Bengaluru, India
At DesignSense, we have the onerous task of supporting thousands of our BricsCAD customers across India (and a few more outside as well, on the basis of a special relationship we share with international users). One of the most tedious and difficult tasks for any technical support is to handle and resolve technical support issues that happen only on some computers, are un-predictable, intermittent and often seem to result from a complex set of factors emerging from the operating system.
In this post, I would like to discuss one such vexing issue we have encountered at some (very few) places and the attempts to resolve it with some solutions.
The problem:
When BricsCAD is started from the desktop by double clicking the icon, it crashes and says "BricsCAD could not start and needs to close". This is the kind of message which is most un-helpful and you know nothing why it crashes and where you should go looking for clues for the same.
One of the first workarounds we have for this problems is to right-click on the icon and check the item "Run as Administrator". By doing so, it (often) resolves the problem and starts BricsCAD without an error or crash.
But if we double click a DWG from Windows explorer, it again displays the same dreaded error "BricsCAD could not start and needs to close" and does not start. Which means that when we double click on a dwg file Explorer, BricsCAD is not probably starting as Administrator.
So, the immediate questions to Bricsys Support were this:
- Why is BricsCAD refusing to start normally on some computers?
- How to set the DWG dbl-click association to run it in admin mode?
Admittedly, the answer to this query was not easy and straight-forward either, just as the problem.
The Solution(s):
Eugen Vilcu Tatru from Bricsys came up with this possible scenarios and explanation:
When having multiple BricsCAD versions/architectures installed, BricsCAD needs COM registration for every version/architecture switch, and that is made by starting BricsCAD as an administrator during the installation run.
So in case only one version/architecture is used (recommended), after registering its COM libraries, BricsCAD can be started normally (without admin rights) until the next BricsCAD switch.
> Why is BricsCAD refusing to start normally on some computers?
Here are some reasons why things could be getting screwed up:
- the default application set to open drawings (.dwg, .dxf, ...)
- the current BricsCAD user profile/s
- the BricsCAD installation/s, or
- external add-on/s installed or added to SRCHPATH.
You could try:
- uninstall all external add-ons
- create a new user profile, set it current and restart BricsCAD as an admin
- if these do not fix the problem, uninstall BricsCAD > rename the old installed folders (from Program files, Roaming and Local) reinstall BricsCAD to the default path, without importing existing settings.
- If the crash still persists, could you please export the current BricsCAD user profile and attach the .arg file here?
Exporting the current profile to a .arg file
> How do set the DWG dbl-click association to run it in admin mode?
You can open the BricsCAD installed folder > right click on bricscad.exe > Properties > Compatibility tab > tick "Run this program as an administrator".
You could also keep open a BricsCAD instance (started with admin privileges) when opening drawings from the Explorer, but this is not a very convenient way to work, in my opinion. But if it works for you and if you like it, it is perhaps a solution nevertheless.
Want to know more about BricsCAD?
- BricsCAD V18: Trial download
- BricsCAD V18 Shape: Trial download
- BricsCAD Communicator V18: Trial download
- CADPower V18 for BricsCAD: EXE (-or-) ZIP (Linux/Mac compatible)
- CADPower V18 for AutoCAD: EXE (-or-) ZIP
- GeoTools V18 for BricsCAD: EXE (-or-) ZIP (Linux/Mac compatible)
- GeoTools V18 for AutoCAD: EXE (-or-) ZIP
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