Fundamentals of SOLIDWORKS Electrical Troubleshooting

It is critical that your electrical schematic design tool is working properly so you and your team can continue to produce electrical documentation. In our case, knowing basic SOLIDWORKS Electrical troubleshooting steps could mean the difference between being dead in the water and getting that project out before the deadline.

In this article, we will be covering some basic steps in gaining information during the initial troubleshooting steps. This information will be helpful whether you’re reaching out to your Value Added Reseller (VAR) for support or if you’re simply attempting some troubleshooting steps on your own. Before the troubleshooting process can begin, we will need to confirm a few things. Several of these pieces of information will change the steps taken when attempting a resolution to the issue.

Confirm the SOLIDWORKS Electrical Year and Version

This is a crucial step for 2 reasons: common bugs and new features. You can find what version of SOLIDWORKS Electrical you are running under Help>About in the SOLIDWORKS Electrical Command Manager.

There’s a chance that the issue you’re experiencing could be a known issue for a certain year or even service pack. This is important, as it will determine if there is a specific workaround process. As far as new features go, a newer version of the program could contain a feature that could solve the issue, which can be determined by your VAR.

Confirm your Serial Number

This is a crucial step when contacting your VAR, especially if you’re dealing with licensing issues or error messages. The serial number can be found under Help>About and clicking the text “Show serial number”.

Checking your serial number

Confirm your Installation Type

If you’re unsure if you’re using a standalone or client/server setup, an easy way to check is through Tools>Application settings. The Collaborative server and Databases tabs will both contain useful information. As the highlighted fields below show, we can see the name of the machine that the program is connecting to.

Verifying the location of the Collaborative Server

If it is a separate server address from the current machine, we are safe to assume that it is a client/server setup. This is a very important step when experiencing installation-based issues or any kind of database error message.

Creating a Duplicate Testing Environment

Duplicating a project before doing extensive troubleshooting steps. This is done to help reduce the risk of work that has already been done within the project. Archiving is helpful when contacting your VAR’s Technical Support team, as providing them with the project to test on their end can help determine if the issue can be reproduced in a test environment. In the screenshot below, we can see the “Duplicate” and “Archive” options.

Archiving and duplicating an electrical project

Additional SOLIDWORKS Electrical Troubleshooting

With these steps, we can start off strong regarding troubleshooting methods, while working to minimize the impact of the issue being experienced. While these steps outline good information gathering techniques, additional troubleshooting may be required.

To get help with additional SOLIDWORKS Electrical troubleshooting, contact our Technical Support team here.