So I was under the impression that Solidworks Electrical had over 500,000 parts form different suppliers in their library. However after paying for the software I found these had to be downloaded from their portal (which is fine) but what I've now realised is that 99% of these parts are incomplete. In Solidworks Electrical almost all of them don't have the most basic information needed to make line drawings/schematics/3d assemblies. Surely I must be missing something - does anyone know if these are just generally not included when downloading the files form the Solidworks Electrical Portal? Would be pretty pointless if parts don't have 3d models or any circuit information.... Most don't even have a line diagram symbol with them.
For example, this is all the information included with most parts, just a reference number, manufacture details and a couple of other details.
Jacob, it really varies from Manufacturer to manufacturer in the portal, and while it sounds good to say "135 million parts!" or whatever the count is up to, results may vary. Some are very polished and complete, others it seems the creators just wanted to check it off their list. This is NOT generated by SW, it is a service of the manufacturers as more of a crowd-sourcing "best interest" relationship.
It is still a time savings to download parts from the portal, even if you have to add the rest of the details, but plan on checking over those part additions and adding what's needed. Adding the circuits is honestly very quick, and you can easily copy/paste existing part circuits between parts, just right click on one part in your library, choose "copy circuits" then choose the part that has no circuits and "paste circuits" to build up those terminal/circuit connections quickly.