Windows 10 & Solidworks 2015-16 Student Edition – compatible?

[Chris Hapstack]

Although SolidWorks graciously provides student edition licenses to any FRC team who wants them, these licenses don’t come with technical support (certainly understandable, as technical support for thousands of students would be expensive). Because of this, I’m having a hard time finding out whether SolidWorks Education/Student 2015-16 will run on Windows 10. I know that SolidWorks Professional will run on Windows 10 if you install Service Pack 5 (we’re contemplating upgrading to Windows 10 at work). Is this update available for the student edition? If so, how can I get it? A couple of the computers my team uses are about to be updated to Windows 10 and I’m concerned that SW won’t run on them.

I searched through the SW student forums and turned up a few unanswered questions along these lines, so that route doesn’t look promising. I’ve also tried calling normal SolidWorks technical support, but they referred me to the forums as soon as they heard “student.”

If SW on Windows 10 is a complete no-go, is there any way to boot an old version of Windows on the same computer that’s running 10? I’m not super well informed on this front, but I know you can boot Windows on a Mac in order to run SolidWorks.

Any help is appreciated!

[adammiller3122]

Originally Posted by Chris Hapstack

Although SolidWorks graciously provides student edition licenses to any FRC team who wants them, these licenses don’t come with technical support (certainly understandable, as technical support for thousands of students would be expensive). Because of this, I’m having a hard time finding out whether SolidWorks Education/Student 2015-16 will run on Windows 10. I know that SolidWorks Professional will run on Windows 10 if you install Service Pack 5 (we’re contemplating upgrading to Windows 10 at work). Is this update available for the student edition? If so, how can I get it? A couple of the computers my team uses are about to be updated to Windows 10 and I’m concerned that SW won’t run on them.

I searched through the SW student forums and turned up a few unanswered questions along these lines, so that route doesn’t look promising. I’ve also tried calling normal SolidWorks technical support, but they referred me to the forums as soon as they heard “student.”

If SW on Windows 10 is a complete no-go, is there any way to boot an old version of Windows on the same computer that’s running 10? I’m not super well informed on this front, but I know you can boot Windows on a Mac in order to run SolidWorks.

Any help is appreciated!

I am assuming that it would run on 10, but if it doesn't, you can definitely dual boot. Here is a guide on how to do so. You can ignore the fact that it says that you shouldn't install 10 as your primary OS, as this was written during the beta stage of 10. http://www.howtogeek.com/197647/how-...indows-7-or-8/

[g_sawchuk]

If it is of any help, SolidWorks 2014 works on Windows 10. In regards to 2015-2016, I am not sure.

[AllenGregoryIV]

SW15 works fine on windows 10 for me so far.

[orangemoore]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

SW15 works fine on windows 10 for me so far.

I haven't had too many problems. (It crashed twice but both times I think it was my fault)

[Rachel Lim]

Solidworks 2015 works as well for me on windows 10 as it did on windows 7.

The exception to this is solidworks electrical, which won't install. I'm fairly sure it's an issue with the version of microsoft SQL server that solidworks tries to install. I'm guessing if you install a supported version separately (2012 SP2 / 2014 SP1 or later) and then electrical it should be fine, but I never tested this out.

[Michael Hill]

I'm not sure why I've had issues with mine. I get SolidWorks Resource Monitor issues while running 2015-16 on Windows 10 (I didn't try it on Windows 7, so I can't be sure if it's a Windows 10 issue or not). I check my computer resources, and I still have 8 GB of free RAM left. I have a Quadro K1100m graphics card with 2 GB of DDR5 memory as well. I'm wondering if it's eating up my video RAM in a hurry. This wasn't an issue last year.

[guniv]

We ordered parts over the break to go with the Quadro we got from FIRST Choice last year and got a PC running. Runs fine on Windows 10 as far as I know because our CAD members haven't complained at all!

[grem110]

Just a head's up--if you've got a high res screen (like retina mac) SW doesn't display right. The text doesn't fit into the space it's normally allowed and the buttons are really small. There are workarounds like this one, but this one causes SW to flip out at random intervals and display the menu bar where the part window normally is...Just a word of warning.

[mman1506]

Originally Posted by grem110

Just a head's up--if you've got a high res screen (like retina mac) SW doesn't display right. The text doesn't fit into the space it's normally allowed and the buttons are really small. There are workarounds like this one, but this one causes SW to flip out at random intervals and display the menu bar where the part window normally is...Just a word of warning.

Have not experienced that issue on my retina Mac. Are you running the latest version of SW? I know they put out some improvements for high resolution screens recently.

[AgentTex]

Solidworks is compatible with Windows 10. I have had Resource issue notifications but it was only when I had more than 3 or 4 windows open. It has worked well for myself and my team and it hasn't caused any problems with my computer yet. Hope this helped.

[billbo911]

I am currently running Autodesk Inventor Professional-2016 STUDENT VERSION along with Inventor HSM Express on Windows 10 without issue.

[tim-tim]

I recently did a clean install of Windows 10 Pro, and SolidWorks 2015-2016 Student Edition has been working with no noticeable differences than Windows 7 Pro.

[Sperkowsky]

I can speak from experience that it "Now" works fine. It started to work around June.

[Chris Hapstack]

Thanks a bunch for the feedback, everyone! Looks like I have no reason to worry.