How to get Tekla Structures crash dump file

Tekla Structures
Not version-specific
Tekla Structures
crash dump
crash
Troubleshooting
registry
mini dump
Environment
Not environment-specific
Attachments

Sometimes when Tekla Structures crashes there is not enough information available on what exactly is the reason for the crash, or it might not be possible for your Tekla Structures local support team to reproduce the crash. In this case, you might be requested to provide a file called crash dump. Our software developers will need this crash dump file to investigate what the cause of the crash is and how they should fix the issue.

Note: From Tekla Structures 2019 onwards, in cases where Tekla Structures crashes and Contact support dialog box opens, a dump file is created in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Trimble\Tekla Structures\<version>\Feedback folder. A mini dump file is created for Tekla Structures 2019 and 2019i, and a full dump file is created for Tekla Structures 2020 and newer. You can still use the below mentioned steps to produce dump files if Contact support dialog box does not open after a crash in Tekla Structures 2019, 2019i and 2020. 

Prerequisite: you will need local administrator rights on your computer for completing this task.

Here is the instruction describing the process of getting Tekla Structures crash dump:

  1. Make sure you have enough free space on your system drive (C:\ drive). Usually a single Tekla Structures crash dump file size can be a couple of gigabytes (GB) or more.
  2. Download the attached .zip file.
  3. Unzip all files from there to a folder located somewhere on your computer (for example, you can use your Desktop). As result, you should get two .reg files with filenames Enable_TS_dump_(full_dump).reg and Disable_TS_dump.reg:
     
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  4. Double-click Enable_TS_dump_(full_dump).reg and allow adding it to the Windows Registry. This will force Windows to generate a full crash dump file each time Tekla Structures crashes.
  5. Start Tekla Structures if it is not started already.
  6. Make Tekla Structures crash.
  7. Wait for some time until Tekla Structures window completely disappears from your screen. Note: in most cases Tekla Structures will try to restart automatically right after the crash so if you get a new Tekla Structures dialog box then you do not need to wait anymore.
  8. Open the folder %LOCALAPPDATA%\CrashDumps in Windows Explorer. You can do it, for example, by copying %LOCALAPPDATA%\CrashDumps into clipboard, then pasting it in the address bar of any Windows Explorer window and finally pressing the Enter key on your keyboard:
     
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  9. Identify the proper crash dump file in the opened CrashDumps folder. It will be a TeklaStructures*.dmp file with the most recent modification date.
  10. Compress the crash dump file. For example, you can either use Windows (right-click the dump file and select Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder) or any 3rd party archivers like 7-Zip, WinRAR, etc. This should greatly decrease the file size because the compressed file size can be 10 times smaller than the original crash dump file.
  11. Send the compressed crash dump file to your Tekla Structures support team with the description of the issue.
  12. Double-click Disable_TS_dump.reg and allow adding it to the Windows Registry. This will remove the changes that were applied in step 4 of this instruction and therefore will help you saving free space on your system drive. In addition to that, you can also remove all TeklaStructures*.dmp files from the CrashDumps folder and the compressed dump file you have just sent. 
 

See also

How to get Tekla Structures hang dump file
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