Solidworks 2K3 Shutdown 1

[Krom]

I've run into an interesting problem with SW2003 Office.
When I draw a spline curve in a sketch and try to rotate
and copy the spline in a circular pattern, SW2K3 tries to access drive A: about 10 times. Immediately an error window pops up and says "An unhandled error has occurred.....". Then SW exits and I'm back to my desktop. Does anyone know what's going on?

 

[SBaugh]

Have you contacted your VAR on this?

Give us the exact steps it takes for you to repeat this and maybe we can try to recreate it. If so then it should be sent to SW for an Eval.

Regards Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies
credence69@REMOVEhotmail.com

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.3dmca.com

*When in doubt always check the help*

 

[Krom]

Ok, I'm trying to develop a universal part to accurately
show gear tooth profiles for fitting and tolerances. I generated a spline from a 60 point free point curve. These points were generated using excel and the parametric equations for an involute. When the free point curve was plotted, I used convert entities to make a sketch entity from it. This curve is scalable based on the diameter of the generating circle. To generate a tooth cut, the curve has to be rotated a variable angle based on the number of teeth before the mirror is used. When I try to use circular step and repeat, I uncheck equal, and make sure use constraints is checked (to give me a equation drivable angle). Then under steps I use 2 and an arbitrary angle (I used 4.5 degrees). When I do this, the preview comes up fine but, I click ok, and the program exits like I wrote in the previous post. These are the most details I can give you. The rest is still in the planning stages. So, there it is. Thanks.

 

[mjcole]

Krom,

I'm interested in knowing more about the equations you used to generate the involute gear curve. I've been meaning to do this myself so I can make parametric gears.

I'd appreciate any info you could give me on how to generate the curve.

Michael

 

[SBaugh]

There is a program that you can buy that makes parametric gears. its called Geartrax and Its worth the price.

http://www.camnetics.com

With out having your files there is no way I can determine what your problem is. You should forward that to your VAR.

Best Regards, Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies
credence69@REMOVEhotmail.com

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.3dmca.com

*When in doubt always check the help*

 

[Krom]

(for mjcole)
The equations to parametrically generate an involute curve are:

X = R(sin(A)-Acos(A))
Y = R(cos(A)-Asin(A))

Where R is the radius of the generating circle
and A is the angle of unwind (clockwise for positive)

Try generating with delta A less than 5 degrees. Good luck and thanks.

 

[gonzo691]

Yes, I know what you are going thru. I have had endless problems in general with Solidworks 2003 throwing errors and shutting down for what appears to be no appearent reason. Tech support was a waste of time and this site has given many ideas that we have tried. THANK YOU ALL!! We are still going thru every check possible or at least known to use to try and stabilize this problem. no luck yet, but I would appreciate any and all help in this matter. I will post any changes that we find as being helpful.

 

[scondon]

Hi Krom,

I have been experiencing similiar problems under a number of different circumstances for a couple of years now. In this time I have had two different PC's (all Win 2K) and 3 different versions of Solidworks. Generally, Solidworks would crash with the 'Unhandled Error' message just as I was saving an assembly(usually multi-configuration and usually with the assembly drawing open to). A percentage of the time the crash would occur when an Outlook 'pop up message' would appear, and on occasion after Solidworks tried to read the CD drive during a save. This led me to initially suspect Outlook and secondly, I tried to make sure I never left an unused CD in its CD drive. Crashing whilst saving is unfortunate because it often corrupts the autorecover file and or the backup file(s).
After a couple of days of thorough testing, where I tried closing down background apps and services, I eventually disconnected the network cable....the crashes, which by this point were once or twice per hour, ceased. Since then, I swapped out the network socket to pc cable, and as yet I still havent had a crash (working on the same models).
I still cant work out the logic behind it, since I work off my local drive 99% of the time, and indeed this may still turn out to be a red herring, since the problem would often disappear for months at a time. Please note this confused the VAR also who doubted it was a software compatability problem and checked that the files were not corrupted...they werent.
However, I have now had a couple of days without a crash, and my network link is operating thanks to the new cable.

Regards

Steven

 

[MadManxCadMan]

Hi Scondon,

System crashes due to network cards: There is a 'feature' of XP/2000 which many users are not happy with when they become aware of it - both operating systems disable the on-card CPU's for network cards by default, so the main CPU of your machine has to handle the network traffic as a higher priority task.

The following link is to a site detailing a fix which requires a registry setting change. This should be done following all the usual preventative steps (backing up your registry first etc, getting your IT support (if you're lucky enough to have them) to do it for you...):

http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/954/

The warning caveats are standard for modifying the registry: this mod had been widely publicised in the computing press, as it does speed up systems. Worth a try?

Regards,

Bob