SolidWorks Excessive memory usage. 1

[kgoode]

Hello all,

I am observing as one of my engineers is opening and closing assemblies and parts in solidworks. While we are going through this process I am noticing that in task manager the memory for the active Solidworks process continues to steadily climb. I have also noticed that when users open SolidWorks then open an assembly the memory allocation for the Solidworks process does not decline. At this point I am scratching my head as frustrated users are experiencing system crashes.

Our systems are Dell precision T5400's running Windows Vista x64 and solidworks 2008. the systems currently house 4gb of ram. Any help or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

Welcome to the world of SolidWorks!

That situation, however unacceptable it may be, is completely 'normal'.

Max out the RAM and increase your VM to suit.

 

[MadMango]

Is this behavior repeatable on other machines?
Can you narrow this performance hit down to a single part file?

 

[kgoode]

This scenario is happening on multiple systems. I have yet to narrow this issue down to one or multiple files. This issue seems to happen regardless of which file is open.

 

[MadMango]

What SP of SW08 are you using?

 

[kgoode]

SP4

 

[MadMango]

You could try SP5 and see if your problem goes away, but I don't recall anything about any memory leaks being addressed.

 

[Theophilus]

Mine does the same (XP 32-bit, 4GB RAM, v2007 SP5) until I close down SW and start it again. With the 64-bit OS you're using, go get more RAM--cheapest, fastest, most certain way to make the problem go away. For those of us in 32-bit land, we have no such fix.



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.

 

[uGlay]

you have to be saving, closing and restarting all day.

SW2008 Office Pro SP4.0
Intel Core 2 Duo CPU
2.2GHz, 2.00GB RAM
QuadroFX 3700
SpacePilot

 

[Theophilus]

I have a couple of projects with huge numbers of parts in the assemblies. To get an eDrawing of a top-level assembly, I've got to shut off everything in the background such as browsers, email, silly little programs, etc. And then sometimes it still doesn't work and eDrawings crashes. So with a couple of things it gets challenging, but otherwise is quite the stable system. (Most of the time I'm doing industrial design, not machine design.)



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.

 

[sldwkmin]

One item to be aware of in regards to this is that SolidWorks when you first open it does not load any additional items such as tools it needs, once you open a file it will load certain items based on what it needs to solve that file set and if you use a tool or feature it will load what it needs to run that particular item. Once you close the file set you should see a drop in used memory but not back to the original level as it keeps the items loaded that it needed for particular tools and functions. If you reopen the same file set again it should grow to the original max number and then if you do nothing additional while the files are open and then close them it will drop back to what was previous.

Along with that the task manager is not a reliable source to track memory useage. I have seen it off by up to 500mg. If you go to Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Performance right click in the graph and select "Add counter" select process from the first drop down, virtual bytes from the drop down below that and SLDWORKS from the drop down to the right. It says "virtual bytes" DO NOT mistake this for virtual memory. It is tracking all bytes that SolidWorks is using. You may also need to right click in the graph and adjust the min and max numbers to get a good read.

Cole M
CSWP, CSWST, CSWI, CPDM
HP XW4300, 3.4g proc, 2.5g RAM, ATI Fire GL 3100
Dell M90, Core 2 Duo, 4g RAM, Nvidia Quadra FX2500M
Equus (custom), P4, 3.4g proc, 3g RAM, Nvidia Quadro FX3400

 

[Theophilus]

I like showing both the Mem Usage and VM Size columns in Task Manager. VM Size for SolidWorks is generally much larger.



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.

 

[sldwkmin]

Theophilus,

All those items can be tracked through the tool I mentioned. Having run several of these tests on many systems I've found that portion of Task Manager to be very inaccurate and for all practical purposes worthless. For whatever reason its memory tracking is horrible.

Cole M
CSWP, CSWST, CSWI, CPDM
HP XW4300, 3.4g proc, 2.5g RAM, ATI Fire GL 3100
Dell M90, Core 2 Duo, 4g RAM, Nvidia Quadra FX2500M
Equus (custom), P4, 3.4g proc, 3g RAM, Nvidia Quadro FX3400