Elec3dcore – SOLIDWORKS 2022 Electrical 3D Add-in Error

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, a problem has been found when using the Electrical 3D add-in for SOLIDWORKS 2022, 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 can 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?

Remove “209” from the end of License Order

The work-around provided by SOLIDWORKS is to navigate to your registry, and remove “209” from 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.

Interestingly, we have found that adding “209” back into the registry did not disable the add-in or cause the original error message to reoccur. The add-in will run fine regardless of whether “209” is added back in, however, it is recommended that it is not added back in, as any future reactivations will lead to the same issue if “209” is still present.