I'm doing an ME degree right now, and they teach us both Solidworks and Pro-E (now Creo Parametric.)

If I remember the results of googling 'Creo vs Solidworks' correctly, Creo is better at handling really big assemblies and is used extensively in automotive industry. Most of my peers prefer Solidworks.

As I recall, SolidWorks took the majority of the market from Pro-E in the early 2000's by charging (IIRC) $4k when Pro-E was more like $20k.

I don't know what SolidWorks charges now, but I heard that the price is considerably more than $4k.