XYplorer Beta Club

An amusing, but highly irksome, thing just happened to me. The usual PC start-up, Solidworks kicks off with several tabs open. XY too, all stable. I see an 80Mb .stp file I meant to load and see if it is any use to me, sitting there on the open tab in XY. So I double click it and Solidworks (2023 SP5 Premium) takes focus and goes about the opening process. I know it is going to take 5-10 mins, so back to XY to do some file housekeeping while I wait. But it won't let me! Win 10 Pro 64 PC.

Instead, when I click on any other tab, or even try to close it for a restart, I get a pop-up dialogue saying it can't do that right now due to an operation and I get Retry and Switch buttons offered. Retry just closes the dialogue so I can click another tab and rinse / repeat. Switch takes me to the Solidworks dialogue where it is churning away at the file. So I am locked out of XY because SW is playing mean with file handle locks, in some important way that completely disrespects XY!

In this morning's case, when SW released the tenacious hold it had around XY's filey throat, it did so by crashing out, no crash dialogue (it does that). I expect that is to do with the file, but it could easily be because XY was pestering it to do something SW took as an illegal operation and it just exits when that happens; it is not the perfect piece of software its French masters make it out to be, but it is the best out there for this kind of work, IMHO. I will go try opening the file again without asking XY to do anything while that happens....

Edit: File opened just fine, about 4 mins, during which time I didn't activate XY. I SHOULD go and repeat the process to prove repeatability and grab a screenshot, but begrudge the 15 mins cycling that takes! Maybe tomorrow...

PS: Another Solidworks - XY issue is the Preview mode. I have a wide screen (5120 x 1440) and the previews in XY appear to reflect that format (ie they are only using a fifth of the available display room height), whereas everything else, no matter the screen it was last saved on (I have 3 hooked up), previews with a full pane display. Additionally, the preview doesn't reflect the last saved display condition, which a narrow preview would be fine if it did. Instead I get what looks like the top fifth of the last-saved display, displayed as a small height (full width) clip. Not enough for the preview to be helpful in understanding which bit I am looking at as the distinguishing features are not in view. All part of the unfriending process, presumably. Re this, I suggest last saved display is what should turn up in the preview, with the the model bounding box used to set the width and the height being whatever fits, centred on the display area. If that is doable?

Didn't do anything related to it that I'm aware of.

So you manually added STP to the previewed file types? This could mean that the hover box (triggered right before you completed you double-click) was trying to preview that file, which could be the cause of the block. Try to open the STP file via ENTER (no mouse), does it make a difference?

These are unrelated topics, essentially grouped under Solidworks anomalies. I can do more testing to see if it is neutering XY while opening any of the file types I use, being the native .sldprt and .sldasm and also .stp. Just reporting that there is some kind of file handle conflict that is ultimately fatal for XY. If this is a 'first touch' on the topic, I will do some more definition work.

The other issue relates to preview of Solidworks native files. .Stp files preview as text files, full screen. Attached is a screenshot of XY .vs. Win Exp, side by side on the wide screen previously referred to, of the same part file. This is typical, except that, more commonly, nothing appears in the XY display rectangle, because the salient part of the image is out of bounds. Sometimes I see Unable to Preview, which I suspect is because I am yet to open and save the file. How about this. It turns out, if I scroll a few files in Win Exp looking at previews, then go back to XY, all the just-scrolled files that displayed with a skinny window now display as a full height one, and the XY view looks EXACTLY like the Win Exp one. Why is it so, and how is a recaching / share happening? It is not some kind of variable reset as unscrolled files still appear as white boxes or tantalising corners of the real file in XY, but check out the more fullsome one in WE and come back to XY and there she is, in all her glory. Hmmm, what a puzzle, but at least it is replicable!

To be clear, I just tried in a different folder with files saved today. Look at a file in XY, see the skinny preview. Look at same file in Win Exp, see a large, more complete preview. In XY select a different file to preview, which will be skinny if not seen in Exp b4, go back to the first file and it is the same preview as Win Exp. Every single time.

PS: XY version is 26.80.0200

The Impasse between Solidworks and XY has survived a Win 11 upgrade and multiple revisions of XY. Any time SW is doing disk operations I am locked out of XY. Here is a classic example: Obviously there is going to be no "correct the problem" as the file will eventually finish loading and I get XY control back again.

The real problem is any time SW is saving or opening files, it locks XY out and the simple becomes impossible. Yet open Windows Explorer and access is granted, without the convenience of the various tabs ready to get to the things I wanted to do in the first instance! I have just been putting up with it. Even now, as I type this, I couldn't use XY to copy the link to the above file as that file is still opening, but the Chrome browser was able to get to the file, albeit via a painful folder finding and opening process, rather than just copy the address in the XY bar to go direct.

So, while typing this, it occurred to me to open a new instance of XY and that one has access just fine, but go back to the original one I double clicked on the still-opening file and it gives me the pop-up again.

Previewing of Solidworks files in XY has not improved either, and the most recently provided pictorial example remains the status quo.

I use Solidworks a lot, and this little impasse has me close to abandoning my lifetime license here and looking at what else may solve the problems XY does, without the burden this SW conflict brings to the table. So it does matter, to me, but hey, SW is only a few gazzillion market share so this issue surely matters to others too, when they realise the connection...

It turns out the only way to workaround the lockout issue is to use Task Manager to close XY (as only get the pop-up again if try to X out). Then XY can be restarted, albeit with a couple of tabs skewiff despite having the instant write options ticked. It is a crappy workaround, but much better than the status quo. While the issues I just read about with the TB version are sorted, sufficient for release. Then we can see if it works with Solidworks for preview and file lockouts...