#1 - Activate Your SOLIDWORKS 2025 License
Upon launching SOLIDWORKS 2025 for the first time after it has been installed or upgraded, it’s required you activate your license.
This ensures your license is valid and should only take a few seconds. It’s unlikely you’ll encounter any issues at this stage, especially if you’re upgrading SOLIDWORKS on the same machine that was running the prior version.
However, computer upgrades or outdated folders can sometimes disrupt the activation, resulting in an ‘activation failed’ error. If you encounter this, then be sure to contact our Technical Support team to assist you in resolving the issue.
#2 - Log into the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform
If you’ve recently purchased SOLIDWORKS, you’ll also want to activate the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Any new SOLIDWORKS license comes with ‘cloud services’ included. This provides you with access to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, granting cloud-based storage and collaboration functionality that integrates with your Desktop SOLIDWORKS.
Well-considered data management and lifecycle management is crucial, and a yearly upgrade gives you the chance to evaluate and optimise the security and workflows you have in place. The 3DEXPERIENCE ‘roles’ that come with your SOLIDWORKS license provide you cloud storage, file sharing, markup and collaboration, revision management, product lifecycle management workflows and project planning tools, to name a few.
Even if you’re not looking to change your data management process, it’s worth activating 3DEXPERIENCE as this is where forums, leaning material and Enhancement requests are now located.
Activation of 3DEXPERIENCE platform is straight-forward. For a full guide on activating your platform, as well as in-depth explanations of the functions included, please see the blog series on How to Activate the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform.
If you’ve purchased SOLIDWORKS and are unsure if cloud services are included, contact the Support desk. We’ll let you know what your license includes, and assist with platform setup if desired. It’s worth pointing out that 3DEXPERIENCE only integrates with SOLIDWORKS 2022 and onwards, so an upgrade is long overdue if your software still thinks the decade just started.
#3 - Check Your Hardware is Optimised for SOLIDWORKS
Any fresh upgrade provides a good opportunity to check that your machine is optimised to run SOLIDWORKS. Parametric modelling software can tax any machine, so making sure your system is configured to handle it is key.
You can find out what your system is currently running using the Rx tool. This diagnostics tool is installed alongside SOLIDWORKS and can be found using Windows START.
Here, you’ll find key information like your computer’s available memory, latest reboot, and crucially, your graphics card driver.
Your graphics driver may be out of date if you’ve upgraded, and may not be on the version that SOLIDWORKS requires. To upgrade your graphics card driver and ensure SOLIDWORKS is always using its full performance, please follow The Best Hardware for SOLIDWORKS in 2025
The point about the latest reboot is no joke. You wouldn’t want to be awake for 10 days straight without a nap, and neither does your computer.
Your machine runs a bunch of services, and these build up over time, not stopping until they’re manually disabled, or your machine is restarted.
These services can drag the performance of demanding software like SOLIDWORKS, making lagging and crashing more likely. To ensure your machine is properly resetting when you restart , and cleaning your system of redundant services, it’s highly recommended that you alter your machine’s start-up settings.
In the Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Power Options -> System Settings, you can find the ‘Fast Start-Up’ function. This will be enabled by default, and makes your machine restart faster by saving lots of system information into memory when shutting down, and picking it back up when you boot up, instead of resetting completely. It is our recommendation that you turn this off. Your machine will take slightly longer to boot up, but a product like SOLIDWORKS will thank you for it.
#4 - Personalise Your SOLIDWORKS System Options
Once upgraded, SOLIDWORKS should look and behave the way you’d expect because the installation inherits the user’s system options from the prior year. If you’ve tweaked the factory settings - modified selection or background colours, toolbar arrangement, shortcuts – you’ll see these pulled through into the latest version. Convenient, but sometimes overkill.
Where it may cause disruption is how it looks at your File Locations, a crucial and often modified section of your System Options. This is where you control the file-path of templates, sheet formats, weldment profiles, tables, and other external data you want SOLIDWORKS to notice.
If you label your SOLIDWORKS folders by year, it may still be looking at last year’s folders for information. Generally, most file paths will appear as:
C:\ProgramData\SOLIDWORKS\SOLIDWORKS 20xx…
C:\Program Files\SOLIDWORKS Corp\SOLIDWORKS\Lang\*Language*…
We can manually alter these paths to a custom location by using ‘Add’ to find the preferred path, and ‘Delete’ the redundant locations. However, if you notice all paths reference the previous year, we can update all paths in one step.
Click ‘Edit All’. The resulting pop-up will show all current paths. Using the Find/Replace function, we can change the old year (2023) to the current year (2024). Select ‘Replace All’ and all system paths will modify to reference the most up-to-date files.
If you don’t include the year in the path, all other custom paths you’d set (network locations, PDM folders, 3DEXPERIENCE bookmarks) should automatically be correct, but we’d still recommend checking this post-upgrade.
#5 - Set up the SOLIDWORKS Toolbox
Another setting work checking is your Toolbox location. Depending on your installation settings, this may have changed to the default ‘SOLIDWORKS Data 20xx’ location. If you intended for this to be pointing at a shared toolbox (on a network, PDM Vault, 3DEXPERIENCE platform) you will need to modify this path.
Find ‘Hole Wizard/Toolbox’ in the System Options, and ensure the file path you see under ‘Hole Wizard and Toolbox folder’ is as expected. If not, use the […] to modify this path.
Like File Locations, there is a likelihood this path may be referencing an old, out-of-date path with a previous year. If this is the case you may run into issues when using the hole wizard/ Toolbox function, so manually change this path to the same year your SOLIDWORKS version. If the path appears correct and you’re still having issues with the Toolbox post-upgrade, or any other settings for that matter, please contact Support.
Tip: If you’re a SOLIDWORKS power user, with heavily configured settings, it’s worth saving them every now and again, to ensure you’ve got a backup of everything you’ve customised from factory. Drop-down System Options to find Save/Restore Settings.
From there, you can save settings from System Options to Mouse Gestures.
The resulting settings file can be saved to a network, or copied across machines, and ‘restored’ on a colleagues PC as a way to standardise system preferences across devices.
#6 - Explore the New Features!
Whenever you install SOLIDWORKS, you’ll be greeted with a ‘What’s New’ PDF. This is also accessible through Help -> What’s New within SOLIDWORKS, alongside a HTML format that forwards you to the SOLIDWORKS Help website.
However, skim-reading 200+ pages of features isn’t the best way to learn, so it’s worth checking toggling the ‘Interactive’ feature whenever you upgrade. This notifies you of new features within your own SOLIDWORKS interface, showing a ‘?’ on significantly changed PropertyManagers.
Clicking the ‘?’ symbol will highlight that specific enhancement in the guide, alongside examples of when it should be used.
Keep an eye out for our blogs and webinars whenever a new major release roles around. We’ll release short-form ‘Top 10’ videos to highlight the latest and greatest features from the latest version, and long-form webinars that get into the weeds of enhancements from SOLIDWORKS and its partner products. With a 2025 upgrade on the horizon, you can find this year’s Top 10 features by following: SOLIDWORKS What’s New 2025 – Top 10 Features .
Take the Next Steps
Discover all the latest updates across the SOLIDWORKS 2025 portfolio and how you can enhance your efficiency with our deep-dive webinar, blogs, and videos.
It’s more than just annual updates, though. Make the most of your SOLIDWORKS subscription with our Enhanced subscription package to unlock exclusive discounts, priority support, and so much more!