Need to chose MCAD for very large assemblies 1

[parne]

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 together. I have done a bit of searching the forums, and found that SW and Inventor users are not very happy with their performance over 5000 parts either. How about the SE-users of this community, could anyone be making assemblies in 30.000-50.000 range? SE product leaflets talk about 100.000 plus parts, is this for real?
Would you think SE is up there with e.g Pro/E when it comes to large assemblies? We are a small/medium sized company that cannot afford or maintain the high end MCAD systems like CATIA or UG. The machines we make are welded steel structures with some sheet metal covers and filled with chain drives, linkages rollers and a lot of standard machine components. No fancy shapes really.

 

[looslib]

If you can't afford UG or cATIA, then you can't afford Pro/E either. The price isn't much different by the time you get the modules you will need to function with the large assembly size that you have.

When you count your 30-50K parts, is that unique part numbers or total components?


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."
"Fixed in the next release" should replace "Product First" as the PTC slogan.

Ben Loosli
CAD/CAM System Analyst
Ingersoll-Rand

 

[parne]

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?

 

[swertel]

Yes, Solid Edge can handle large assemblies.

But, it requires you to be able to utilize the tools they have for large assemblies. With version 17 (current version) they changed opening and saving which reduced times I was experiencing in v16 from 2-4 hours down to 3 minutes. If your file and configuration management system have the flexibility to allow you to fully utilize SE massive assembly features, then you'll be well off. If they don't, SE still handles large assemblies without memory errors or similar problems, but performance may be hindered.

--Scott

For some pleasure reading, try FAQ731-376

 

[swertel]

P.S. Make sure you stay active in the public forums, specifically here and their newsgroups (require maintenance and a "webkey"). Some people have a hard time using SE workflow and feel that commands and burried and hidden because of it. I prefer the workflow compared to other modelers, but will not deny that it takes references from experienced users to really get proficient at the software. If you switch to Edge, stick with it for a while and be prepared to work differently than you may have before.

If I may ask, what were you using before?

--Scott

For some pleasure reading, try FAQ731-376

 

[beachcomber]

I recently worked on large machine assemblies using V14.
I did a BOM for the full assembly and it had around 18000 parts, although some fixings etc. would have had user-defined quantities. I estimate the total model count would have been 15000+.
Producing drawings was a bit of a pain at first, but by using the built-in functions (eg. simplified parts,using display configurations to only process visible components) I managed to get it to a managable level, and significantly decreased drawing file sizes.

V17 now has specific methods for simplifying assemblies for display and producing drawings, and I would think the bigger the assembly the more gain you will see.
Good luck.

Beachcomber.