I actually made a system image on my Studio XPS 16 and restored it on the drive in the XPS 17 to test. It seems to be an issue with the Nvidia driver. HOWEVER, performance sucks, dragging parts around is choppy, graphics is poor. It works as expected with minimal CPU usage when idling.

If I right click the solidworks icon and select to run it with the integrated graphics instead of the Nvidia GPU, I don't have these issues. When I close Solidworks, the sldworks.exe process keeps running and the CPU usage stays high. This is with the application just sitting there, no files open. One of the core's threads is pretty much pegged. When I open Solidworks, I get constant CPU usage of ~15%.

I was sent an XPS 17 as a warranty replacement for my Studio XPS 16. Awhile back I asked if anyone knew whether the XPS 15 with its Nvidia GPUs or the XPS 17 with its Nvidia GeForce GT 550M would work OK for Solidworks (CAD software.) Nobody answered, and I now have experience with it, so thought I'd put it out there in case anybody else wonders this.

Solidworks with geforce