Solidworks

This page will assist you in installing Solidworks on your personal computer.

How to Install SolidWorks on your MacBook

Installing Windows on Your Mac

SolidWorks only runs on Windows operating systems, so you have a couple of options to install Windows on your Mac. You can either partition your hard drive or use a 3rd party virtualization software. Using a 3rd party virtualization software allows you to run Windows as an application on your Mac OS, but can slow down your laptop significantly, so I’d recommend partitioning your hard drive.

You might (or might not - depending on your computer) need a blank USB drive in order to partition your hard drive. You’ll also probably need at least around 30 gb of free space on your hard drive, but may be able to get away with less - consider the size of SolidWorks, Windows, any other programs you want to install on your Windows OS, and projects you create in SolidWorks.

Apple has a program called BootCamp that will help you partition your drive and install windows. This guide should have most of the information you need: How to install Windows using BootCamp.

For step 2 of this guide, you can get a free version of Windows 10 from Stanford Licensing. Follow these steps:

1. Make sure you’re using Chrome, not Safari, as your web browser.

2. go to: Stanford Software Licensing

3. click on the blue button that says “Software Licensing Web Store”

4. click on the Microsoft tab and then on Windows 10 Education and add it to your cart

5. download the 64-bit version to your computer and it should pop up in your downloads folder as “Win10_Academic_English_x64.iso”

One of the steps in the guide includes opening Apple Bootcamp application on your computer, which itself gives you specific directions that can vary from computer to computer.

After you have your hard drive partitioned and you can switch between Mac OS and Windows (If you’re in Windows and want to switch to Mac OS, click on the Bootcamp System tray item which is at the bottom right of your screen. If you’re in Mac OS and want to go to Windows, do a Spotlight search for “Startup Disk” which you can also find in System Preferences, “click the lock to make changes” and enter your password, then click BOOTCAMP Windows and “Restart…”).

Installing SolidWorks

Now you’ll need to actually install SolidWorks. The Terman Engineering Library (which is on the 2nd floor of the Huang Engineering building) has free copies of SolidWorks on USBs that you can borrow for up to 4 hours.

The USB will have a PDF with directions on how to install SolidWorks in addition to the actual program, so make sure you follow those directions carefully. It will probably take about an hour to do the whole installation. (Don’t forget to bring your laptop charger to the library because installing it uses a lot of battery!)

Once you have SolidWorks installed, you won’t actually be able to save anything you make until you put it into compatibility mode, so it can run with Windows 10. To do this, go under properties and set it to run on Windows 8 compatibility mode.