Technical Illustration Preview in Composer Does Not Function in Composer 2016 and Prior

When using the Technical Illustration Workshop within Composer, the "Preview" functionality allows the final SVG output to be previewed in Internet Explorer. This article walks through the steps necessary to fix the function if the file is not previewing correctly in Composer 2016 and prior.

As shown in the example above, technical illustration previews should appear directly in Internet Explorer. 

However, the illustration below shows an example of what may be seen when the Preview functionality is not able to correctly display the SVG file preview.

Alternatively, the Preview functionality may also show a link that redirects the browser to the Adobe SVG Viewer download site. Since the Adobe SVG Viewer is no longer supported by Adobe, it is not recommended to install this software. 

Both of these issues can be resolved by following the steps listed in the section below. 

Troubleshooting Steps

1. Navigate to the "Html" directory contained in the SOLIDWORKS Composer Install folder. As shown below, the default path for this location should be C:\Program Files\SOLIDWORKS Corp\SOLIDWORKS Composer\Html

2. In this directory, delete the file named "SolidWorksSvg.html".

3. Once the file named "SolidWorksSvg.html" has been deleted, copy the file named "svg.html".

4. Paste the copy of this file into the same location, so that it appears as shown below. Once the copy of "svg.html" is present in this directory, right-click the file and select "Rename".

 5. Rename this copy into "SolidWorksSvg.html".

6. After performing these steps, the Technical Illustration Preview function should load SVG previews directly into Internet Explorer, without the need to launch any external application.

For further assistance, please contact our HawkSupport team at 877-266-4469(US) or 866-587-6803(Canada) and support@hawkridgesys.com.