You may have heard about this great ability to use a clean uninstall feature now in SolidWorks.  Well, we Composer users aren’t quite as lucky.  If you want a complete uninstall of 3DVIA composer, it is still a manual process.  Fortunately, it is relatively simple.

From the Windows Control Panel, choose Programs, then Programs and Features. Find and uninstall all 3DVIA listings.

Then you will want to delete any folders relating to 3DVIA on your hard drive. You might find 3DVIA folders in the following locations:

Make sure you do not have any custom styles or profiles existing in these folders that you’d want to keep.

Depending on your installation, there may be additional folders from previous installs or folders may not be named exactly the same.

Install directory:
“%Program Files%\Dassault Systemes\3DVIA Composer”

User data:
For XP, “Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents\3DVIA Composer”
For Vista® and Windows® 7, “Users\<username>\Documents\3DVIAComposer”

After deleting folders, edit the Windows registry to remove the following keys (some keys may not be present of your system). To access the Windows Registry Editor select

Run…… in the Windows Start Menu, type regedit, and hit OK.

IMPORTANT:

Edit the Windows Registry at your own risk. Before editing the registry, it’’s recommended to create a backup.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Dassault Systemes\3DVIA Composer
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Dassault Systemes\3DVIA Composer

Note: If you would like assistance in completing any of these steps
Contact Symmetry Solutions Technical Support

When using the meta-properties in 3DVIA that are coming from the Custom Properties in SolidWorks files, be aware how 3DVIA deals with capitalization of the property names.

While SolidWorks and Windows Explorer don’t see the difference between DESCRIPTION, Description, and description (as long as they are all spelled the same), 3DVIA see these as three different properties. Therefore if your BOM only lists DESCRIPTION and some of the actors have one of the other two variations of the word, that cell in the BOM will be blank.  So it is important to verify that the Custom Properties are consistent.