PDF Creation in SOLIDWORKS Electrical 2016 SP4 and later

If you have just installed or upgraded to SOLIDWORKS Electrical 2016 SP4 you may discover that you suddenly can’t print or export to PDF.  You get a message saying you need to install PDF creation software or that “Exporting PDF files requires the installation of GhostScript”.

What’s going on, it was working fine before, why isn’t it working now?

It has been discovered that several anti-virus applications are detecting a possible threat within the PDF creation utility installed with SOLIDWORKS Electrical 2016 and earlier versions.

The threat relates to the possibility of Adware being within the PDF creation utility.  Although there is definitely no active Adware, some anti-virus applications are detecting a potential threat.  Depending on the action of your anti-virus application, it may quarantine the PDF utility files and cause the installation of SOLIDWORKS Electrical 2016 to fail, or the installation may succeed, but you have trouble printing/exporting to PDF.

Because of this, SOLIDWORKS 2016 SP4, and later versions, will no longer install the PDF creation utility.  If you need to save SOLIDWORKS Electrical schematics to PDF, the SOLIDWORKS Electrical PDF creation utility may be downloaded independently from http://download.pdfforge.org/download/pdfcreator.

If you install the PDF Creator, a dialog will prompt you about installing the Web Companion add-in for your default homepage.  It is recommended you select the “No, don’t protect me” option to not install this application.

About the Author:
Bill Murch
Technical Support Engineer
CSWP, CSWE, CDWP
Based in Sydney, Australia