A SOLIDWORKS Visualize crash can be triggered by a number of behaviors but have two common causes: a corrupt local cache or an issue with the graphics card. These two are a great place to start investigating when dealing with frequent crashes.
SOLIDWORKS Visualize Application Error
Setting a Dedicated Graphics Card
Computers have many components and options to gain performance through an upgrade: you may choose a high-power graphics card, such as an NVIDIA RTX A5000, or another card from the SOLIDWORKS Certified Hardware List. Having a dedicated graphics card in the computer does not mean it’s the only graphics card that the computer or Visualize will use by default. If SOLIDWORKS Visualize crashes when launching the program, check that your graphics card is certified, that the driver is up to date, and that the program is set to use the correct card.
To set the default card you will first need to close SOLIDWORKS Visualize completely, go to Windows > Settings > Display, and click on the Graphics option towards the bottom.
Windows Graphics options
The appearance of the Graphics menu may vary, but there will be an option to add an app and that is what we will choose.
“Add desktop app” button
From there you will navigate within File Explorer and select the Visulaize.exe application. This path may vary depending on if you modified your installation location. The default path is C:\Program Files\SOLIDWORKS Corp\SOLIDWORKS Visualize.
SOLIDWORKS Visualize executable
Visualize is now listed in the apps and if you open the menu there will be a drop-down menu that allows you to choose the GPU (graphics card) the program will use. This typically defaults to “Let Windows decide” but we want to set it to “High Performance” ensuring it is the dedicated graphics card.
Specify “High Performance” graphics card
Managing 3D Settings
Another setting that may need to be changed is the one native to your graphics card. In this example, we are using an NVIDIA so we will launch the NVIDIA Control Panel. In the pane to the right, go to Manage 3D settings and switch to the Program Settings tab. This tab allows you to set the preferred graphics card for individual programs. We can select the program to Dassault Systems SolidWorks and set the preferred graphics processor to “High-performance NVIDIA processor”.
NVIDIA Control Panel
NOTE: If you have an AMD graphics card there will be an AMD control panel with similar settings.
Fixing a Corrupt Local Cache
If the program is still crashing on open after setting the dedicated graphics card the issue may instead be that the local cache has been corrupted. In this case, we will instead rename or delete the folders listed below so that Visualize can rewrite the cache. My personal preference is to rename the files with “_old” as a suffix in case we need to revert back to the previous state.
These are the paths that need to be renamed or deleted:
- C:\Users\[Username]\Documents\SOLIDWORKS Visualize Content
- C:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Local\Dassault_Systèmes\SLDWORKSVisualize.exe_StrongName_<code>
- C:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Local\SOLIDWORKS\SOLIDWORKS Visualize 20XX
- C:\ProgramData\SOLIDWORKS\SOLIDWORKS Visualize 20XX
Note: The AppData folder is a hidden folder. Please see the instructions to make that folder visible here.
If you receive an error that any of the files are open, you will need to stop the Visualize Queue and Boost services by going to Windows > Services and scrolling to SWVisualize20XX.Queue.Server and SWVisualize20XX.Boost.Service. If either are listed as running right click and select “Stop” to delete or rename the folders. Services can be restarted after the files are renamed.
For more Tips and Tricks regarding SOLIDWORKS Visualize check out our other articles here.
