7 Replies Latest reply on Mar 13, 2013 5:06 PM by John Sweeney

    Parts and toolbars dissappear when opening files

    Aaron POE
    Aaron POE Mar 13, 2013 9:23 AM

      We are still currently working in 2009. Whenever I try to open a file or create a new file, be it from our server or from my hard drive, solidworks seems to go crazy by making the actual part and all toolbars dissappear. Its not a lost references issue or a show/hide issue. The feature control frame dissappears, the modeling window goes blank, and all toolbars dissappear. Whenever you close out of the part or assembly, the toolbars and reappear. We have tried restarting solidworks, shutting down the computer, and running Solidworks Rx, all to no avail. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

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        • Re: Parts and toolbars dissappear when opening files
          Aaron POE
          Aaron POE Mar 13, 2013 11:48 AM (in response to Aaron POE)

          I was able to get the graphical view and feature manager pulled back up by hiding all of the toolbars. Once we got to this point we were able to place toolbars back to their location, until i tried using CommandManager. When I tried turning CM back on it reverted back to the same issue of losing the FeaturnManager and Viewport.

           

          Also now that the viewport and FM is back up, we are having an issue getting the parts themselves to show up. We can highlight the part or feature and get them to show up momentarily, but once you click off of that part or feature it dissappears again. I am thinking that this is more of a graphics card issue rather than a soliworks issues but we are open to trying any suggestions. 

            • Re: Parts and toolbars dissappear when opening files
              Lenny Bucholz
              Lenny Bucholz Mar 13, 2013 12:07 PM (in response to Aaron POE)

              has anything changed on the computer? updates, new hardware, new video driver?

               

              You may have to run a repair on your SW install or up date your graphics driver???

                • Re: Parts and toolbars dissappear when opening files
                  Aaron POE
                  Aaron POE Mar 13, 2013 12:17 PM (in response to Lenny Bucholz)

                  Prior to this situation occuring, nothing had been uodated in quite some time. We are running SW 2009 on a Dell Percision T3500 with Windows XP 64-bit, nVidia FX-580 graphics card, 6GB of RAM, and Intel Xeon Process. We are also running two independent screens. Once this problem started we did try updating the video card driver to the most recent driver, but that did not fix the issue. We also tried completely uninstalling SW and reinstalling it which also did not fix the issue. That why Im starting to believe that it is a graphics issue rather than a SW issue.

                    • Re: Parts and toolbars dissappear when opening files
                      John Sweeney
                      John Sweeney Employee Mar 13, 2013 2:54 PM (in response to Aaron POE)

                      Hi Aaron,

                      Can you snap a screen shot of your SolidWorks session?  I'd agree that it sounds like a graphics card/driver issue if the model geometry is not painting, however, the toolbar and FeatureManager area disappearing almost sounds like you have a toolbar layout issue.  If you select the "View" menu do you see the "Full Screen" choice at the bottom (F11) selected, or do you see the "FeatureManger Tree Area (F9)" or "Toolbars (F10)" items toggled off?  Or perhaps you have toolbars enabled and disabled for different types of documents (refer to "View-Toolbars" menu item to be sure desired toolbars are selected when each document type is open - part, drawing, assembly).

                       

                      -John

                        • Re: Parts and toolbars dissappear when opening files
                          Aaron POE
                          Aaron POE Mar 13, 2013 3:12 PM (in response to John Sweeney)

                          John,

                          We got the toolbar and feature manager sitatuion fixed. We have temporarily fixed the disappearing model geometry by checking the radio box under System Option > Performance > Use software OpenGL, inside of SW. We got ahold of our reseller's tech. support hotline and this was the solution they gave us to get by for now. They said that it is in fact a graphics card issue. SW seems for be running a little slower than normal using this solution, but it will get us by until we figure out the main issue with the graphics card, or hopefully get it updated to a quadro series card.