Typically, the answer for what to do when one receives a message stating “Could not obtain a license for SOLIDWORKS” may simply be to activate or reactivate your SOLIDWORKS license. However, if you are experiencing a SOLIDWORKS 2022 Electrical 3D add-in error, specifically, that comes down to a different issue, and a much different solution.
When viewing the lmgrd logs found in the SOLIDWORKS SolidNetWork License Manager, we see that the add-in looks for the feature name “elec3dcore.” The problem with this is that “elec3dcore” is not supported.
It’s worth stating that this only seems to be a problem when using a network license, rather than standalone. So, how do we handle this? One way is to upgrade to SOLIDWORKS 2023, as this issue, as of now, is only known to occur in SOLIDWORKS 2022, but what if you would like to continue using the SOLIDWORKS 2022 Electrical 3D add-in?
The workaround provided by SOLIDWORKS is to navigate to your registry, and remove “209” from the end of the “License Order” in the following registry entry: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\SolidWorks\Licensesxxx\Settings]
Once this change is made to the registry, our SOLIDWORKS Electrical 3D add-in works properly. Please note that a slow load-up time can be expected initially after this change is made.
Please note this change is user profile-specific. For instance, if accessing the registry with the admin credentials of another user, the change may not be effective for the local user. Instead, be sure to access with the same user profile that is used for the daily SOLIDWORKS operation.