Unlock your PC’s full potential by optimizing your hardware and SOLIDWORKS settings to boost performance so you can work more efficiently and condense modeling time.
We’ll guide you through the key considerations when looking to speed up SOLIDWORKS, from hardware requirements and graphics cards to the optimal SOLIDWORKS settings and system options.
“Have you tried turning it off and on again?”
Perhaps the single largest cliché of the IT world, but in theory a reboot will help with SOLIDWORKS performance, so it is worth trying before anything else. A full reboot will clear the session information and allow SOLIDWORKS to start with a clear memory.
A word of caution – many PCs have Windows Fast Startup enabled as it is the recommended default and it may be locked down by IT administrators.
Fast Startup does not clear the session information in order to boot up as fast as possible.
Think your PC hygiene is good by shutting down after work every day?
Well, take a look at your SOLIDWORKS Rx tool (search for it in Windows) and you might be surprised to see when your last reboot was.
The last reboot on the PC above was a week ago, despite being shut down every evening. There’s no hard and fast rule, but aim to keep this number below 5 days if you can.
To avoid this issue and perform a full reboot, click ‘Restart’ instead of ‘Shut down’ at the start of your day or at lunch time to clear your last session information and give SOLIDWORKS some breathing space.
One of the most common causes of poor software performance is ageing or unsupported hardware.
When selecting hardware, consider the complexity of the task, the volume of work, the level of detailing required and whether you’ll be using SOLIDWORKS Simulation or Visualize packages in your workflow for FEA/CFD analysis and rendering respectively.
There are three main things to consider:
Can my PC run SOLIDWORKS?
Graphics Card Settings for SOLIDWORKS
Docking Stations & Multiple Monitors
Let’s take a look at each of these in more detail.
Before installing the latest version of SOLIDWORKS, it’s always worth checking the SOLIDWORKS system requirements and hardware certification pages to make sure your PC can run SOLIDWORKS and that your system is supported to reduce the risk of performance degradation.
There you can check the status of desktop and laptop workstations, operating systems, and graphics cards against the version of SOLIDWORKS you use. These are updated each year as SOLIDWORKS tests the configurations, also providing recommendations for the latest supported graphics card driver.
Choosing supported hardware can be one of the best ways to enhance SOLIDWORKS performance and is an important consideration, as getting it wrong can be costly!
If you are unsure or have any queries around hardware, you can always a raise a support ticket.
SOLIDWORKS is designed to work with professional-grade graphics cards like the Ada Generation of NVIDIA RTX cards. Performance gains can be made by using supported graphics cards and keeping their drivers up to date.
The SOLIDWORKS hardware certification page contains a list of recommended graphics cards that offer the best performance and reliability. Make sure you’re working with a supported card, rather than those designed for gaming.
Keep your graphics card driver up to date and ensure it’s always on the latest supported version.
You can check what card and driver you have in the SOLIDWORKS Rx tool – search for it in Windows and look on the Diagnostics tab to see your system information.
Laptop workstation users should also check that SOLIDWORKS is always set to use the dedicated graphics card. If you ever see ‘Integrated Graphics’ showing in the Rx tool, then this is also the way to switch back to your GPU.
Search for the NVIDIA Control Panel in Windows and click ‘Manage 3D Settings’.
Add-ins are a great asset to SOLIDWORKS users. They embed additional functionality into your main SOLIDWORKS Design interface.
These could be add-ins for data management and lifecycle workflows like SOLIDWORKS PDM or 3DEXPERIENCE, for structural analysis with SOLIDWORKS Simulation or for manufacturing through CAM integrations.
Typically, many of these are turned on by default in SOLIDWORKS. To help boost performance and speed up SOLIDWORKS opening times, you can configure SOLIDWORKS add-ins to load for the current session only and future startups.
We recommend turning off add-ins on startup that are not essential to your daily workflow, then enable them when you need to work with them and have SOLIDWORKS open.
Here’s a guide on how to turn SOLIDWORKS add-ins on and off:
Access the drop-down menu next to the Options cog and select 'Add-ins...'
Any add-ins ticked in the first column will now be turned on and available for use. All others will be turned off for the current SOLIDWORKS session.
NOTE: It is recommended to have PDM and PLM related add-ins load on start-up to ensure you are working within your data management and lifecycle workflows from the start.
SOLIDWORKS system options provide customizable control over the user interface, performance, and workflow behaviours, directly influencing design efficiency.
It’s worth looking through the system options and customizing keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures to see if there are any settings that will speed up your workflow, but for the purpose of this article, we’ll focus on the settings that directly affect the performance of SOLIDWORKS.
There are four key settings (all accessed via the Options cog) that can help to boost performance when using SOLIDWORKS:
Found under the ‘Performance’ section of the System Options, this setting improves the performance of SOLIDWORKS when navigating parts and assemblies with pan/zoom/rotate and helps to display shaded and draft quality views when moving around drawings.
It is essential for using DSPBR appearances in SOLIDWORKS and has also been known to remove unexpected graphical artifacts in the viewport.
NOTE: Requires a SOLIDWORKS restart to take effect.
This setting swaps silhouette edge generation from the CPU to the GPU to free up processing power when working with HLR, HLV or wireframe views.
It is also found under the ‘Performance’ section of the System Options, just below the Enhanced Graphics Performance option.
SOLIDWORKS 2023 introduced a flexible approach to loading assemblies that we recommend taking advantage of.
In the ‘Assemblies’ section of the System Options, turn on ‘Automatically optimize resolve mode, hide lightweight mode’.
This option forces SOLIDWORKS to load all components within an assembly as resolved but automatically swaps performance-intensive components between lightweight and resolved as you work with them.
When SOLIDWORKS performance is really sluggish, we can disable the dynamic highlight from the ‘Display’ section of the System Options to give us a quick boost and keep working.
This setting controls the visibility of the orange highlight that appears when hovering over parts and features in the viewport.
Each time we hover over a component, our CPU is drawing the individual orange lines around the edges of the component, so it has its work cut out!
This option is automatically disabled in Large Assembly views and Mac users of SOLIDWORKS report this setting as especially important to disable when running Windows OS in parallel.
These system options will help to balance overall performance in SOLIDWORKS, but each part, assembly, and drawing also has their own file-specific performance.
Let’s look at some best practices and options for boosting performance in SOLIDWORKS files.
Firstly, opening assemblies and drawings in lightweight mode will boost open times. SOLIDWORKS 2026 also introduced the ability to open STEP files in the background while we carry out other modeling tasks.
Modifying the image quality can help to balance performance by decreasing the number of lines that make up edges, which reduces the amount of geometry SOLIDWORKS has to load.
Head to the Options cog and select the ‘Document Properties’ tab. In the ‘Image Quality’ section, slide the sliders to the left to reduce the resolution of edges.
Aim to strike a balance between performance and resolution that works for you. It is best to apply this at the part level so that the image quality pulls through to any assemblies the part is used in.
Employing best practices and good modelling technique will also help to avoid degraded performance where individual files are concerned, consider:
Using the Performance Evaluation tool to highlight under-performing geometry
Working with cosmetic threads instead of physical geometry
Simplifying geometry or defeaturing parts in large assemblies
Patterning bodies instead of features
Suppressing cosmetic features like fillets
Saving files in shaded mode or as simple geometry
These are just some of the best practices that are taught in our SOLIDWORKS training courses that will help you reduce the load on the software when modelling in SOLIDWORKS.
So get ahead of poor performance by implementing these suggestions within your SOLIDWORKS setup and don’t suffer in silence – if you are experiencing poor performance with SOLIDWORKS, then get in touch with our technical support team.