AutoCAD vs Solidworks

With the advancement of technology, different sectors are evolving to produce quality work, one such sector is the civil engineering sector which is the backbone of infrastructural development. Designing and constructing buildings, houses, railway platforms etc is not an easy task and requires a lot of resources and time, so to ease the designing and modelling work many companies released different software, two of the most used software in this field are Solidworks and AutoCAD. They are used in modelling, designing, and drafting different civil infrastructures so we will see a detailed comparison between the two.

AutoCAD is computer software which helps in drafting and designing different types of computer applications. CAD is an acronym for Computer-Aided Design. It was developed by Autodesk. It is compatible with different operating systems like Windows, MacOS, iOS etc. It was first released in 1982 and its stable version was released in 2021. It is available in many languages. It provides robust tools for easing the work of designing.

Advantages of AutoCAD

• It comes with advanced features which help in the accurate and precise designing of civil infrastructures.
• It allows importing files from other platforms to work on pre-built designs.
• It allows to easily share files without any data loss to multiple parties simultaneously. 
• Calculation of Area, Center of Gravity, Mass, Volume etc is very easy.
• It provides enhanced image tracing functionality which helps in converting handmade designs to digital designs.

Disadvantages of AutoCAD

• It is not suitable for Building Information Modelling (BIM).
• It supports limited file formats to import into this software. 
• It is heavy software which requires high memory and disk storage.

Solidworks is computer software which is used in modelling and designing buildings, machine components, automobile parts etc. Initially, it was released in 1995 and its stable version was launched in 2021. It was developed by Dassault Systemes. It is used in CAD (Computer-Aided Design) as well as CAE (Computer-Aided Engineering) works. It supports Windows operating system.

Advantages of Solidworks

• It allows sharing of data with clients and team members easily.
• It comes with a library which has a large number of usable components.
• It has an automation feature to design a basic building or machine components by entering details.
• Calculation of different features like area, volume etc is easy and precise.

Disadvantages of Solidworks

• It does not provide any 2d functionalities.
• Third-party extension is required for file management.

Following is a table of differences between AutoCAD and Solidworks:

	AutoCAD	Solidworks
1.	It can be understood as computer-aided design software which is used in construction, designing, and drafting 3D models.	It can be understood as computer-aided engineering software for designing architectural and automobile components.
2.	It was developed by Autodesk.	It was developed by Dassault Systemes.
3.	It supports Windows as well as Mac operating systems.	It supports Windows but does not support Mac operating systems.
4.	It is available for mobile devices also.	It is not available for mobile devices.
5.	It allows 2D as well as 3D drafting.	It does not support 2D drafting.
6.	Its price starts at $235 per month.	Its price starts at $5490 per year.
7.	It is available in multiple languages.	It is available in the English language only.
8.	It offers a free version named as ‘student version’ for students for one year.	It does not offer any free version.