Since some SolidWorks users work on their own patents or try to find patentable solutions, I thought I'ld mention something I found that some engineer friends have MISSED.
Using the USPTO.gov site is less friendly for basic searching in some ways, at least when you want to look at just a few patents.
Google now has a section called "Patents" (under MORE).
The neat thing about Google's results is that you get a thumbnail of the front page which blows up to the full front page when you search, which USPTO.gov does not do in the initial page results.
Lots of users of the USPTO.gov site, I've found don't know how useful the Advanced search is in finding relevant prior art AFTER THEY FIND A RELEVANT PATENT.
If you copy down a patent number on something you think is relevant to your work, and it is 4,000,007, that doesn't tell you much. But in Advanced if you do a query on "REF/4,000,007" you will get a list of 13 patents which issued AFTER 4,000,007 which refer to it as prior art, and which are certainly relevant to search through.
For fee patent databases for people doing serious work include Delphion.com &