Double Clicking on a SolidWorks File Doesn't Do Anything!

Have you ever double clicked on one of your SolidWorks files, fully expecting it to open in SolidWorks for you to modify to your heart’s desire, but instead your PC simply sits there… doing nothing…. laughing at you? Well maybe not laughing at you, but it sure feels like it is! We’ve come across this problem ourselves and although there are quite a few reasons for something like this to happen, there is one possibility that many might not have thought of. That possibility is that you actually told SolidWorks not to open your files ever again!

Yes, it’s true. It’s called “Don’t ask me again”. You may see this option quite a bit when you’re working with SolidWorks and it can be either a solution to your everyday annoyances or the cause.

Enabling “Don’t ask me again” and choosing an option will disable these pop ups and always enforce the choice that you selected. So for instance, if you try to open a part that isn’t available for write access, realize that you don’t want to open it as “Read Only” and choose cancel, it will always use the cancel option if you have “Don’t ask me again” enabled. Therefore anything that isn’t able to be written to will not open from this point forward. No messages, no pop-ups, no prompts, just confusion six months down the road. The good news is that we can bring these messages back!

To see any pop up messages that you have disabled, open up SolidWorks and go to Tools > Options > System Options > Messages/Error/Warnings. This screen will give you a list of all of the messages/errors/warnings that you have disabled in the past and check them to re-enable the prompt.

Once the message is reactivated, you will be see the prompt whenever you try and open SolidWorks files that are not available for write access! As I had mentioned before, this is only one possible solution as to why a file doesn’t open with a simple double-click of the mouse. If your issue continues to occur, please feel free to contact CATI and InFlow customer support to help you out!

Best Regards,

The InFlow Technical Team