Are There Any Updates to Technical Drawings? | What’s New in SOLIDWORKS 2025

This year, SOLIDWORKS sees possibly the most exciting update to technical drawings since the invention of CAD.

SOLIDWORKS 2025 introduces a series of exciting updates aimed at improving the drawings environment, making it easier for users to create, manage, and update their drawings with greater efficiency.

Whether you’re working with bills of materials (BOMs), surface finish symbols, or exporting DXF/DWG files, SOLIDWORKS 2025 brings tools that streamline these tasks.

Here’s a breakdown of the major enhancements to the drawings environment.

#1 – Reload Drawings for Easier Version Management

One of the standout features in SOLIDWORKS 2025 is the ability to reload drawings, which will help users to quickly reverse unwanted changes.

This feature allows you to quickly revert a drawing to its last saved version with just a single click—no more closing and reopening the drawing or losing progress.

The reload function comes with a dialog box that alerts users to any potential loss of changes, ensuring that you are always in control of your drawings’ revisions and up-to-date with the most recent save.

#2 – Enhanced Bills of Materials (BOM) with Cut List Integration

Bills of Materials (BOMs) have received notable enhancements, particularly for assemblies containing welded components.

In previous versions of SOLIDWORKS, users could include detailed cut lists in BOMs, which was especially useful for welding designs. Now, in SOLIDWORKS 2025, a BOM can be used to fully replace a standard cut list.

Using the ‘calculate quantity using BOM quantity’ checkbox, users can override the quantity value to read assigned cut-list properties instead (such as length).

This improvement makes it easier to manage the quantities of welded parts and components directly from the BOM without needing to handle a separate cut list.

#3 – Surface Finish Symbol Updates for ISO 21920 Standard

To ensure that your drawings comply with the latest industry standards, SOLIDWORKS 2025 introduces updates to surface finish symbols based on the ISO 21920 standard.

This update provides better consistency in your annotations and helps users ensure that their drawings align with the latest guidelines for surface finishes.

Users can also use saved styles to streamline the process of adding repeated surface finish annotations throughout the drawing.

#4 – Improved DXF/DWG Export with Drawing Views as Blocks

Exporting drawings to DXF and DWG formats is now easier than ever. A major enhancement in SOLIDWORKS 2025 is the ability to export drawing views as blocks, which eliminates a time-consuming step when opening drawings in 2D CAD programs like DraftSight.

Traditionally, users had to manually select all individual entities for each view and convert them into blocks to make editing in 2D CAD software possible.

With this new option, SOLIDWORKS automatically exports the drawing views as blocks, allowing for a seamless transition between your SOLIDWORKS drawings and 2D CAD programs.

#5 – Automated Drawing Creation

Okay, hyperbole aside, this is a great feature and looks to be one that will receive continued investment in the future, the headliner? SOLIDWORKS 2025 can automatically generate 2D technical drawings.

Annotated drawing views can be created for SOLIDWORKS parts and assemblies within your custom drawing borders in just a few clicks!

It’s a good way to get the bulk of the heavy lifting done before checking over the annotations and adding markups before design reviews.