What computer hardware is working well with working with 100 mb files?

[rrummell]

We are growing large in file size (100 mb) and we seem to be running into very slow speeds on our computers and I wanted to see what other people are using for computer specs before we spend alot of money to find out that we are heading in the wrong direction.

 

[AnnaWood]

rrummell,

You mention that you have grating and thread plates in your assemblies. How much detail do you have in those parts?

That could be what is hurting you in your drawings. The parts that have a large number of patterned features really drain resources. Having to render them in wireframe in a drawing can really push your system.

Can you show those views as a solid instead of wirframe mode? The solid views will render quicker then wireframe mode. You may also experiment with suppressing those parts in your assembly, then seeing what the drawing performance is.

When I have a drawing that is taking a while to work with I will often temporarely show all the views in solid mode, then switch over to wireframe when the drawing is done and ready for the last saves and printing of the pdf's for release.

You are very likely running out of virtual memory and going to a 64 bit operating system will probably help with drawing speed. Drawings are the most resource intensive task of all the work we do in SolidWorks.

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

http://www.auerprecision.com

 

[pdybeck]

A couple of thoughts...

You could use display states to do what Anna is suggesting. You could also create a simplified configuration of parts that have a significant number of surfaces (such as a part with a high number of patterned features). You would then use the simplified configuration of the part in the assemblies where they are used. This would lessen the number of surfaces shown in your assembly model and relieve your computer from the burden of rendering and updating all those surfaces. If you have SolidWorks Professional, or if you have access to the SolidWorks Utilities add-in, then there is a tool that helps with geometry simplification for cases such as these. It will build a configuration in your part file(s) and de-feature your part automatically where it can to simplify the geometry. You can do this at the assembly level and have SolidWorks create simplified configurations in the part files. This would do the bulk of the work. You could then go into each part file and change how parts are simplified or strip away even more features to simplify the config at the part level. Don't know if this applies to your situation, but thought I would mention, as round-tripping parts breaks the associativity to the real part file that defines the geometry. If creating a simplified config could help, then you might not need to round trip.

Pete