3d flow through fluid domain?

I'm not so sure SolidWorks can do simulations. FLUENT does fluid simulations. If you're a college student, this would most likely be available (if youre at an engineering based college). As for the modeling of the flow, I would recommend making it an incompressible flow. You are dealing with liquids and from the sounds of it you want the properties of the liquid. And I would also recommend using a viscous flow. Its an upward flow and this will have a large effect on the quality of the flow. There are many methods to use for turbulent flows, and more importantly transient flows, and they are all useful for specific types of flows. If you have a convection dominated flow (high Re) then you use one type (SIMPLE), if you have a diffusion dominated flow (low Re) then you use another (QUICK). Knowing only a little about your flow, I would recommend SIMPLE. Research turbulent modeling schemes and that should help further. Hope some of this helps.