Thanks for the response. The parts count I am talking about is total amount. Many parts will be copies.
Well, maybe Pro/E is not such a good idea, but then, is Solid Edge?
I have hit the roof with another MCAD system when the assembly reaches 7000 parts, I could not generate the drawing without memory full errors, although I have an Athlon64 X2 with 4 GB RAM.
Layouts of the full mill line could eventually reach 30.000-50.000 parts when grouping the machines...