Let 3D ContentCentral do your work

Easy question: What is better than spending an enjoyable day modeling parts in SolidWorks? Answer: Someone else doing the modeling for you!

3D ContentCentral® is a free service for locating, configuring, downloading, and requesting 3D parts and assemblies, 2D blocks, library features, and macros. Currently there are over 500,000 users who share and download user contributed and supplier-certified 3D parts & assemblies, 2D blocks, library features and macros.

If you have not been there in a while, it is worth your time to stop back in.

Back in the early days of 3DC, nearly every time you wanted to download a model from a supplier, you had to create a login account with that supplier. I had a sheet of over 20 usernames/passwords trying to track all of the suppliers. Now, your one free 3DC login gets you access to all suppliers.

If you are new to SOLIDWORKS, there is an additional bonus to using 3DC. Most models are in native SOLIDWORKS format, thus I urge you to download interesting models and study how they were built. They may not be modeled using your companies best practices, but experiment with the models learn how and why different features affect others.