Solidworks Student Edition Install Problem

verbotenwhisky said:
I worked for a large engineering company that got into a legal fight with AutoDesk and won, it does happen. IntelliCAD beat them in court also. AutoDesk is typically careful about picking their battles and their legal documents are insane, try reading through the EULA.
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That's actually gratifying to hear. I have no need to read their EULA, because I've been avoiding their stuff. And who needs a headache anyways?
 
I purchased SolidWorks Standard version in 2012. As I recall, it was around $4K. I am running on a Win 7, 64 bit machine. I have a complete set of install DVD's. I bought my seat outright so I wouldn't have to deal with annual subscription fees. I am struck in 2012 but for most of my purposes, that isn't a problem. The only issue is communicating with the outside world as SolidWorks files are 11 years past that. I can import files as DXF or IGES files but having the standard version, I can't import features. There are workarounds though. I can modify imported files by cutting out unwanted features and adding new features. One common use is importing screws or bolts from McMaster Carr. Their models are geometrically accurate and it saves a lot of time from creating from scratch.

When I first looked at Fusion 360 in 2015, I was assured by their team that the full featured version would always be available for free to hobbyists so I downloaded it. It is hardly free now. Draftsight was also free when it was first launched by Dassault, largely to allow SolidWorks users to work with their old AutoCAD files. It is hardly free now. Eagle for PC board design was free when up to ver. 7. It's no longer free now.
 
FreeCAD is still free. It's been serviceable for me. It's not professional grade in my opinion, but it's still exceptionally good. It's open source as well, if that matters to you. If something about it bothers you, you could change it, that is if you could figure it out.

I built FreeCAD from source. It's not terribly difficult as the instructions are pretty decent. I'm compiling from the dailies as it's the quickest way to get fixes. I only recompile if it's been a while, or if I seem to have a bug. There's forums to ask for help. I've had a fix done for me within a couple of hours. The fix was pushed to git. I just did a git pull and rebuild. Of course some of my requests are blown off, but overall it's been good. It definitely is more than good enough for my use case.
 
I'm struggling with every developer on the planet dropping support for Win 7 in unison. Now google says you're naked using their browser on 7. Nothing is being updated. Fine for an offline machine, but who claims to do productive work on a machine without connnectivity?

And that business about reading EULAs... Dude, I'm an end user, that's way above my pay grade. They should be called EULLAs, with the extra L for lawyers. That chit comes out with a Fleisch-Kinkead reading level of 20. The average American idiot reads at a 7. That's the belly of the bell curve right there.
 
WobblyHand said:
That's actually gratifying to hear. I have no need to read their EULA, because I've been avoiding their stuff. And who needs a headache anyways?
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I have a number of design softwares on my work machine, Auto desk stuff among them but for my personal machine I am buying a perpetual license of Briscad Mechanical.
 
verbotenwhisky said:
I have a number of design softwares on my work machine, Auto desk stuff among them but for my personal machine I am buying a perpetual license of Briscad Mechanical.
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I've never heard of that one. Bris-CAD? When you install it, does the Moyle come and cut the end of your stick off?
 
pontiac428 said:
I'm struggling with every developer on the planet dropping support for Win 7 in unison. Now google says you're naked using their browser on 7. Nothing is being updated. Fine for an offline machine, but who claims to do productive work on a machine without connnectivity?

And that business about reading EULAs... Dude, I'm an end user, that's way above my pay grade. They should be called EULLAs, with the extra L for lawyers. That chit comes out with a Fleisch-Kinkead reading level of 20. The average American idiot reads at a 7. That's the belly of the bell curve right there.
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I'll let the company worry about AutoDesk, I started using their software in 1990, I was on the board up to that point and there wasn't an EULA for that. There isn't anything perfect as far as I can tell Brics seems good for the functionality.
 
Fixed! I chalk-up the stupid amount of hours I spent troubleshooting to my ignorance. At least now, I now understand my computer hardware, specifically the video card and available drivers. Solidworks apparently requires a video driver certified by them. After I narrowed-down the issue to the video driver, I tried all I could find. After spending more time on the Solidworks' troubleshooting site, I found my video card - AMD Radeon Pro WX3200. The driver was available on AMD's website and it fixed the issue.
 
Gaffer said:
Fixed! I chalk-up the stupid amount of hours I spent troubleshooting to my ignorance. At least now, I now understand my computer hardware, specifically the video card and available drivers. Solidworks apparently requires a video driver certified by them. After I narrowed-down the issue to the video driver, I tried all I could find. After spending more time on the Solidworks' troubleshooting site, I found my video card - AMD Radeon Pro WX3200. The driver was available on AMD's website and it fixed the issue.
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The AMD Radeon looks good on paper but has a huge amount of issues with all types of CAD software, we only run NVIDIA on our CAD machines because they get along with 99% of the software out there.
 
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