That's not just Solidworks. It's pretty much all parametric CAD systems. I don't expect that to change any day soon. The problem they have is massive develop

That's not just Solidworks. It's pretty much all parametric CAD systems. I don't expect that to change any day soon. The problem they have is massive development, small market, big costs. Back revision compatibility would kill their development engines. It's a tough scene. I worked in it for 25 years. The other thing people should realize is all the CAD tool vendors are generally funding complex PLM / PDM system development necessary for larger scale users to operate on large products and across many teams. This is a significant portion of annual license fees. As a small team or individual, one can use STEP. Now, admittedly the ability of Solidworks to work with STEP files is limited. (I would not want that job) Personally, if I were going to get a license and just run it, I would get a system much more capable in that area. NX, as an example, is excellent, and I know many who have older licenses who do a lot of work just fine that way. Most everything can be done, and the skillset is not unlike what we use in some of the open CAD systems. A native file is not always required when the modeler offers direct modeling as well as parametric. Just FYI. Finally, anyone needing to interact with CAD needs to build license costs into their rates. It's too expensive to do otherwise. Let the work pay for the tool.