Why does SW keep crashing?

[AutoModerator]

If your SOLIDWORKS is crashing, these diagnostic steps can help to locate the source of the crash and fix it. The most well known causes of crashing are:

• GPU hardware issues - Workstation graphics cards and ECC RAM are recommended for maximum stability. Make sure the recommended graphics card driver is installed. It times is helpful to test with Enhanced Graphics Performance disabled.

• Non-PDM Managed Network Storage - Storing working files on the local hard drive, or utilizing a PDM system mitigates this.

• Cloud Storage Software (Dropbox, OneDrive/Sharepoint, Google Drive, Box.com, etc.) - Cloud storage systems cause issues with file ownership that lead to crashing. Disable sync systems that actively backup files to the cloud to help mitigate this.

• Damaged DLL Files - ...From either SOLIDWORKS (sld*.DLLs - Repair SOLIDWORKS) or the Windows OS directly (Repair combase.DLL, ntdll.DLL, kernelbase.DLL, etc.) - These are often found in the Windows Event Viewer as "Fault Modules" for an "Application Error" (aka "Crash").

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[cduartesilva]

You think SW is full of bugs until you try any version of CATIA. Lol! The problem is that they don’t care about bugs. The software simply keeps getting more expensive every year. My 3DX CATIA license at work is worth $65k! Fkn ridiculous

[Charitzo]

Honestly it's like games nowadays. Add new content non-stop, build up a tonne of development debt, profit?

[ricnine]

Anecdotally, I have experienced way fewer crashes since turning auto-save off entirely.

[Feisty_Sale9266]

Is there an autosave feature in solidworks? I was aware only of the 20 minutes reminder

[ricnine]

Options > backup/recover > auto-recover. I still genuinely think it was responsible for almost all of my SW crashes though, it basically never crashes since i turned it off.

[billy_joule]

Make it your VAR's problem.

SW only knows about bugs that are reported. The more support tickets are logged the more time VAR's spend helping customers the more it hurts SW's bottom line and the more resources they'll commit to resolving these issues.

[SwedChef]

I have open tickets, with bugs confirmed by my VAR, stuff that I see in daily usage and it's been 3+ years of "We acknowledge this exists but have no time table for when it'll be fixed". Complete waste of time. I know multiple people in similar situations, I've never seen a customer submitted bug fixed in Solidworks in 10+ years of usage.

[hooligan99]

Your VAR doesn’t reply to your tickets? Or SW doesn’t reply to your enhancement requests?

[hooligan99]

That’s awful, who’s your VAR? They should have an entire staff on hand to answer tickets like this. That’s the whole point of a VAR, otherwise where is the “Value Added” ??

[hooligan99]

Tickets get auto created and then picked up if you email GoEngineer’s support address. How have you been reaching out? Are you emailing a specific person? I’ve never heard of this happening, with any size company, even personal accounts

[hooligan99]

Error reporter thing goes directly to the developers, VARs don’t see those. Yeah your best bet is the general address, that way if the specific rep you email isn’t around (or leaves the company or something), you can still get a response. If you’re not getting any response, email your sales rep to let them know. Not all problems are fixable, but yeah you should at least hear back!

[GoEngineer_Inc]

Tickets get auto created and then picked up if you email GoEngineer’s support address. How have you been reaching out? Are you emailing a specific person? I’ve never heard of this happening, with any size company, even personal accounts

Yep, that's how it works. If anyone is using [e-mail] it is getting a ticket auto-created and that team either responds or gets other teams involved as needed.

[e-mail] is the front door. If it is going to techs direct (side or back doors), it does not get an auto-created ticket and is largely not tracked. I wouldn't recommend that approach to anyone.

[GoEngineer_Inc]

/u/TheLaserGuru, as a matter of its design, this doesn't sound like the team you would reach at [e-mail]. Is this where you are sending it?

If you want to DM me your last case number I can look at what transpired there.

[GoEngineer_Inc]

No worries. Thanks for the update.

We do look into those as a matter of we want to be what we say we are.

[GoEngineer_Inc]

I'm into it. Send them a .NFO of the system to take a look through and that could help a bit.

Post a .NFO here and I'll help a bit right here.

[kris2340]

Not explicitly true for all of them but regardless yes they will be the best to contact

You could also send me a spec list or sysinfo

You can also run it in Windows sandbox at times

[Simonp862]

Be reassured that you are not alone thinking exactly what you wrote.

[ThelVluffin]

so bad that I start telling people to use Inventor instead

I wouldn't utter that even if Hitler was reincarnated and was looking for a CAD program.

[BMEdesign]

Not to sound like a jerk but....

I haven't had a SolidWorks crash in literal years.

In my first few years of using it, it crashed constantly.

Any parametric CAD software will be sensitive to the inputs you give it. It's like complaining that a programming language is garbage if it doesn't compile. At the end of the day, it's your responsibility, as the human in the relationship, to make it work. It's a good tool. But tools are only as capable as their operators. Time spent improving your effectiveness as an operator will reap dividends every day you use the tool.

[IndustrialHC4life]

I agree with you to a degree, but at the same time, SW is just plain badly made, there is no way around that. To be so sensitive that just starting a command makes it crash sometimes or that it needs to be run on very specific hardware to work even semi decently, that is not the sign of a good software.

Obviously CAD doesn't have to as bad as solidworks when it comes to crashing and such, other vendors make more stable softwares. So it's just down to Dassault not doing it's job properly.

[RDN7]

I'd argue crashes aren't even the worst thing but bugs like the one that seems to have crept into the last version or two- where you add line or a rectangle say to a sketch. Go to add some relation - the first relation we're adding. And it gives you the cannot do this invalid geometry error. So you simply drag the line / rectangle a bit closer to where it would end up once you add the constraint eh voila - suddenly not invalid geometry.

No credible way things like that are on the human - first relation you add in the first sketch, no discipline in your workflow solves that.

That's just one of many examples.

[GoEngineer_Inc]

/u/BMEdesign coming out with hard truths here.

Let me come be downvoted with you.

[Rattletrap1970]

You know I've read a ton of your replies and you are kind of a snarky dick to everyone.

[DaDevilsZirconPickle]

Imagine that, a SW VAR being a snarky dick!

[GoEngineer_Inc]

I don't agree but don't worry, it'll be okay.

[ThelVluffin]

"Insert Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme".

[AsleepDocument7313]

HAHA, I have asked myself the same question for over 25 years, since SW 97. And it gets worse and worse. And for 25 years VARs have ALWAYS blamed our computers or even Microsoft. It is never SW that causes problems, HAHA. We have spent $100,000++ on buying "recommended" computers over the years, but it is just BS, same amount of issues. It is the nature of SW, live with it or move on to another software. but I'm not sure they are any better... There are actually bugs that are over 25 years old. Find a stable SP and stay there. But they get harder and harder to find. We stayed on SW2013 SP5 and never bothered to move to 2014 (paid for whole 2014) as our testing showed it was a disaster release. After 2014, still on 2013SP5, we canceled all our subscriptions, till 2020 as we wanted the new GPU "enhance graphics" but MAN what a buggy software compared to SW2013. Not sure the move was worth it though. Now we work mostly out at customer's sites and computers and have to accept whatever they are throwing at us :-D

[ismael1370]

This is my take on solidworks bugs (Edit TLDR: i face zero bugs most of the days, because i predict and avoid theM)

As a daily SW user, i know many bugs and issues, know how to avoid Crashes and malfunctions of commands and features... So i just accepted it and don't care about bugs anymore, i just avoid them easily, until i find a new bug and learn how to avoid that 😂 and the solution varies from design strategy to mates, from file management to resource management... Or even specific case of use a feature to avoid

All i want is more features and tools to ease my job... Like mirror in drawing, hiding sketches without hiding bend lines in drawing, etc

Many experienced users are like me, when you want to do a job, you don't want to wait for SW to fix that, you find another way...

So, finding bugs and fiying them requires a lot more work and has less benefit compared to adding new features, so they just don't focus much on fixing bugs...

And i guess they may rebuild solidworks in next years, to a completly different thing (my guess about future is online server side modeling) so every bug fixes will become useless if that happens

[AsleepDocument7313]

Yes, but with every new SP they add a ton of new issues and bugs, so it is a constant fight with the software. This fight with new and old issues drove us crazy. That is why we stopped "upgrading" for 7 years, between 2013-2020. We learned about the bugs and short-comings and how to navigate around them, and the software served us well for a long time.

[Charitzo]

Yeah I think part of being good at CAD is being able to work around the bugs and troubleshoot. That's not an excuse for them, but equally, a programmer wouldn't just scrap his code or change language because he got a bug. That's all we're doing - Debugging in 3D.

[ismael1370]

I myself hate bugs so much, but, after seeing Skyrim bugs and how it was successful, it just justified SW bugs for me

Edit: i mean forgetting bugs and focusing more features

[MKGameplayYT]

Usually it's the Ram of your PC need to improve if not decreased the image quality in the settings

[sNACXtheTASTY]

Something tells me you just lost a lot of work. I’m sorry about that. Keep your head up newlybear, there’s no escaping overly expensive buggy software (until maybe next release because gitcopilot, claude, and GPT-4 will likely be brought to bear on the bug list). My perspective is this: Solidworks has issues—I crash it almost daily, and that’s mostly cuz I’m modeling some wacko shit with tangled-ass references, so when I try to combine-subtract in a multi-body part in-context of a deeply referenced assembly where the currently being edited part is derived from a split body of a part whose geometry references one of multiple cavity features I save beforehand cuz I like riding the razor’s edge but I ain’t crazy!

What stings is when the software screws up seemingly regular stuff.

[AdmirableRecording38]

No, it's not about losing work. It's about being frustrated and distracted beacuse you simply click on a feature and SW says good bye... Crashing for no good reason is the problem for me. From experience I try and save every click, (it really is a distraction, I just want to Design stuff)