SOLIDWORKS Electrical Server Migration: How To

Sometimes the need arises that your SOLIDWORKS Electrical Server needs to be moved to a new machine. We get questions about how to migrate the electrical database. SOLIDWORKS Electrical makes it pretty straightforward to backup/restore the database environment, so we will use that to make the server move as painless as possible.

Open SOLIDWORKS Electrical on any client machine that is connecting to the existing server and run the environment archive command, selecting to archive all objects. The time it takes to complete this varies, depending on the size of your libraries and number of projects. It may be recommended to do this at the end of the day.

Install the new electrical server, using the SOLIDWORKS installation manager and selecting “Server Products” in the first step. You do not need to wait for the environment archive in the previous step to be complete before installing.

Once the server is installed, and the archive complete, if the new server is at a newer version year/service pack you will need to update the client machines as well. Once that is complete, or if the client software does not require updating, open the software and navigate to Tools > Application Settings.

Change the Collaborative server tab and the Databases tab (SQL Server) to point to the new server, as shown below.

In total there should be three fields that require changing: The collaborative server Address, the Application data folder, and the Server name. The Connection type will continue to list the old server until the software is restarted. After restarting the software, check that the setting changes were retained. If not, you may need to launch the software as an administrator and try again, so that the software will be allowed to make the necessary registry changes.

Now, simply unarchive the environment that was previously archived, on one of the client machines. This will recreate everything from the old server on the new one, and you will be back up and running with no data loss.

Brian Cooke
Sr. Application Engineer, Electrical
Computer Aided Technology, Inc.