Since our PCs have been updated to Win 11 eDrawings (2023) has been a bit of a flake.
Sometimes only graphic area, no window frame or header.
Sometimes only the window frame and header, no graphic area.
Sometimes after opening eDrawings it does not show in the task bar, which is typically full as 2 row is not available in Win11.
The eDrawings window is still there if covered by another window, but not shown in task bar.
If eD is minimized then it will usually get an entry in the task bar.
Opening a new file in eDrawings will remove it from task bar.
I don’t use the other desktops in Windows, but one time I was looking for eDrawings and opened desktop switcher, and eDrawings shows on both desktop 1 and 2 but only the graphics area.
It’s not bad enough that I’m going to spend hours goose chasing the problem down. It feels like a Windows thing causing problems that had not been fixed yet in eDrawings 2023. I do like to keep a look out for what things are fixed, and broken, in the releases of SW. We plan on updating to 2026 once SP5 is out. But I haven’t heard of this one yet.
Hi, our issues were never solved. Workarounds are what we found.
Essentially this amounts to a focus/windowing problem. Windows 11 exacerbates this problem by eliminating some of the available windowing options available in the right click menu in the task bar.
In some instances users are working on two monitors docked to a laptop with the laptop shut. In those cases sometimes edrawings gets “lost” on the “inactive” laptop screen. The only solution in these instances is to open the laptop and “find” the lost edrawings.
Separate from the closed laptop issue: Sometimes the main window is “minimized” but edrawings gets launched separately via “open with”; this usually results in an out of focus “lost” session. In windows 10 you could “tile windows” or “ cascade windows” to bring it back. In windows 11 those menu options are gone. Instead you can grab focus by using win+tab to select the edrawings window then “Window key + arrow” to snap/restore the window to one side of your screen or the other.
The main thing I have found is just tell people never to minimize edrawings. either close out of it or just leave it open behind your other windows.
Not a SolidWorks user so forgive the question if it is dumb, but since eDrawings is a separate app, can you install the latest eDrawings version while still running an older version of SolidWorks?
Unfortunately, I’ve seen many of these kinds of problems in multiple versions of eDrawings, which is very frustrating. We’re now using 2023 SP5 for the viewers, but it remains unstable. We’re using eDrawings 2024 SP5 on the engineering PCs because with 2023, loading the preview tab in PDM often failed, even though it was set to show the bitmap..