Solidworks crashing

I'm running SW2015 on a HP 8600 work station. Been working flawlessly for ever. Over the past couple of days it seems to be acting up. On some recently created part files, when I try to open them I get a message like " can't open file from future edition (or something like that)" Huh?? Today I tried to open a ,dwg file and program crashed. Twice. I can open a part file OK but if I ask to make a drawing from part I get the message "a drawing already exists, do you want to create a new one anyway?" I say yes and crash. I get a "Creating a crash report" etc.

Any Ideas?

I am off maintenance BTW.

I think I'll shut down the computer and clean out the dust and reboot.

I'll be back later.

Thanks!

Tim in D

edit: So I shut down, blew out the box (wasn't too bad) wiggled connectors, checked that all 5 fans worked on power up.
Seems to be working fine now. I did notice on shut down there were 6 new downloads waiting to be installed. I let that go to completion and am BACK ON THE BUS Y'ALL!

well the can't open future version means the file is from a newer version of SW like SW2016, 2017. file are only forwards compatible not backwards.

len_1962 said:

well the can't open future version means the file is from a newer version of SW like SW2016, 2017. file are only forwards compatible not backwards.

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I think he's saying that they're files he made at his seat of 2015, only a couple of days before, and they're still flashing him the 'Future Version' when he tries to open them. Definitely sounds like a registry issue to me, which might as well be Pandora's Box (to a guy like me anyway.)

Tim - in my experience, if you're using it hard every day, SW likes to be uninstalled/reinstalled once a year or so. With how hard I run things, and my peculiar nature, I actually like to reformat whatever computer is my workhorse about once a year. Reformatting obviously deletes literally every piece of information off of the computer (at least that's how my non-tech savvy mind understands it) so it's not something to be done lightly, but I think of it like Spring Cleaning, and find SW and my computer perform noticeably better for quite a while afterwards.

I suppose you could try cleaning up the registries manually, but I wouldn't with how fast it is to reformat/reinstall everything these days. You can Google around for the most efficient way to do it, and the first time you do it'll force you to rethink how you store/maintain things, but the next time it'll actually be pretty quick, and you can be off doing something else for the majority of the process.

Johnny is correct, I created the files on SW2015. Seems to be working again. I did shut down the machine last night because of thunderstorm threat.Maybe the Windoz update never completed..........or something. I will play alittle bit more later. I gnerally leave this computer running 24/7. I do notice if I leave SW on the Task Bar too long (days) it will act up. After closing the program and reopening it, it usually stabilizes again.

Thanks guys!

Tim in D

Tim in D said:

I do notice if I leave SW on the Task Bar too long (days) it will act up. After closing the program and reopening it, it usually stabilizes again.

Tim in D

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I can attest to that. Even left on the task bar overnight it often misbehaves in the morning. I always kill it at the end of the day even if I leave my computer on. Saves aggravation

Thanks for that. I was wondering if it was only my set-up......

Tim in D

End of the day? Crap, I restart SW every couple of hours.

Open up the task manager (Ctrl+Shft+Esc) on your computer when you've just opened SolidWorks, you'll probably see SW (SLDWORKS.exe) pulling about 100k-150k of memory. Now open a typical file, and look at your task manager again. SW is probably pulling about 200k-250k of memory. Now close that file out, and watch the memory usage. It goes down, but not back to the 'freshly started program' level.

Large assemblies (1,000k and up) are pretty taxing for SolidWorks, but even after you close them out, you'll still see SolidWorks pulling 500k or so of memory, which will significantly decrease the performance of the program and your computer.

After every single time I close out a decent sized assembly, I restart SolidWorks. I keep an eye on that memory usage all day, and if I see it creeping up to where it affects performance, I restart SolidWorks.

And for the love of God, keep your Task Pane off, unless you need it! That's a huge slowdown for SolidWorks, and some folks just keep it hanging there all day without realizing it.

I'm with Johnny, depending on the assembly size, how many parts/sub-assemblies are open (sometimes an obnoxious amount) and complexity I'll have SolidWorks crash every few hours or less. Early 2016 service packs seemed to be worse.