cheaper configuration is the right one. We handle implementation ourselves, from network licensing and lab imaging to student license distribution and onboarding. When a license fails the week before finals, you reach our certified technical team, not a sales desk. SWYFT Academy and Elite Coaching keep your faculty current on every module they teach.
Frequently Asked Questions
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SOLIDWORKS EDU Edition is functionally identical to the commercial software, so students are well-prepared to transition into a work environment.
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Yes. Student home use licenses are available as part of most education packages, allowing students to complete coursework on their own machines.
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Pricing scales with the number of seats and license type. Contact us for a custom quote based on your program's needs.
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A license server manages a pool of floating licenses. Students check out a license when they open the software and return it when they close it, maximizing utilization across shared lab environments.
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SOLIDWORKS offers the Certified SOLIDWORKS Associate (CSWA) and Certified SOLIDWORKS Professional (CSWP) exams. Both are industry recognized certification, sought after by employers and can be pursued while still in school.