Common Support Calls in August '11
Our Technical Support team offers fantastic telephone support as and when you need it. This month sees the introduction of our Technical Support Newsletter for supported customers, which will cover tips and tricks to handle our most common support calls. Our aim is for this to grow into a valuable knowledge base to further enrich our service to you and ensure we continue to be the best SolidWorks reseller in Europe for customer satisfaction.
Technical Support Manager, Ed Hawkins answers this month's ten most common support calls...
- Cosmetic Threads not displaying callouts
- Where has my VaultAdmin tool gone
- "Part is in a rolled back state and is inaccessible now"
- Cannot activate SolidWorks
- Customer Portal - locked out
- Large toolbox components on opening assemblies
- Graphics problems
- Configuring Toolbox for easier selection with Hole Wizard
- PDMWorkgroup - why is a file read-only?
- What is the best file format for import to SolidWorks?
1. Cosmetic Threads not displaying callouts
If you have created a hole with the Hole Wizard and when you dimension it at drawing level it looks like this:
then you might not be getting all the information you require. Try right-clicking on the cosmetic thread and selecting "Insert Callout". Alternatively, select "Hole Callout" from the annotation toolbar and you can make it look like this:
2. Where has my VaultAdmin tool gone
On a re-install of SolidWorks or an upgrade to a service pack you may lose the VaultAdmin tool from your programs. This is because the installation manager is not set to install it by default.
Upon installation, when you are on the "Product Selection" page make sure you expand the section called "SolidWorks Explorer/PDM" and check the box that says "PDM VaultAdmin". Retrospectively, you can go into "Control Panel", Add/Remove Programs (or "Programs and Features" under Windows 7) and select "change" on the SolidWorks entry. Then make sure you select the "Modify" option on the installation manager and keep clicking next until you get to the "Product Selection" page.
3. "Part is in a rolled back state and is inaccessible now"
This can sometimes happen when switching between an assembly and component part. It can be quite frustrating when it does happen as more often than not the part is not in a rolled back state. We have found that locating a part in the tree with a rebuild sign next to it (traffic lights) is where the problem lies. If you open this component and then go to File -> Reload, the problem should be solved. Unfortunately, you may lose any changes made to that part if you haven't saved.
This is a common problem that is now easily sorted by the customer. You have a new machine but have forgotten to transfer the SolidWorks licence from the machine. This can also occur if the hard drive has been changed or if you have uninstalled SolidWorks and not transferred the licence. Previously, we would have to transfer this at our end but now the user can now go to the customer portal and download the activation manager.
Running this program will allow you to transfer any active SolidWorks licence off the machine, allowing it to be activated on another.
If you are still seeing problems with activation after trying this then please give us a call.
5. Customer Portal - locked out
We get a lot of questions from new and experienced users as to why there are locks against some of the options when they log in to the Customer Portal.
The reason for this is that your serial number is not linked to your Customer Portal account. To resolve this problem you should click the "Register My Products" link and input your serial number.
If you are under active subscription the padlocks will be removed, allowing you access to useful features like the Knowledge Base, or Downloads and Updates.
6. Large toolbox components on opening assemblies
This is another common problem we see in Technical Support, despite changes having been made in the 2011 release to counter it. If when you open assemblies and see large fasteners, it may be the case that your toolbox does not contain the configuration that the creator of the assembly has specified. I have included a checklist to go through to troubleshoot this problem:
- Go into Tools, Options, System Options, Advanced - and make sure that there aren't any dismissed messages relating to the creation of toolbox components.
- Select the assembly within the open dialog box but don't open it. Then click the References button at the bottom of the page, which will open a new screen. Within this screen, locate a toolbox component and check the file location. If this is not the same as your toolbox location (found in Tools, Options, Hole Wizard/Toolbox) then double-click on the component, and then browse to the correct folder.
If you are running 2011 - then all you need to do is go to Tools, Options, System Options, Hole Wizard/Toolbox, and make sure the option shown is ticked:
We take a lot of calls related to graphics problems so I thought it was worth going over a couple of tips that we try when responding.
The first thing to do is to use SolidWorks RX to check that your graphics drivers are up to date. If you go into the Start Menu, select the SolidWorks entry, and then go into SoidWorks tools, you will see RX. Open this program, click on the diagnostic tab, and a green tick will appear next to your graphics card if you have the correct driver. If you don't, click on the hyperlink and you will be taken to a webpage where you can download the correct one.
We have found that it is much better to uninstall the old graphics driver from your system before installing the new one.
8. Configuring Toolbox for easier selection with hole wizard
There are a lot of things that can be done with the toolbox but the most common tool is the Hole Wizard. In fact, we often get calls from people saying that there are too many options! To solve this problem, you can easily configure the toolbox to show only the standards or hole sizes that you actually use, making selection of the chosen hole much faster.
We do this by using the "Toolbox Settings" program. The first screen allows you to choose the standards that you want to use - you can even go into each standard and select which category you want to display. If you drill down a bit deeper (pardon the pun!) you can select "Hole Wizard holes" and remove the sizes you don't use from within the chosen standard. There are even some options to add custom hole sizes too. Give it a try and see what else you can do!
9. PDMWorkgroup - why is a file read-only?
We now have a lot of customers using PDMWorkgroup to manage and revision control their data. This add-in comes in with SolidWorks Professional and has a number of nice features to help you to control your data. One question we get asked a lot is how to take write-access to a file if you have opened it as read-only.
The easiest way to do this is to ask the user who has write-access to release access of it. Then you can go to the file menu, select "Reload" and check the option to reload with write-access. If you have made any changes to a read-only file, you will then be able to take ownership and save and check-in the changes you have made.
10. What is the best file format to use when importing to SolidWorks?
With a range of CAD systems on the market, and suppliers collaborating with designers all the more, we often get asked which file format is best for SolidWorks to read. We all know that SolidWorks has the best range of neutral translators in the market, but what do we advise?
In the background, SolidWorks is based on the Parasolid modelling engine - so the best format to read in is Parasolid (.x_t), as the technology is the same. However, we have also had good results with STEP files. If you are doing this type of importing often, it is always worth trialling a number of formats before settling on the one that gives you the best results. Remember, it is always worth right-clicking on the body after it has been imported and selecting "Import Diagnostics". This will allow SolidWorks to check the body for any faulty faces or import errors that may not be apparent to the naked eye.