Question 1

Create your Sibe account

Accepted Answer

You can create your Sibe account and land in a working workspace in one sitting. No credit card, no server to set up.

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Create the account

Go to sibe.io and click Try for free.
Enter your work email and click Continue.
Enter your full name and set a password.
Accept the Privacy Policy and Terms, then click Sign up. If the button reads Sign In instead, that email already has an account.
Wait while your workspace is prepared.
Answer the setup survey: goals, team size, CAD software, current file setup.
Click Start to open your workspace.

What happens next

You land in your workspace with the Setup Guide open and four steps waiting:

Install the add-in
Import via the add-in
View files in the dashboard
Check out a file

The next two articles cover all four. Your CAD lives under the Vault icon in the left navigation.

Common questions

Do I need a credit card? No. The trial runs 14 days with no credit card.

Do I need to install anything to sign up? No. You create the account in a browser. The native add-in for SOLIDWORKS® 3D CAD comes next, in Install the Sibe add-in for SolidWorks.

What does the setup survey do? Your answers about goals, team size, CAD software and current file setup shape how your workspace is set up, so you do not s

Question 2

Install the Sibe add-in for SolidWorks

Accepted Answer

You can have the Sibe add-in running in SOLIDWORKS® 3D CAD with one setting to think about, and two housekeeping steps that stop most install problems before they start.

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Before you start

Windows, with SolidWorks installed and closed
Administrative privileges on the machine: the installer raises a Windows User Account Control prompt

Clear the decks first

Most failed installs are leftovers from an earlier one.

Open C:\Users\your_username\AppData\Local\Temp. If you cannot see it, turn on View → Show → Hidden items in File Explorer.
Press Ctrl+A, then Shift+Delete. Skip anything Windows says is in use.
Restart the machine.

Install the add-in

Sign in to your Sibe workspace and click Add-in in the left sidebar.
Click Download the SolidWorks add-in.
Open the downloaded file and click Yes at the Windows User Account Control prompt.
Click Next.
Read and accept the license agreement, then Next.
Keep the default install location, or change it if you need to.
Click Install, then Close.
Restart once more so SolidWorks picks the add-in up.

Or grab it straight from here: Download the Sibe add-in for SolidWorks.

Rolling it out across a team? Ask support about the silent install. It takes the click-through out of the process.

Check it worked

Open SolidWorks and look under

Question 3

Start here: the Sibe onboarding series

Accepted Answer

You can go from an empty account to a checked-in assembly with approved revisions by working through twelve short videos, in order, in a single afternoon.

Ken Maren, Chief Solutions Architect at Sibe, walks every step. Each video has a written article to go with it, so you can watch it once and come back to the steps later.

Three ways through the series. Click any step below to open its written guide. Use the Related articles list on the left of this page to jump straight to any of them. Or watch the full onboarding playlist on YouTube end to end.

The series

Set up

Configure

04 · Workspace settings: metadata, sync and references: what carries over from SolidWorks, and who sees what · 5:46
**[05 · Seats, roles and fo

Question 4

Sibe | What's New in January 2026

Accepted Answer

What’s New in Sibe: January 2026

Q: Smarter Reference Handling for SolidWorks | April 2026

A set of new capabilities that give <a href="https://www.sibe.io/">Sibe</a> a deeper understanding of how your <a href="https://www.sibe.io/features/cad-file-management">SolidWorks files connect</a>, and repair what shared drives can't. Sibe is a cost-effective <a href="https://www.sibe.io/cloud-cad-management">Cloud CAD Document Management platform with a native SolidWorks add-in</a>, engineered for engineering teams that want clean <a href="https://www.sibe.io/features/cloud-version-control-for-solidworks">version control</a>, reliable references, and release-ready handoffs, with free unlimited web visitors. No servers, no VPNs, no admin hassles. This release builds on the file-centric Add-in we shipped earlier this year. It focuses on the part of the job shared drives and folder-based tools consistently get wrong: understanding how SolidWorks files relate to each other, and keeping those relationships intact as your team moves, renames, and refactors. ${frame}<a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HLV7HsCMOJM"></a> Here's what's new: <ul> <li>SolidWorks custom properties in your workspace Sibe now reads SolidWorks custom properties directly and displays them in the web dashboard. Part Number, Author, Description, Assembly, Action or any custom field your team defines is visible to engineers and non-engineers alike, without opening SolidWorks (Example metadata shown in the screenshot below: Action, Assembly, Author). </li> </ul> Workspace admins can toggle which properties are active under Settings → Metadata, so only the fields

Sibe has had a major overhaul. Both in front and behind the curtain. We have listened to your requests and have started from the ground up to bring you those changes. We are off to an amazing start in 2026. And here are those changes:

1. Upload through the Web Dashboard

As the title suggests, you can now upload SolidWorks files through the Web Dashboard. Upload files individually or an entire folder's worth.

Upload This method also supports sub-folders. Speaking of:

2. Multi-Level Folder Support

Create as many layers of folders as needed. Try to remember that when these files cache, Windows does have a 255-character file name + path limit.

3. Settings UI

Settings now is located on the sidebar, and under Settings is where Tags and Add-Ins are now located.

Settings

4. Releasing Files now locks released files

By popular demand. Releasing files now automatically locks files. This prevents released files from being checked out. Those that are owners of that folder must unlock files that need changes.

Release Auto Locks Files

5. Tabs!

The Add-In UI has been overhauled as well. We no longer hav

Question 5

Smarter Reference Handling for SolidWorks | April 2026

Accepted Answer

A set of new capabilities that give Sibe a deeper understanding of how your SolidWorks files connect, and repair what shared drives can't.

Sibe is a cost-effective Cloud CAD Document Management platform with a native SolidWorks add-in, engineered for engineering teams that want clean version control, reliable references, and release-ready handoffs, with free unlimited web visitors. No servers, no VPNs, no admin hassles.

This release builds on the file-centric Add-in we shipped earlier this year. It focuses on the part of the job shared drives and folder-based tools consistently get wrong: understanding how SolidWorks files relate to each other, and keeping those relationships intact as your team moves, renames, and refactors.

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Here's what's new:

SolidWorks custom properties in your workspace Sibe now reads SolidWorks custom properties directly and displays them in the web dashboard. Part Number, Author, Description, Assembly, Action or any custom field your team defines is visible to engineers and non-engineers alike, without opening SolidWorks (Example metadata shown in the screenshot below: Action, Assembly, Author).

Workspace admins can toggle which properties are active under Settings → Metadata, so only the fields

Question 6

The Sibe add-in for SolidWorks, in depth

Accepted Answer

You can run your whole day from the add-in panel, directly in SOLIDWORKS® 3D CAD: find a file, see who has it, check it out, check it back in with a note.

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The panel lives in the right-hand task pane and has four tabs: Vault, Changes, References and Settings.

Vault tab

Refresh the vault, open the local folder, clear or re-download the cache, turn sync off for a folder
Switch between tree view and flat view, with or without the description column
The triangle icon collapses and expands folders
Double-click a file to open it. Its name shows in bold while it is open in SolidWorks
Right-click → Check-out to claim a file
A small pencil icon marks a file you have modified locally; new files carry an added locally icon
Non-CAD files work too: double-click a spreadsheet and it opens in its own application
Favorite Folders and Locate Active Document get you back to what you were working on

Find a file

Search across file name and description at the same time, and both are highlighted in the results
Sort by name, description or checked-out state, or by clicking a column
Filter to SolidWorks files only, or to files checked out by you

Changes tab

You see what is waiting to be checked in on the Changes tab. The notes field is required. The note becomes the version history, so future-you can tell what changed without opening the file.

After

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