Trial #4: SolidWorks 2016 Silent Install

Problem:

The silent installer doesn’t work from command line.

Forget PDQ deploy/SSCM/MDT task sequence deployment or make it work yourself.

Solution:

Read the docs and write a script:

prerequisites

installer

My Script… so far:

The following script was intended to be run from the root of an admin image made by the SolidWorks Installation Manager. It references media by paths relative to this location in my environment and may need amending depending on your situation.

What I’ve found:

• I think these items are required for network install:

  SERVERLIST="PORT@SERVER" SOLIDWORKSSERIALNUMBER="x"
  

• CMD.EXE doesn’t like ‘(‘ in paths. Therefore, if you want to execute something including ‘(64bit)’ in it’s path, you must pass it to a processor such as msiexec.exe if the installer is an ‘.msi’ or ‘cd’ to the path and execute an ‘.exe’ directly

The following is fine as it’s ‘(‘ free:

  .\64bit\Microsoft_C++_2008_Redistributable\vcredist_x86.exe /Q

This will fail and the path will be incorrectly interpreted

  .\64bit\Microsoft_C++_2008_Redistributable_(x64)\vcredist_x64.exe /q

This will be treaded as a string and the exe not executed. The ‘(‘ will be correctly interpreted

  ".\64bit\Microsoft_C++_2008_Redistributable_(x64)\vcredist_x64.exe"

I chose to bookend problem ‘.exe’ with a pushd/popd pair

  pushd ".\64bit\Microsoft_C++_2008_Redistributable_(x64)"
  .\vcredist_x64.exe /q
  popd

In Powershell the following seems to be legit - I haven’t tested in batch/cmd yet.

  & ".\64bit\Microsoft_C++_2008_Redistributable_(x64)\vcredist_x64.exe" /q