SOLIDWORKS Support Monthly News – April 2018

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Hello to all,

Welcome to this new edition of the SOLIDWORKS Support Monthly News, coauthored by members of the SOLIDWORKS Technical Support teams worldwide.

SOLIDWORKS 2020 will be the final release of SOLIDWORKS Supported on Windows 7

As Microsoft has announced the end of life plan for Windows 7 Support, SOLIDWORKS 2020 will be the final planned release of SOLIDWORKS which supports Windows 7.  Starting with SOLIDWORKS 2018 SP3, reminder messages will appear within the software so that users have ample notice prior this change. SOLIDWORKS 2010 will be the final release of SOLIDWORKS supported on Windows 7. SOLIDWORKS 2021 will not run on Windows 7.

In general, refer to the SOLIDWORKS System Requirements page.

Do you want 10x faster rendering in SOLIDWORKS® Visualize 2018 SP3?

By Julien Boissat

To take advantage of this performance boost, you must make sure the GPU your NVIDIA graphic card is compatible with the new AI denoiser in SOLIDWORKS® Visualize 2018 SP3.

The update to include the AI Denoiser means we can no longer support very old NVIDIA graphics card of the Fermi generation. These cards no longer supported are Quadro FX series and Quadro x000. Updating to Visualize 2018 SP3 and newer with these outdated cards will result in Visualize not using your GPU and run in CPU-only mode. To continue using Visualize with your Fermi generation GPU, please remain on Visualize 2018 SP2 and do not update to new versions until you have a graphics card of Kepler generation or newer.

Here is a table which summarizes the evolution of supported NVIDIA® GPU microarchitectures:

SOLIDWORKS Visualize

 Version

2017 SP0.0 and older

2017 SP1.0 to 2018 SP2.0

2018 SP3.0 and future
AI denoiser

No

No

Yes
Supported NVIDIA® GPU microarchitectures

Maxwell
Kepler
Fermi

Pascal
Maxwell
Kepler
Fermi

Volta
Pascal
Maxwell
Kepler

Wonder what NVIDIA® GPU microarchitecture is on your computer? Please check this Wikipedia page for all NVIDIA graphics cards ever made, with their chip generation.

If you think it’s time to replace your graphic card, you’ll be happy to know we’re offering a  limited-time 30% discount on Quadro P4000.

To learn more about the new AI Denoiser  and the time-limited discount offer, click here.

Note:

  • The new AI Denoiser has a minimum hardware requirement of 4GB VRAM. Machines featuring a graphic card with less VRAM will not be able to use the AI Denoiser feature, but will still be able to use the GPU for rendering. More technical details in Solution Id: S-072096.
  • Even if your graphics card supports the AI denoiser, you may still need to update your driver. Please make sure to check out the SOLIDWORKS Certified Graphics Driver page once 2018 SP3.0 is released.

An Inside Look at Archive Replication in SOLIDWORKS® PDM Professional

By Kevin Crawford

Have you ever struggled with setting up or troubleshooting issues with Archive Replication in SOLIDWORKS® PDM Professional?  I want to explain how it works behind the scenes that may help in troubleshooting replication.

What happens when a vault is replicated?

When setting up replication, there are a number of things that happen in the database and on the replicated archive server.

  1. Empty archive folders for the vault are created on the replicated archive server
  2. The registry on the remote server is updated with the vault information
  3. The remote server is added and assigned a unique ArchiveServerID in the ArchiveServers table
  4. All existing files in the Documents table are added to the ArchiveServerStored table. Database now “knows” that the first archive server has all the files and the new remote server has none. Vault is now replicated to new server.

What happens when a user Gets Latest Version of a file?

When a user “Gets” a file, the client system will check the database to determine which server has the version of the file based on the information in the ArchiveServerStored table.

  1. If the archive server that the client is attached to does not have the file, the archive folder is created and the index.xml file is created on the replicated archive server. The index.xml file is used by the archive server to know which physical file (version) to send to a requesting client or replicated archive server.
  2. A record of the replicated file, version, and archive server is added to the ArchiveServerStored table.
  3. The file is copied from the source archive server to the replicated archive server.
  4. The file is cached to the client vault view and is now available for the user

Summary

When setting up replication be sure to refer to the Replication Guide found in the PDM installation folder, typically located under ‘C:\Program Files\SOLIDWORKS Corp\SOLIDWORKS PDM\Lang’ and inside the appropriate language folder.  When troubleshooting replication failures, common issues include a communication failure between archive servers or missing information either in the database or on the archive server.  A couple of the most common communicatio   n issues are the servers are unable to find the server name or the port is being blocked.  Ensure DNS (Domain Name System) lookup is working over a WAN.  If DNS lookup is not working, add an entry to the hosts file to map the server name to the IP address (see S-037242).  Check to make sure the port used by the archive servers (typically 3030) is open and any security software or devices are not blocking it.  Use the Network Connectivity Test Tool to help identify communication issues (see S-069274).  I hope this helps explain what happens behind the scenes with replication and provides some things to check when troubleshooting problems.

You can test SOLIDWORKS 2018 SP3.0 EV (Early Visibility) ONLINE!

We are making big changes to the EV program. Starting with SP3, Service Packs can be run from a browser with zero install. Yes, you read that correctly!

Any customer who is on subscription can run EV online. You can launch EV Online from www.mysolidworks.com

Main benefits

  • No installation
  • Instant access
  • More platforms. You can run SOLIDWORKS from Windows and Linux PCs, Macs, and Chromebooks using an HTML5 web browser (Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Firefox)
  • No signup is required
  • You can quickly check if a specific issue is fixed and test to make an informed upgrade decision
  • Allows next SP to be run in parallel with your production version

To report an issue, use the new ‘Send Feedback’ UI that is built right into SOLIDWORKS EV.

To access your SOLIDWORKS files from SOLIDWORKS EV, first upload them to Dropbox or Google Drive and then select that location from File > Open.

Simulation Step-Up Series

Last month, Rameshgave an Introduction to Nonlinear analysis. This month, for the final video of the Simulation Step-Up Series, Joe discusses Thermal Analysis.

Thanks for having followed all the videos of the Simulation Step-Up Series. If you want to view the videos again, click here.

Noteworthy Solutions from the SOLIDWORKS Knowledge Base

icon - SW In the SOLIDWORKS® Resource Monitor or SOLIDWORKS, why do I see the warnings: ‘Available open document capacity is low’, ‘Available open document capacity is critically low’, and ‘WARNING! SOLIDWORKS is running critically’?
SOLIDWORKS monitors your entire computer system resource usage in real time while SOLIDWORKS is running, including Windows® Graphical Device Interface (GDI) objects. The Windows OS limits the maximum number of GDI objects available for each process to 10,000 GDI objects. Once any process nears the 10,000 GDI Object limit, the process can become unstable.
For more information about how SOLIDWORKS uses GDI objects, see Solution Id: S-074412.

 

Icon - EPDM After upgrading to SOLIDWORKS® PDM 2018, why does the variable value not appear in the output file name of PDF files generated by the ‘Convert’ task?
To resolve this issue, follow the steps in Solution Id: S-074089.

Why do I receive the error: ‘Exception code 0xc0000005 thrown at address XXX in: XXX file version XXX…’?
This message appears because the solver crashed for an unknown reason. SOLIDWORKS detected the solver crash and returns this message to inform about the circumstances of the problem.
As a user, you cannot overcome a solver crash. What you should do is take a full screen capture with the error message, and send it along with the model to your support contact.
For more information, see Solution Id: S-074253.

Why do I receive the error ‘Abnormal bolt pretension is detected during the modifying pretension cycle…’?While performing the preliminary run to determine how to adjust the pretension in the Bolt Connectors, the solver determined that the adjusted pretension values it obtained are abnormally high. This can occur by mistake if the bolt connection is extremely soft (very low stiffness compared to surrounding bodies).
For more information, see Solution Id: S-074092.

That’s it for this month. Thanks for reading this edition of SOLIDWORKS Support News. If you need additional help with these issues or any others, please contact your SOLIDWORKS Value Added Reseller.

Also, comments and suggestions are welcome. You can enter them below.

Julien Boissat

Julien Boissat

Sr. Technical Customer Support Engineer, SolidWorks, EMEA at DS SolidWorks Corp.
I have been a Tech Support engineer for Simulation products since 2002. I was previously a product manager at SRAC, the original makers of COSMOS for those who remember that time! ;-). I am currently in charge of the content of the certification exams for simulation products. I also initiated and still author the Simulation Knowledge Base and participate as much as possible in the expansion and evolution of the SolidWorks Knowledge Base. Finally, I handle the SolidWorks Support Monthly News blog.