- What CSWP-API Actually Is
- The Exam at a Glance
- Two Halves: 18 Tasks and 10 Questions
- The 15 Objectives, Grouped by What You Actually Do
- Why VBA Comes First
- What CSWP-API Is Not: Add-ins, PDM and Other Credentials
- Who Benefits from the Credential
- Registration, Fees and Logistics
- A Preparation Path for CAD Users Without a Programming Background
- Frequently Asked Questions
- CSWP-API is SOLIDWORKS' Certified SOLIDWORKS Professional API credential, focused on Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) automation.
- The exam has 28 questions: 18 hands-on automation tasks and 10 multiple-choice questions, in 120 minutes.
- You need 70 of 100 points to pass; no prior certification is required to sit the exam.
- The official sample contains only four multiple-choice questions, so you must build your own hands-on practice.
What CSWP-API Actually Is
CSWP-API stands for Certified SOLIDWORKS Professional API. It is a credential offered by SOLIDWORKS, a Dassault Systemes brand, that verifies you can automate SOLIDWORKS by writing code against its application programming interface. Where most SOLIDWORKS certifications test whether you can model a part or assemble a mechanism by hand, this one tests whether you can make the software do that work for you through macros.
The exam's public focus is Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), the scripting environment built into SOLIDWORKS. You open the macro editor, write or edit code, call the API, and produce a result in a real SOLIDWORKS session. That makes it one of the more unusual certifications in the CAD world: it sits at the intersection of design knowledge and programming skill, and you need both.
If you are looking for related definitions, our pages on what CSWP-API stands for and the meaning of CSWP-API cover the terminology in more detail. This article focuses on what the credential contains and who it is for.
The Exam at a Glance
Before going deeper, here are the confirmed facts from the issuer's exam page and its linked certification guide.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Credential | Certified SOLIDWORKS Professional API (CSWP-API) |
| Issuer | SOLIDWORKS, Dassault Systemes |
| Format | 28 questions: 18 hands-on automation tasks, 10 multiple-choice |
| Duration | 120 minutes (two hours) |
| Scoring | 100 total points; 70 required to pass |
| Language focus | Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) |
| Minimum software | SOLIDWORKS 2017 or later |
| Fee (North America) | US$49 for one attempt, excluding software and training |
| Retakes | New CSWP-API credit required; at least a 14-day wait |
| Prerequisite certification | None required |
Two details deserve emphasis. First, the 70% passing grade is a score threshold, not a published pass rate; we have not verified any population pass rate, and you should be skeptical of sites that quote one. Our pass rate analysis explains what can and cannot be said. Second, the exam cannot be paused. Two hours is a fixed window, which shapes how you should rehearse.
Two Halves: 18 Tasks and 10 Questions
The structure is what makes CSWP-API different from a typical multiple-choice certification. Eighteen of the 28 questions are hands-on automation tasks, and ten are multiple choice. The practical consequence is that most of your preparation time belongs in the VBA editor, not in a flashcard app.
The hands-on automation tasks
These tasks put you in front of SOLIDWORKS with a macro environment and ask you to produce a result: create geometry, add a feature, insert a view, write a property, save a file. You are working in your own installation of SOLIDWORKS, either a working commercial license or student software, with your own internet connection. The linked guide describes the exam as non-proctored and online.
Because the tasks are executed against real models, they reward candidates who can read API Help quickly, recognize the right interface for the job, and debug when a call returns nothing. Knowing a method name from memory helps, but knowing how to find and verify it under time pressure helps more.
The multiple-choice questions
The ten multiple-choice questions probe conceptual understanding: how the object model is organized, what a method returns, why a piece of code fails. The issuer's practice sample contains only four multiple-choice questions, not a full 28-question mock, so there is no official full-length rehearsal. Anyone selling you a "real" practice exam is selling an approximation; the honest approach is to practice the skills directly.
The 15 Objectives, Grouped by What You Actually Do
The issuer lists 15 exam objectives. They are unweighted: the issuer publishes no percentage breakdown, and describes the task list as non-exhaustive, so treat each objective as a minimum area of competence rather than a guaranteed question count. Some drawing-related headings overlap, and they are retained here as the issuer wrote them. For a deeper walk-through, see our complete guide to all 15 CSWP-API content areas.
Rather than reading them as a flat list, it helps to group them by the kind of work they represent.
Foundations: Understanding the API Object Model and Troubleshooting
These two objectives underpin everything else.
- The object model is a hierarchy: the application object leads to documents, which lead to features, sketches, views and components.
- You must know how to navigate from one object to another and which interface exposes which method.
- Troubleshooting means reading return values, checking for null objects, stepping through code and interpreting why a call silently did nothing.
Part and Assembly Work: Part design automation, Assembly automation, Adding sketch entities and dimensions, Feature creations such as extrudes and cuts
This cluster is about building and editing 3D content from code.
- Sketches are created on planes, entities are added with specific methods, and dimensions are applied afterward.
- Features such as extrudes and cuts depend on a correctly prepared sketch and correct selection.
- Assembly automation involves working with components inside an assembly document.
Navigation and State: Selection and traversal techniques, Hide/Suppress/Resolve components
Selection is where many candidates stumble, because the API often requires an explicit selection before an action works.
- Traversal means walking through features, bodies, faces or components programmatically.
- Component states (hidden, suppressed, resolved) are changed through specific calls and affect what the rest of your code can see.
Drawings: Drawing Automation, Creation of drawings, Insert drawing views, Insert a BOM, Save drawings in different file formats
Five of the fifteen objectives touch drawings, making this the largest thematic cluster.
- Create a drawing document, place views of a model, and add a bill of materials.
- Export or save drawings in different file formats.
- Expect the overlap in the issuer's headings to mean related skills tested in slightly different ways.
Data and Housekeeping: Add custom properties, Save and close documents
These objectives sound small but appear in nearly every real automation.
- Custom properties carry part numbers, descriptions and other metadata, and they feed BOMs and drawing notes.
- Saving and closing documents cleanly prevents the locked-file and open-session problems that break later steps.
Because the objectives are unweighted, resist the temptation to guess which clusters carry more points. A safer strategy is to reach working competence in every cluster, then spend extra time on the ones where your macros fail most often.
Why VBA Comes First
SOLIDWORKS can be automated in several languages, but the CSWP-API exam centers on VBA. That choice matters for how you prepare. VBA lives inside the SOLIDWORKS macro editor, requires no separate development environment, and is the language the macro recorder generates. For many CAD professionals it is also the most approachable entry point into programming.
The macro recorder is a starting point, not a solution
SOLIDWORKS can record your interactive actions and produce VBA code. This is a useful way to discover which API calls correspond to which commands. But recorded macros are brittle: they often hard-code selections, record UI-dependent steps, and omit the error handling you need. On the exam you will need to understand and modify code, not just replay it. Treat the recorder as a way to find method names, then rewrite the result so it is robust.
API Help is your most important reference
Being able to search the SOLIDWORKS API Help, identify the correct interface and read a method's signature is a core skill. Practice looking up a method you have never used and implementing it from the documentation alone. That is exactly the situation a hands-on exam task creates.
What CSWP-API Is Not: Add-ins, PDM and Other Credentials
It is worth drawing boundaries, because the SOLIDWORKS API world is broad and the exam covers only part of it.
- It is not a C# add-in credential. Building a compiled add-in with its own user interface, in C# or VB.NET, is a different discipline from writing VBA macros. The exam's stated focus is VBA.
- It is not a PDM API credential. Automating SOLIDWORKS PDM through its own API is a separate area with its own objects and concepts.
- It is not a general CSWP. The standard CSWP certification tests modeling skills. For a comparison, see how the two differ in our CSWP-API certification overview.
Who Benefits from the Credential
CSWP-API suits people whose work already involves SOLIDWORKS and who are tired of repeating the same steps by hand. Typical profiles include:
- Design engineers and CAD administrators who want to automate drawing creation, property population and file export across many models.
- Applications engineers and technical support staff at resellers who help customers automate their workflows.
- Engineering teams with repetitive configuration or release tasks, where a single reliable macro can replace hours of manual clicking.
- Aspiring automation developers who want a recognized checkpoint before moving into add-in development.
On the question of money, we deliberately avoid inventing numbers. There is no verified data tying this specific certification to a defined salary uplift. The credential's value is better judged by demonstrated automation value: the hours you save a team, the errors you remove from release packages, the workflows you make repeatable. Our ROI analysis and salary guide walk through how to evaluate that honestly, and the CSWP-API jobs page covers the kinds of roles where it helps.
Registration, Fees and Logistics
The exam is delivered through SOLIDWORKS' certification program using Tangix/VirtualTester. Follow the current VirtualTester Web Client instructions; they take precedence over the older TesterPRO installation and crash-recovery language that still appears in the linked guide.
- Fee: US$49 for one North American attempt, not including software or training. Our cost breakdown explains what that does and does not cover.
- Software: SOLIDWORKS 2017 or later. Note that 2017 is a software minimum, not an exam-version label; the live exam page and the sample guide are undated.
- Environment: your own working commercial or student SOLIDWORKS installation and a stable internet connection. The exam is non-proctored.
- Time: two hours, no pause.
- Retakes: a new CSWP-API credit and at least 14 days between attempts.
- Validity: the issuer's 2020 Certification Program Q&A states that customer and student certifications do not expire.
For eligibility and scheduling specifics, see CSWP-API requirements and exam dates and scheduling. Recommended preparation includes SOLIDWORKS Design Essentials and API Fundamentals, but these are recommendations, not admission requirements. The public API Fundamentals course is a three-day offering, and that length is unrelated to the two-hour exam; it is a preparation curriculum, not an official exam blueprint.
A Preparation Path for CAD Users Without a Programming Background
If you can model confidently but have never written code, you can still build toward this exam in a sensible order. The sequence below ties each stage to specific objectives rather than to generic study habits. A fuller plan is in our CSWP-API study guide.
Learn the language and the object model
- Write small VBA procedures: variables, conditionals, loops, simple error handling.
- Connect to the running SOLIDWORKS session and open a document from code.
- Practice navigating the object model and reading API Help until it feels routine.
Build geometry from code
- Create sketches, add entities and apply dimensions.
- Create extrudes and cuts, and confirm the feature appears in the tree.
- Practice selection and traversal, since features depend on correct selection.
Assemblies and component states
- Work with components in an assembly and traverse them.
- Hide, suppress and resolve components and verify the result.
Drawings, properties and saving
- Create a drawing, insert views, add a BOM and save in multiple formats.
- Write custom properties, then save and close documents cleanly.
Timed rehearsal
- Run a full two-hour session with your own task list, mixing hands-on work and concept review.
- Debug failures instead of skipping them; troubleshooting is itself an objective.
Key Takeaway
Verify every macro against its result. After each practice task, check the model: is the feature in the tree, is the property populated, does the exported file open? Learning to confirm output, not just run code without errors, is the habit that separates a passing attempt from a frustrating one. For a compact refresher before exam day, use the CSWP-API cheat sheet, and when you want guided training options, start there.
For difficulty expectations, how hard the CSWP-API exam is gives a realistic picture, and the passing score page explains how the 70-point threshold works in practice. When you are ready to test yourself, our CSWP-API practice questions help you check conceptual knowledge between hands-on sessions.
Frequently Asked Questions
It certifies that you can automate SOLIDWORKS using the SOLIDWORKS API, with the exam focused on Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). It is issued by SOLIDWORKS, a Dassault Systemes brand.
There are 28 questions: 18 hands-on automation tasks and 10 multiple-choice questions, worth 100 total points. You need 70 points to pass, and you have 120 minutes.
No. No prior certification is required. SOLIDWORKS Design Essentials and API Fundamentals are recommended preparation, but training courses are not exam admission requirements.
The issuer's 2020 Certification Program Q&A states that customer and student certifications do not expire. Always check the issuer's current pages for any policy updates.
Yes. The guide describes a non-proctored online exam using your own working commercial or student software, SOLIDWORKS 2017 or later, and your own internet connection. Follow the current VirtualTester Web Client instructions for delivery details.
No. The issuer's guide includes only four multiple-choice sample questions, not a complete 28-question mock. Build your own hands-on practice from the 15 listed objectives, and use practice questions to check conceptual understanding.