Building valuable experience and paying for college with online SOLIDWORKS internships

SOLIDWORKS  on Tethys Engineering

Tethys Engineering makes it possible for students to work with a commercial license of SOLIDWORKS for the purpose of participating to online internships.

It offers a unique opportunity for students to gain valuable experience while earning an income to help pay for tuition. In addition, students can receive structured feedback from their business counterparts and enrich their apprenticeship journal on Tethys. All reviews and ratings can be certified and be an important part of a student's resume.

The software licenses is directly available in a browser window either on PC or Mac and the cost of software usage monitored in real time. Below are the steps a student can take to get started.

Getting into a SOLIDWORKS internship

There are a number of steps to take in order to get into a SOLIDWORKS internship. The first and probably most important one is to find a customer. Tethys will continue its efforts to attract various businesses to the platform but the best way to get things started is for students to reach out to businesses they may have had an internship with in the past and explore the option to work online with SOLIDWORKS through the Tethys platform. With that in mind, here are the steps needed:

Step 1 - Get a student gold subscription

Access to SOLIDWORKS is only available with the most complete subscription on  Tethys. It will also require the business customer involved in the internship to have a "Business Plus" subscription

Step 2 - Set up the SOLIDWORKS services

​Students are independent contractors on Tethys and provide services to customers as part of online internship activities, To set this up, the student will need to access the "Business tools" on Tethys, create a store, and add various services to the store. In doing so, the student will have the opportunity to define the price of the service provided which needs to include the access fee for Tethys and the cost of running the software. A pricing tool widget is available below the vertical menu to determine what those total costs are.

Step 3 - Get access to the commercial SOLIDWORKS license

Only verified students can access the commercial SOLIDWORKS license on Tethys. To verify that the student is part of a qualifying educational program, a verification process is needed. This process can be started now by emailing to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and requesting SOLIDWORKS access.

Information needed:

​- First Name, Last Name and current address

- Copy of Student ID card

- Copy of last enrollment statement from the qualifying school (I.e., US and Canada 2 or 4 years degree)

Once the verification is completed, the student will be given access to the "Software Access> Appstream" dashboard from which the option to launch browser base software session will be made available.

Step 4 - Get to work!

That is it, at this stage a student will have what he/she needs in order to get into a work group (see how to create or participate to a work group in the "Help Center"), manage activities, get time sheet approved, and get paid for the work done using SOLIDWORKS 

​Once launched, the package available to the student includes SOLIDWORKS, eDrawings (the SOLIDWORKS file viewer) and WorkDocs drive. All those applications will run within the user's browser window.

WorkDoc drive is part of this initial package to allow file sharing among a group of users. The first time the application is launched, a user will need to create a WordDoc account. This is not managed by Tethys for security and privacy reasons. The WorkDoc network drive will be mounted as the W:/ drive when SOLIDWORKS is launched. WorkDocs need to run simultaneously in order for this to work. A local sync option is also offered by WorkDoc to allow user to move files to local drives and work with local installation of SOLIDWORKS.