Technical Alerts & News

View the presentations from this year's SolidWorks World right here.

Thanks to everyone who helped make SolidWorks World 2010 such a huge success!

Here is your chance to help SolidWorks create better solutions that meet your needs. While SolidWorks remains committed to its core products we understand that we need to do more to support your success. As such, our goal is to better understand the fit and challenges of engineering departments within their firms but just as importantly what external challenges they face as well. These engineering professionals have identified a set of customer needs that we would like help with prioritizing.

This service pack is now available to Subscription Service customers. To download, click here. Or log into the SolidWorks Customer Portal at https://customerportal.solidworks.com and click Download Software and Updates to access the update. 

Note: If you installed the hotfix for SolidWorks 2009 SP5.0, you should uninstall that hotfix before installing SolidWorks 2009 SP5.1.

For a listing of SPR's fixed in this Service Pack, click here..

This service pack is now available to Subscription Service customers. To download, click here. Or log into the SolidWorks Customer Portal at https://customerportal.solidworks.com and click Download Software and Updates to access the update. 

Note: If you installed the hotfix for SolidWorks 2010 SP2.0, you should uninstall that hotfix before installing SolidWorks 2010 SP2.1.

For a listing of SPR's fixed in this Service Pack, click here..

All customers with PhotoWorks on a 64-bit operating system with SolidWorks 2009 SP5, 2010 SP1, or 2010 SP2 MUST apply this hotfix in response to SPR# 535417.

SolidWorks 2009 SP5 (x64), SolidWorks 2010 SP1 (x64), and SolidWorks 2010 SP2 (x64) have been temporality removed from the SolidWorks Downloads pages due to the technical issue listed below.

An issue with PhotoWorks has been identified in 64-bit versions of SolidWorks 2009 SP5, SolidWorks 2010 SP1, and SolidWorks 2010 SP2 in which the SolidWorks installation, the operating system, program files and data files may become damaged or unrecoverable if the PhotoWorks add-in is enabled when SolidWorks is running and the SolidWorks process is already using more than 2GB of virtual memory. These service packs have been removed from the web site as a precaution in order to prevent the risk of damage to customers’ systems under these circumstances.

This problem does not affect 32-bit versions of SolidWorks; hence all 32-bit Service Packs are still available for download. Furthermore, SolidWorks 2010 SP0 (x64) is not affected, nor are SolidWorks 2009 SP4.1 (x64) and earlier Service Packs of SolidWorks 2009. Please note also that this issue only pertains to enabling the PhotoWorks add-in and has no effect on the use of PhotoView 360 for renderings.

The issue is documented in Knowledge Base solution S-046282, included below for reference, which will be updated as more information is available. Immediate hot fixes are planned for each of these service pack versions, and will be released as soon as possible. SolidWorks 2009 SP5.1 and SolidWorks 2010 SP2.1 point release service packs are also being developed with a fix for this issue.

What should I do?

If you are using PhotoWorks on 64-bit versions of SolidWorks 2009 SP5, SolidWorks 2010 SP1 or 2010 SP2, we strongly advise waiting for the availability of these hot fixes or point release updates before any further use of PhotoWorks.


Knowledge Base Solution ID:S-046282

SolidWorks and operating system may become unstable after PhotoWorks add-in is enabled when SolidWorks processes are using more than 2GB of virtual memory. What may cause this?

Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 (64 Bit only) operating systems:

SolidWorks and operating system may become unstable after PhotoWorks add-in is enabled when SolidWorks processes are using more than 2GB of virtual memory.

An issue has been identified where SolidWorks and the Windows operating system may become unstable after enabling the PhotoWorks add-in within SolidWorks 2009 SP5 and SolidWorks 2010 SP1 or later. The issue has been reported to the development team as SPR# 535417. If using PhotoWorks, it is advised to enable the PhotoWorks add-in only after first opening a new SolidWorks session before any files are loaded.

A symptom that this issue may occur is if no PhotoWorks Toolbar or menu appears but the Render Manager tab remains shown. If you notice these symptoms, it is strongly advised to end the SolidWorks session with the “end process” selection from the processes tab of the Windows Task Manager.

SolidWorks Enterprise PDM 2010 SP2.0 is now available. To download, click here. Or log into the SolidWorks Customer Portal at https://customerportal.solidworks.com and click Download Software and Updates to access the update.

For a listing of SPR's fixed in this Service Pack, click here..
 

SolidWorks 2010 will not support processors without SSE2 extensions, such as earlier Intel or AMD processors.

The following note was added to the CPU requirements:
Intel® Pentium® 3, AMD Athon™ and Athon XP CPU’s are not supported. CPU must support SSE2
(Streaming SIMD Extensions 2), see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSE2 for more details.

This is also documented in Knowledge Base Solution S-044851.

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This service pack is now available to Subscription Service customers. To download, click here. Or log into the SolidWorks Customer Portal at https://customerportal.solidworks.com and click Download Software and Updates to access the update.

For a listing of SPR's fixed in this Service Pack, click here..

It’s time to vote for the top tenenhancements you’d like to see in a future release of SolidWorks!  Just visit our Brainstorm site to submit your ideas and vote on ones submitted by your fellow users. After the voting is complete, the top ten list will be unveiled at SolidWorks World.

To get started, all you have to do is visit the following link and log in using your Customer Portal account. http://www.solidworks.com/sw/communities/2010_topten.htm

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This service pack is now available to Subscription Service customers. To download, click here. Or log into the SolidWorks Customer Portal at https://customerportal.solidworks.com and click Download Software and Updates to access the update.

For a listing of SPR's fixed in this Service Pack, click here..