If you are a MECAD subscription customer, you already have access to a set of SOLIDWORKS automation tools that you may never have opened. myCADtools, a SOLIDWORKS Gold Certified add-in suite of over 70 productivity utilities developed by Visiativ, is included free for the first 12 months of your MECAD SOLIDWORKS subscription. After that initial period, Elite Enhanced Subscription customers qualify for a 50% discount on annual renewals, while standard subscription customers can renew at the standard rate. Either way, these tools pay for themselves quickly once you see what they replace.

As an Applications Technician at MECAD Systems, I recently hosted a webinar to walk SOLIDWORKS users through the tools that make the biggest practical difference in a design office. This article covers what we demonstrated, the customer reactions that stood out, and how you can start using these tools today.

Watch the Full Webinar.

If you prefer to see these tools in action rather than read about them, the full recording of our 9 April myCADtools webinar is available above. The session includes live demonstrations of every tool discussed in this article using real SOLIDWORKS models.

Bulk Flat Pattern Exports That Made a Room Full of Engineers Laugh

If your business works with sheet metal, whether you are designing enclosures, brackets, panels, or chassis, you know the standard SOLIDWORKS workflow for getting flat patterns to the workshop: open each sheet metal part individually, ensure the Flatten feature is unsuppressed, then use File > Save As to export the DXF. For a project with 50 or 100 sheet metal components, this process can consume an entire day.

myCADtools’ SheetMetalManufacturing tool eliminates this entirely. You point it at an assembly, and it automatically exports every sheet metal flat pattern layout to DXF or DWG files. The output is organised by material thickness, either grouped on separate sheets within a single drawing file or split into individual files per thickness group. Custom properties are inserted below each generated view, so your laser cutter or press brake operator receives all the information they need without opening SOLIDWORKS. I demonstrated this to a fabrication company in KwaZulu-Natal during an on-site visit. Their engineering team was watching as the tool processed an assembly with over 80 sheet metal parts. When every flat pattern appeared within seconds, organised by thickness, with properties below each view, the room literally chuckled. Their lead designer said they had been spending the better part of a day doing that exact job manually on every project. That reaction tells you everything about the gap between what people are doing by hand and what automation can handle.

From BOM Headaches to One-Click Project Outputs

Two tools that consistently surprise customers are SmartBOM and BatchConverter. They solve different problems, but together they cover the bulk of what I call “project admin”: the work you do after the design is done but before anything reaches production or the client.

SmartBOM creates multiple Bills of Materials in a single operation from an assembly or a Windows folder, filtered by type: manufacturing, purchasing, or custom categories. It extracts welded components directly from assembly BOMs, concatenates multiple properties into single columns, and exports to Excel complete with 3D previews of each component. A mid-sized fabrication shop in the Eastern Cape told me they had been building BOMs by hand in spreadsheets, cross-referencing their 3D assemblies against 2D drawings. SmartBOM cut that process from hours to minutes per project, and because it reads directly from the SOLIDWORKS model, the data always reflects the latest design revision.

BatchConverter does for file exports what SmartBOM does for data extraction. Select a project folder and convert every SOLIDWORKS part, assembly, or drawing into any supported format: PDF, STEP, IGES, DXF, TIFF, or multiple formats simultaneously. It supports export by configuration, lets you define naming rules based on file properties, and can automatically retrieve and concatenate all assembly drawings into a single PDF. Need to send a complete set of production PDFs to a client before end of day? It takes a few clicks, not a few hours.

Keeping Your Data Clean and Your Team Aligned

Beyond individual project tasks, myCADtools includes utilities that address data quality and team consistency across your entire design office.

BatchProperties lets you apply or update custom properties across hundreds of SOLIDWORKS files in one pass. Whether you need to populate missing descriptions, correct material specifications, or add revision numbers to legacy data, this tool processes them without opening each file individually. A customer in Gauteng running a design office with about 12 seats told me they spent an entire week manually cleaning up legacy property data before a SOLIDWORKS PDM migration. With BatchProperties, that job would have taken an afternoon.

For teams with multiple SOLIDWORKS users, CopyOptions solves a persistent problem: inconsistent document options across workstations. It copies SOLIDWORKS custom properties, materials, colours, layers, and drawing backgrounds from a reference document to any number of target documents of the same type. The official documentation notes that for a batch of 200 drawings, manually updating title blocks and document options would take roughly 16 hours. CopyOptions handles it in a single operation.

AssemblyBoard is another tool worth knowing. It automatically creates visual nomenclature views of your assemblies in the form of component boards, essentially graphic assembly guides your workshop can follow. For companies that do not have formal work instructions, this is an immediate, low-effort upgrade to how information reaches the production floor.

One thing customers consistently appreciate is that myCADtools integrates directly into SOLIDWORKS as a dedicated tab in the CommandManager and through the Task Pane. You access tools without leaving your modelling environment, so there is no context switching. But if you prefer, myCADtools can also be launched as a standalone Windows application for batch operations, which is especially useful for CAD managers who need to process files without tying up a SOLIDWORKS licence.

I have only scratched the surface in this article. The myCADtools suite includes over 70 utilities covering everything from SmartProperties for automated part numbering, to ProjectManager for duplicating and restructuring entire project folders, to FindDocuments for searching files without a PDM vault. It is not possible to do justice to all of them here. If you want to explore the full range, our MECAD myCADtools YouTube playlist walks through each tool with live demonstrations:

Watch the full myCADtools playlist on YouTube.

And if you want to go a step further, Elite Enhanced Subscription customers have access to a two-hour Ask-an-Expert session with a MECAD specialist, included once per subscription year. This is not just general support. Our engineers can sit down with you, review your specific workflows, and help you develop a tailored approach to using myCADtools that fits how your team actually works. Whether you need to set up SheetMetalManufacturing templates for your standard material thicknesses, configure Integration rules for your company’s property standards, or build a BatchConverter routine for your end-of-project deliverables, the Ask-an-Expert session is the fastest way to get there.

How to Access myCADtools Through Your MECAD Subscription

Every MECAD SOLIDWORKS subscription customer receives myCADtools free for the first 12 months as a standard subscription benefit. During this period, you have full access to the entire suite. After 12 months, the licence tokens are revoked, and you will need to renew to continue using the tools.

This is where your subscription tier matters:

• Elite Enhanced Subscription customers are eligible for a 50% discount on the myCADtools annual licence fee for each SOLIDWORKS CAD seat covered under the plan. This benefit must be explicitly requested before your renewal date.
• Standard subscription customers can renew myCADtools at the standard annual rate by contacting our sales team.

The Elite Enhanced Subscription is a package valued at over R40 000 in added value, which also includes on-demand training with SolidProfessor, an R3 000 instructor-led training credit per subscription, a two-hour Ask-an-Expert consultation with a MECAD specialist, and discounts on consulting services and Service Level Agreements.

If you are not sure which plan you are on, or if you want to activate the myCADtools benefit, contact your MECAD account manager or our sales team. Our support team will assist with installation and a walkthrough to get you started.

View the full Elite Enhanced Subscription benefits.

What You Should Do Next

If you are spending hours on tasks that should take minutes, myCADtools is likely already available to you. Here are the key points:

• SheetMetalManufacturing exports every flat pattern in a project to DXF in seconds, organised by thickness, with properties below each view.
• SmartBOM and BatchConverter eliminate manual BOM compilation and file conversion, two of the biggest time drains in any design office.
• BatchProperties, CopyOptions, and AssemblyBoard keep your data clean, your team aligned, and your workshop informed.
• The suite integrates directly into the SOLIDWORKS CommandManager and Task Pane, and also runs as a standalone Windows application.
• All MECAD subscription customers get myCADtools free for the first 12 months. After that, Elite customers renew at 50% off; standard customers renew at the standard rate.

Contact your MECAD account manager or email sales@mecad.co.za to activate or renew your licence.