Slow access to SolidWorks ToolBox on network

[rgrayclamps]

I have a Toolbox setup on a shared network drive. We have a dozen of SW users to access the ToolBox. We have been using this ToolBox for a couple of years. There were no problems at all. Normally, it took me a couple of seconds to insert a fastner into a small assembly model. But recently, I noticed something wrong with the ToolBox. It takes me at least 15 seconds to insert a fastner into the assembly. The ToolBox was setup "Read-Only". There are no network hardware and pc software changes during most recent one year.

I do notice some of colleages modified the ToolBox. But I do not know what kind of modifications they made as no one is willing to admit making changes to it.

Where do I start to diagnose and repair our ToolBox?

Thanks,

Alex
Windows XP, sp2.0
SW 2005, sp02
ToolBox 9.0(?)

 

[PDMAdmin]

If some of your colleagues have been able to modify Toolbox, it can't be truly "read only" status. Try doing a repair on the install (Toolbox in particular), modify the permissions on the network folder and see if that results in a performance improvement.

 

[dezignstuff]

It might have to do with Custom Standards. Check out the size of the Toolbox database. It should be about 50-60 Mb, but if someone has created custom standards, it could be much larger (double, triple). This is one reason I'm of the opinion that Toolbox on the network is a bad idea. For several other reasons, I think Toolbox local is a bad idea. I've got a bit of a write up on this at my site,

http://mysite.verizon.net/mjlombard/

, in the rules of thumb area, the "Practical Issues with Toolbox" doc.

 

[rgrayclamps]

Hi, PDMAdmin:

My ToolBox is "Read-Only" on the network drive. But users still have write access to it if they want to. They can dis-enable this "Read-Only" very easily. SolidWorks always changes this "Read-Only" property on-the-fly. Some of our users do not like some part of the ToolBox. They may intentionally or unintentionally change the ToolBox. You know that we may not secure the ToolBox as users need to write access to it whenever they need to create a new configuration for a ToolBox component. My Toolbox is about 50.34 MB.

Thanks,

Alex

 

[halfmark]

Alex;
There are only 6 Toolbox users.

As we create new hardware Solidworks writes to the toolbox files. The only thing that was done, was that a description was added to hardware as it was inserted into assemblies. The reason for this was at the request of our management to make the BOM description call outs of hardware more standard.( This was freely admitted to you!) This was done over a month before any problems appeared! We have recently upgraded our servers. During the upgrade,we lost access to the network severals times.Maybe if we look for the problem, rather than someone to blame it on we can fix it. Placeing complete and correct information in this forum might be a good start.

 

[rgrayclamps]

The problem is solved. SWBrowser.mdb was corruptted.

Thanks,

Alex