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What Minor Bug in SOLIDWORKS Drives You Crazy

Discussion created by Jim Sculley on Oct 20, 2017
Latest reply on Mar 7, 2018 by Jim Wilkinson

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Like the title says, this isn't about ONE and TWO. This is about the little things. Small, minor bugs that make you wish SOLIDWORKS was a person so that you could build a time machine to go back and murder its parents. Bonus points if the problem is just intermittent enough to make you forget about it, until it happens again.

Be sure to post your SOLIDWORKS version and service pack, just in case someone wants to verify your bug or let you know that it is fixed in later versions. I'll give one for starters.

SW2016 SP 2.0

Often, but not always, when typing in the property manager (renaming features, entering dimension text, etc) the hotkey for the letter I type will activate. I suspect it has to do with typing speed. It has done this for as long as I can remember.

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S. Casale Oct 20, 2017 4:12 PM
The tab button while working in a dialog will hide whatever the mouse is hovering over... If I am not paying attention to where I have my mouse.
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Walter Fetsch Oct 20, 2017 4:22 PM
Oh boy, this is going to be a busy topic.

The fact that the pointer always has to be a couple of pixels off the item I'm trying to select. If I'm right on it, SW doesn't select the object I want.

The fact that SW prefers to select anything instead of a face.

The fact that SW prefers to select hidden objects over visible ones!

Editing spline points will not permit moving the points a couple of pixels. Instead, I have to move the point far away, then bring it back.
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Jim Steinmeyer Oct 20, 2017 4:26 PM
Occasionally, when I select the SW icon, it starts right up and I have to go to work.

Actually, thinking about it now, one that really annoys me is detailing drawings where I need to dimension to two rounded surfaces. I can always get one or the other, but getting both dimensioned to the surface rather than the center point is a hit or miss project that takes several attempts.
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Jim Sculley @ S. Casale on Oct 20, 2017 4:24 PM
I frequently use CTRL-TAB to switch between the last two documents, and occasionally, the TAB registers before the CTRL and *poof*, component or body is gone.
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S. Casale @ Jim Steinmeyer on Oct 20, 2017 4:27 PM
I pick things up and I put them down.
I pick things up and I put them down.
I pick things up and I put them down.
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Solid Air Oct 20, 2017 4:37 PM
I can only choose one?
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Rick Becker @ Jim Steinmeyer on Oct 20, 2017 4:38 PM
Jim Steinmeyer wrote:
...detailing drawings where I need to dimension to two rounded surfaces. I can always get one or the other, but getting both dimensioned to the surface rather than the center point is a hit or miss project that takes several attempts.
It's a few extra clicks, but you can change where the leaders are using this...
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Alin Vargatu @ Walter Fetsch on Oct 20, 2017 4:39 PM
Walter Fetsch wrote:

The fact that SW prefers to select anything instead of a face.

The fact that SW prefers to select hidden objects over visible ones!

Wow. That is not normal. I saw this problem several times when I visit customers and there is always a solution for this behaviour. What did your VAR say about this problem?
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Dave Brukardt Oct 20, 2017 4:40 PM
The bug that starts with SPR
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Jim Steinmeyer @ Rick Becker on Oct 20, 2017 4:44 PM
Thank you Rick, that may help, as if I don't have enough clicks already. I know you should be able to hold the shift when selecting the rounded surface, but it often seems to forget about the first selection by the time I get the second. The frustrating thing is that some times it works like desired, and some times I have to try 8 or 10 times.
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Rick Becker @ Jim Steinmeyer on Oct 20, 2017 4:57 PM
I gave up trying long ago to get it right and now I just hold the shift key and place the dimension then just change it in the options.
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Walter Fetsch @ Alin Vargatu on Oct 20, 2017 6:25 PM
Alin, this has been normal behavior for at least a decade.
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Habib Ghalamkari @ Rick Becker on Oct 20, 2017 8:23 PM
I thought it's only me.
Now I see others have the same problem.
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Habib Ghalamkari Oct 20, 2017 9:02 PM
Though I've set my options to rename each feature on creation, when I edit a part in context of an assembly mostly this option doesn't work.
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Glenn Schroeder Oct 23, 2017 8:25 AM
Two come to mind.

Here where I work we do vehicle crash testing, and part of what I do is an overhead view of the test installation after the test, which includes at least two views of the test vehicle, one showing it on the impact path just before contact and another with the vehicle at its resting spot. As you can imagine there is often considerable room between the installation and the vehicle so I want to Break the view between them. I don't want the Break lines to show, so I move them to my Hidden layer. They show, with the fluorescent green color assigned to that Layer until I go into the Layer properties, set the Layer to show, then set it to hide again. That fixes it until the next time, but I have to do this 3-4 times a week. It's a minor annoyance, but you did say minor.

When I rename a newly created Display State it will cause SW to crash about 1/3 of the time. I've never been able to figure out why it does it sometimes but not others. I have learned to save everything before trying just in case.
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Josh Brady @ Walter Fetsch on Oct 23, 2017 8:39 AM
I'm continually amazed by the number of people who don't know about the "Selection of hidden edges" options under

Tools->Options->System Options->Selection

and the Dynamic highlight from graphics view option under

Tools->Options->System Options->Display

Messing with these settings almost always addresses selection woes. Note that the Dynamic highlight setting sometimes randomly turns itself off (or used to anyway), especially if you use a Space[whatever the heck ya got]. I guess that counts as a minor bug, although it doesn't (didn't?) happen often enough to be that annoying.
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Frank Bos Oct 23, 2017 8:43 AM
When, (not if), SW crashes I sometimes get the SW crash report that gets sent to somewhere in the space-time continuum, but one half of the time the crash only gives a windows error message so SW will never know how often it truly does crash. No crash report = no crash....
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David Matula Oct 23, 2017 8:59 AM
when you get on a roll...and your redoing a part for the 5th time...and you click on the command to do something and it does not take cause your clicking to fast or moving to fast. Even run into this when doing the part for the first time.
The fun thing with programs is that once you learn how they behave, you know what to expect from them, and then you can bend the rules to your will to create awesome products.
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S. Casale @ Frank Bos on Oct 23, 2017 9:07 AM
SW RX is wrong half the time with what is actually a crash.
More than half of these orange should be red meaning SW crashed not "killed by user."
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Frank Bos @ S. Casale on Oct 23, 2017 9:10 AM
Hi Scott,
Where is this chart from?
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S. Casale @ Frank Bos on Oct 23, 2017 9:13 AM
If you have 2017 or later, in SW RX you have this chart.

Windows Start Menu>
All programs>
SolidWorks Tools 2017>
SolidWorks RX 2017>
Reliability TAB
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Frank Bos @ S. Casale on Oct 23, 2017 9:28 AM
...one of the days showing on mine is barely dots, looks like a straight line of crashes...
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Edward Poole @ Rick Becker on Oct 23, 2017 9:31 AM
I constantly use those options!
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Edward Poole @ Solid Air on Oct 23, 2017 9:31 AM
Unless you have 2 circular objects...
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Edward Poole @ Frank Bos on Oct 23, 2017 9:33 AM
Same here.
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What Minor Bug in SOLIDWORKS Drives You Crazy

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