Performance Suggestions

[BodyBagger]

Hello all,
I am working on a drawing with a large file size (20 MB). This is a top level assembly drawing. I am surprised but my system is really dragging bad. It has never dragged before but I have also not had a drawing of this size before. I have no performance issues working with the assembly model (no lag at all). If anyone has system setting recommendations please let me know.
Much appreciated.

Dell T3400
Windows XP PRO x64 (Build 3790)
3.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E8500
8GB RAM PC2-6400 (400 MHz)
1333 FSB
Nvidia Quadro FX1700

Virtual memory settings:
Initial - 12137MB (50 less than max as recommended by my VAR)
Maximmum - 12187MB (system recommended size)

 

[MikeHalloran]

The biggest performance gain I've found, working on big files every day, is to remove everything but SW (and ACAD) from the CAD station. Especially get rid of stuff that stays alive all the time, e.g. in the taskbar, or stuff that runs in the background and watches other stuff or polls servers.

Put all that bandwidth- wasting crap on a cheap computer next to the CAD station, network them, and map them so you can see each computer's drive from the other.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[msquared48]

Huh?

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

 

[MikeHalloran]

What you _should_ be able to do on a multicore computer is dedicate one core to administrivia, and use the others for hard stuff... but right now, you can't.

Next best thing, put the administrivia on a separate computer... which does not need to be a CAD station.




Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[BodyBagger]

Hi Mike,
This is a dedicated SW and MS Office machine. No internet, no email, no music, no pictures, no nothing. I only plug into the net for updates and then unplug again. It is as bare as even having the standard desktop wallpaper on it.

BB

 

[AnnaWood]

How many sheets in the drawing?

How many views per sheet?

How big is the top level, parts and sub-assemblies?

It is a clean assembly with no errors?

Are you using lightweight where you can? Fully resolve at the end for final plots.

Drawings are among the most compute intensive tasks in SolidWorks.

Set up display states to handle the various views. Every view has to calculate what needs to be shown and if the entire assembly is in every view that is a ton of calculating going on behind the scenes.

Can you split the drawing into multiple files for groups of sheets of the total document?

I also change views to show solids instead of wireframes. The solids seem to work better in big drawings. Again resolve to full wireframes, if needed, at the end before final plots.

Cheers,

Anna Wood
Anna Built Workstation, Core i7 EE965, FirePro V8700, 12 gigs of RAM, OCZ Vertex 120 Gig SSD
SW2009 SP3.0, Windows 7 RC1

http://www.solidmuse.com

http://www.phxswug.com

 

[kris44]

I used the following methods as required;

1. Use display states instead of Detail & Cropped Views where possible
2. Use Shaded without Edges
3. Hide all views except the one you're working on or only load sheets as you need them
4. Use derived configurations to remove complexity

 

[mjcole]

BodyBagger,

Quick View or load specific sheet/s
What kind of work are you performing on the drawing? If you're only adding notes and doing minor changes, I'd suggest loading the Drawing as QuickView (available in 2009) this will allow you to load the entire drawing as Quick View which will display the Drawing information but not allow changes until the sheet you want to modify is loaded. You can load the sheets on an as needed basis.

Detached Drawings
Another option to consider is using save as and selecting FileType as Detached Drawing. The name might seem scarry but by saving it this way it keeps the model views linked to the models but does not do live updates until the next time the drawing is saved with Save As and re-selecting Drawing as format.

While working on a detached drawing you can add annotations and dimensions to the drawing views and if needed can right click on a view and load the model if needed to update the geometry and dimensions.

Detached Drawings are very similar to locked references an assemblies. They can be un Detached just like locked references can be unlocked to update for major changes and not every time the model is slightly changed. Depending on the drawing sometimes the file size can be larger or smaller than the original but the performance benefits should be what steer you to or away from using Detached Drawings.

One final benefit of detached drawings and then I'll shut up. Detached drawings are a good way to send customers or other companies a drawing without having to send your confidential part and assembly models. This way they only can see what you want them too and also you don't have to send the large number of parts and sub-assemblies in your Large Assembly.

Michael

 

[rgrayclamps]

BodyBagger:

I like the approaches that both AnnaWood and mjcole suggested. If you know how SW uses CPU time to do calculation, you can significantly make your drawing more efficient.

For example, I can give you an analogy. Let's say you have a model like human body, and you want section an arm. If you section the whole body at the arm's location, SW will take much longer to do calculation than you just section the arm only. When you section the whole assembly, SW needs to do its computation for the whole assembly even though your sectioning plane does not go through main bodies.

I do not know if this applies to you. But it may give you another idea to improve your drawing efficiency. Can you post a screen shot? We may be able to help you more.

Best regards,

Alex