Can XP64 work for Solidworks? 1

[Valshnar]

I've had XP64 on my system for a couple months now.
SW2006 32 and 64 bit versions
SP 4.0 and 4.1 respectively
Quadro FX1400 with driver 81.67
Dual core atholon 4400 2.1ghz, 2gb ram
Homebuilt box

Have had frequent problems running SW. SW64 bit is very flakey and likes to crash without an error message. It won't run some files that the 32 bit is very stable on.

32 bit has some bugs with mates. I repeatedly tried to do the operation from other computers on the same files with perfect success. Very standard mate operations; clearly a bug with this install.

I installed XP64 explicitly to exceed the memory limitations of 32bit SW.

Basic question is,

a) is anyone using XP64 sucessfully, especially on large assemblies (exceeding 2gb of ram requirement)

b) Can I have a 32b and 64 bit version of SW installed simultaneously, or is that perhaps the problem?

c) Does XP64 just plain suck or is it simply my system? Maybe I should go back to XP and wait for Vista.

Thanks

Rob

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

A couple of other forum members have XP64 & SW64 installed & have given good reviews.

Two questions for you ...
Do you have the /3GB switch enabled? If so, that could be holding back XP64s ability to access more RAM & VM.
If you are wanting to exceed 2GB RAM, why do you only have 2GB installed?


Helpful SW websites FAQ559-520
How to get answers to your SW questions FAQ559-1091

 

[AnnaWood]

I have a dual boot Windows 32 and 64 bit system. System specs below. The 64 bit Windows partition is on a dedicated drive. Both drives are Western Digital 10K SATA Raptors. We also work off the network on a very good SAN with a gigabit connection and dedicated drives for engineering on the SAN.

We do tool and die design, along with our own automation/electro-mechanical press lines. The tool designs are not huge. When the tooling and automation comes together the asm can get pretty large.

I model the die springs with helixes and configurations showing open/closed, etc. I never suppress my parts, just hide. I work with verification on re-build turned on. All the things that slow down SolidWorks. I am never waiting around for my system to finish a task.

For me the system is very stable in both 32 bit and 64 bit mode of SolidWorks. I can't remember the last time I crashed out of SolidWorks. On the 64 bit side I have had Internet Explorer just close out on occasion for no apparent reason.

What I enjoy most about my set-up is how quickly drawing views regen. The drawings are definitely taking advantage of the dual cores when doing a regen and the hourglass goes away noticeably quicker.

Besides having a good network and computers with clean, stable power sources (we had one problem computer start working much better when we discovered that the circuit it was on was not grounded properly), I am a firm believer in the fact that modeling technique greatly influences system stability.

I run with a relatively clean system. It does not have tons of junk software; I do not listen to real-time streaming radio, etc. I keep it up to date with Windows Update and regularly clean out my temp files and de-frag the hard drives. The system is re-started every night. I start and close SolidWorks all day long, since I wear many hats besides being a design engineer. I tend to not have more then one asm, plus one or two part files open at a time. Most design work is done in context by editing parts while in an asm.

My experience has been very positive with 64 bit SolidWorks.

Anna Wood
SW06 SP4.1 x64, WinXP x64
Dell Precision 380, Pentium D940, 4 Gigs RAM, FX3450

http://www.auerprecision.com

 

[PDMAdmin]

XP64 does not need the 3GB switch; I'm not sure if it even has it. That is only a 32-bit issue. Anything above and beyond physical RAM would go to the swapfile. It's slower performance, but it should work.

Check your swapfile settings. How big is it? It should be at least the same as your 2GB of RAM, and you could probably go as much as 4GB (assuming you have that much hard drive space). If you have a sufficient swapfile size, are you clearing out your temp folder? (Read SBaugh's article in the FAQ section if you're not familiar with that.) If those aren't causing the problem, are you doing automatic updates to Windows? Have you done a full sweep of your system with some sort of anti-virus program? (Some viruses will shut down programs involuntarily.) If those aren't the problem, try using 4GB of RAM (which seems to be pretty standard for an x64 machine) and see if that helps.

 

[StefanHamminga]

For XP x64 you can set your swap file to 16GB, as I did, that would give you more headroom (I did get close to 10GB ram usage from SW).
Be sure to place your swap file on an NTFS partition, als FAT only supports filesizes upto 4GB.
Some software does seem to be less stable on x64, especially virus scanners, firewalls, IE plugins and MS Office 2003 without the latest SPs...

I do get the idea that SW2006 x64 sp4.1 is indeed a bit less stable than its 32-bit counterpart. Though in SW2007 that difference is gone.

Stefan Hamminga
EngIT Solutions
CSWP/Mechanical designer/AI student

 

[sostrovsky]

Does anyone think that x64 bit will help out on extremely large and complex parts? Parts with complex lofts, text extrusions, text wrap features and the like? I'm thinking this is more of a processor capability, but these single part files can get into the 30-50 mb size.

Thanks,

Steve O

 

[ctopher]

My only experience with it is, it will dramatically speed up the processing for Cosmos. I have seen a complex part take all night to process, then the same part with a dual x64 take 10 minutes.
Running within SW alone, I see rotations and rebuilds run smoother, but not that much faster.

Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks 06 4.1/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 06-21-06)

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

What do you mean by "help out" ... improve processing speed, eliminate crashing, ????


Helpful SW websites FAQ559-520
How to get answers to your SW questions FAQ559-1091

 

[sostrovsky]

Sorry - I mean speed of the rebuild times and general usability of a large part.

 

[SBaugh]

64 bit will only help in the way of memory, because there is no memory limitaiton. As for CPU speed etc... no it will not help in speed.

There have been many discussions on this issue if you have not looked try searching this up.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376

 

[Valshnar]

Thanks for all the helpful comments and ideas. I will try and respond to cover the questions people had.

1. I have assumed that the 3gb switch is unnecessary in xp64 and have done nothing to try and set it.

2. CorBlimeyLimey correctly notes that it is silly to have XP64 and only 2gb ram...this is only because at my company we insist on building our own boxes to "save money" and currently IT is struggling to figure out the correct ram configuration for my motherboard to bring it up to over 4GB.

3. While I took a day off, an assistant uninstalled both 32bit and 64 bit versions from my machine, swept the registry and reinstalled the 64 bit version. Now I can open a drawing that instantly shut 'er down before. Clearly this is a big step forward. Too early to declare victory.

4. Thanks for the other suggestions such as swap file, temp files, etc. I don't believe these are related to the problem but they are always good to check anyway.

5. I should clarify; I recognize that if I dual boot I can get perfect 32bit performance. But if I am ONLY booting xp64 can I still run 32 bit and 64 bit SW on the same box? This is what I was trying to do before and only the 32bit worked properly. I don't remember which I installed first, and I didn't do anything special to make them run together. (Not simultaneously, by the way).

6. I have found a number of programs that don't like XP64. For example, Powerpoint 2003 has a feature that automatically reduces resolution on all images. This is an invaluable feature for me...unfortunately it does not appear to work on XP64. Works perfectly on the same file from another computer. Just one example of many.

7. I agree with Annawood's philosophy of a clean system. Maybe I'm not quite as dedicated as her, but I try and keep it clean.


Thanks to all for the helpful comments. It looks like XP64 can indeed work well, so I'll keep flogging the horse.

Rob

 

[SBaugh]

3GB switch is not used in 64-bit machines

If you are running 64-bit you can still open 32-bit data.

Not everything is written in 64-bit and some 32-bit apps may not work right, just because its a different bit, but according to MS it should work.



Scott Baugh, CSWP

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376