problem with "View Mates"

[RipV]

We have 4 seats of SW at work and 3 of us expierence this problem (4th person doesn't draw that much) I also have the same problem when using SW working at home.

In our assy's (after they get some size) if you right click a part in the assy to view mates, it will work usally once or maybe twice then from then on, it will show you the mates for that particular part, but if you try to select one to modify or delete, etc., there will be a graphical error and the Property manager tree will just partially appear right in the mate text. It always shows the question mark from the PMT which should be under it. After that, you are done with view mates and have to sort thru hundreds of mates to find the one you want.

we run SW 2003, I have at home a Intel P4, 2.4 ghz, 1.0 gig ram, 256 mb video card, and still have the problem.

at work I have a Intel P4, 1.8 ghz, 1.5 gig ram, 64 meg video card.

I just checked my current assy and it has 27 sub-assys in it 377 total files in the main folder, main folder size= 133 MB.

Any help or thoughts on this?

Ken

 

[MrPickles]

RipV,

First guess would be the video card. You say at home you have a 256mb, and at work a 64mb one. You don't say what video cards they are, but nVidias Quadros are the favorite of a lot of folks, and SW it seems.

Do you have the latest drivers that are approved for SW use? You can check on their website for more info. If the card is fairly old, and you have never updated the drivers, that might be the place to look first...


-----------
Mr. Pickles

 

[RipV]

Mr. P,
I waited till Mon A.M. till I got to work to get the correct Video Card #'s from work.

My home card is a XFX GeForce FX 5200 256 mb
My work card is a 3D Labs Oxygen GVX1 32 mb
My 2 co-workers have a Nvidia GeForce2 MX 64 mb

All 4 machines experience this problem. As far a my home unit goes,I did research cards a good bit prior to purchasing my computer. I got such a good deal on the package with the above card included that I thought I would try it 1st rather that spend the extra $$. Other than this particular problem it has been flawless in SW and everything else.

Ken

 

[RufusUK]

We had the same problem too on 2003 and our cards were approved by SWorks , Oxygen VX1 32Mb.
The only thing I found was to close the file and re-open it. Sometimes the mates would also show grey as if suppressed when in fact they were not.

I havent personally had this problem with SW2004 but having said that.. for each bug that they clear.. another 2 or 3 jump in!

 

[Standing]

Wow, that is really a cool way of looking at mates. I learned something new today. We are also using SolidWorks 2003 SP5.1 My Video Accelerator is ATI FireGL2. Your method worked for over 20 right mouse clicks on different parts. A work around for you maybe the old way I have been looking at mates, before this new way. Click View in main SolidWorks menu, then FeatureManager Tree button, and then view By Dependencies.
That is a lot of mouse clicks, so I programmed them to the macro keys Shift F for features and Shift D for dependencies.
If these test, does not work it maybe the video cards.
Good luck to you.


Bradley

 

[SBaugh]

You might know this already but...

GeForce FX 5900\5600\5200
Win2K 6.14.10.4403 08/28/2003 2004 View Notes
WinXP 6.14.10.4403 08/28/2003 2004 View Notes
Win2K 6.14.10.4403 10/01/2003 2003 View Notes
WinXP 6.14.10.4403 10/01/2003 2003 View Notes

All these cards are a pass with limitations. This can't be ruled out.

GeForce 2 GTS/MX
NT4 4.0.1381.532 10/02/2002 2004 View Notes Pass
Win2K 5.12.01.0631 06/19/2002 2004 View Notes
NT4 4.0.1381.532 10/02/2002 2003 View Notes Pass
Win2K 5.12.01.0631 06/19/2002 2003 View Notes
NT4 4.0.1381.532 10/02/2002 2001Plus View Notes Pass
Win2K 5.12.01.0631 12/19/2000 2001Plus View Notes

The rest are Pass with limitations. This can't be ruled out either.

GVX1
NT4 2.16-0866 07/28/2003 2004
Win2K 2.16-0849 07/28/2003 2004
WinXP 2.16-0849 07/28/2003 2004
NT4 2.16-0866 06/28/2002 2003
Win2K 2.16-0849 06/28/2002 2003
WinXP 2.16-0849 06/28/2002 2003
NT4 2.16-0866 03/28/2002 2001Plus
Win2K 2.16-0849 03/28/2002 2001Plus
NT4 2.16-0388 12/11/2000 2001Plus
Win2K 2.16-0421 12/11/2000 2001Plus
WinXP 2.16-0849 03/28/2002 2001Plus

These all pass.

Make sure you have the approved Video driver for the passing card(s).

Be sure your using the latest SP. There was a problem like this in early SP's of SW03. But only a selected few ever seen this problem. I think it was a limitation between certain video cards. I say that because I could never recreate it on any of my workstations, but others in the company could.

The Oxygen cards are a few years old and their drivers are too... last I checked. So I'm not sure what to say about that other than that one person I know that recreated the problem was also using an older type of card (Elsa Gloria II) and he too could re-create this problem. I was thinking later SP of SW03 fixed this problem. If your not using the lasted you could always try it out.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376

 

[RipV]

Thanks for the input. I bet it's the glitch in the early 2003 SP. Also I failed to mention that at home I run XP Pro and at work we have Win NT SP4


RufusUK,
its comforting to know others have experienced it too
(I think) actually its not

Bradley,
Sounds like we each learned something today. I didn't know how to do it your way either. I like mine better, but if it don't work...then go to plan B I guess.

SBaugh,
Thanks for the info on the cards etc. I have emailed this to my boss. Hopefully they will spend some $$ and do something. My drawing is running slow enough that it takes a good 8 minutes to just save it.
As for home use, I think I will live with it for now as I only do that occasionally.

Great forum by the way,
Ken

 

[RipV]

also I just checked, I/we are running SP0, right out of the box.

 

[SBaugh]

Upgrade to SP5.1 and see if you have the same problems.

I got the above info from -

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/services/VideoCardTesting.html?pid=383

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376

 

[JNR]

You problem is most likely related to video card/OpenGL compatibility. The key seems to be "after you have been running for a while.." There was a lot of it about in those days. The later SP may fix it, but if not you will have to get a new graphics card or updated driver that will handle the "unified back buffer... thingamigig". It was very frustraing for us as we had someone check out that rev with some new boards, but they did not get to the magic combination of part size and time. So we had to send them back and went to Quadro's.

I was - and he did. So at least I didn't get coal.....