Blistering SolidWorks speed....

Hello all...

We just put in a new workstation here running SolidWorks. We installed
an application called Superspeed (www.superspeed.com) and SolidWorks
ABSOLUTELY FLIES!!!

Sorry, I don't have benchmark results, but I guarantee you would never
have seen SolidWorks run this fast.

The application (Ramdisk XP) allows you to create a physical disk using
RAM only, then you can install SolidWorks on the RAM partition. There is
no wait to execute SolidWorks, open dialogs, create features etc because
the entire application is loaded directly into RAM.

We configured the machine with 4GB of RAM and allocated 1GB as a RAM
disk and installed.

If you want to email direct, just replace the USCORE with an actual
underscore in my address.

D. Short

 

D. Short wrote:
Why not run Ship in a Bottle and let us know what you got?

 

if interested in reducing, you can save about 400~450mb by omitting realview

 

It is probably 1gb because of all the add-ins, i.e. Toolbox and the
textures for Realview. The install we did was with no add-ins.

Overall, we have 2 apps on the ramdrive (512mb), SolidWorks takes about
350-400mb (I am not in the office right now).

The startup speed doesn't seem to be much slower as the machine is a
3.2Ghz and the disks are fast SATA 10,000rpm drives.

Even if it takes 5 minutes longer (which it would not) to boot winxp,
the speed increase in running all day long would more than be able to
justify the long start-up time. The only time we shut down or reboot our
machines is after applying new drivers or patching the OS.

Believe me, this is well worth a try, I wouldn't believe you would be
disappointed at all.

D

 

It is interesting you mentioned running a program in RamDisk. I used
to do that in slower Macs with the OS a long time back. There are
programs that load themselves into RAM and run super-fast that way and
the one I've used most recently is the Panorama database program from
ProVue Development in Huntington Beach, CA. It is cross-platform, and
indeed fast.

I have never thought about it until you mentioned it, but I now wonder
why SolidWorks couldn't be designed like Panorama. It sounds like we
have the RAM capacity to do it, even on laptops today.

Obviously, there are safety and programming issues and not all users
might want to run an application in RAM on an older machine which
can't take a large amount of RAM.

Fascinating - Bo

 

Isn't there something missing in this conversation???? Or is it just me????
How is this going to help when your model pushes 1.6Gb as it is and doesn't
behave properly because SW says it can't obtain the required memory to
complete the task? Any RAM taken away to load unnecessary code, rather than
the model, is, in this instance, not wise use of resources.

Now, before all of you flame me (fire suit on,) of course I agree that not
everyone is doing stuff that large and trying to use all of 2Gb of installed
RAM. So, yes, I agree, if you have the room to suck up RAM with a RAM disk,
it would probably work pretty nicely.

A good example of that is BIOS shadowing, which most people already are
doing, they just don't know it. Ok, fire suit off.

WT

 

Firstly, I didn't add the bit saying that you *should* consider the
amount of ram that you need to do your work before you take some away...
my bad, but I'm pretty confident that everyonme here would be able to
do the math ;-)

Laptops could be a problem as they can not take as much ram as a
workstation. My Dell Inspiron 8200 will only take 1Gb, so I would be
hesitant to take 512mb away from that, albeit I have been working
comfortably on 512 for quite some time on medium sized assemblies
(150-300 component drawings).

Modern workstations are another story, although. Put 3 or 4Gb of ram in
and give some to a ramdisk... ram is cheap these days, time is expensive.

 

I'm confused here... I was given the impression a long time ago that
Solidworks does load a primary amount of code into ram. Consider when you
load Solidworks off a network... it doesn't run off the network hard drive,
it loads off the network hard drive into something... like local ram. It
seem that Solidworks would launch instantly from a ram drive but it
shouldn't "run" any faster. AFAIK, Solidworks loads anything that it
happens to be using into ram first. Most programs these days do not "run"
off the hard drive. The paging that Windows does and the time it takes to
load from hard drive to ram is what we're noticing as being slow.

- Eddy

 

This stuff isn't rocket science. Ram drives have been around forever. The
new ram drive softwares, like superspeed just add twists to the old
technology. Basically it works in one of two ways...

Write-through in which your data is safe because it gets copied to hard
drive; which means your basically back to the speed of your hard drive,
except now you have less ram to the OS and the Apps that need it.

and

Write-back (or lazy write) in which your data gets written to the hard drive
every once in a while and also which means your data is less than "real
time" safe and again, you have less ram to the OS and Apps.

Either situation tells me, with respect to SW, your better off leaving the
ram to the OS. Definitely not for me, but to any of you who use it, good
luck.

- Eddy

 

Yes, the technology has been around for quite a while (even DOS days),
but superspeed is quite a bit different and takes it to a new level.

The ramdrive shows as an actual hard drive that you can format as you
wish (fat, raw, or ntfs) and then you copy or install the application(s)
on that drive. When you shut down or reboot, the data is automatically
backed up to a magnetic drive for use with the next session.

I see this much different than your write through/back methods explained
below. The *WHOLE* application is on the ramdrive, so the hard drives
never need to be touched.

Again, ram is so cheap today, why not buy an extra 1 or 2Gb for the real
increase in speed, I would think that the small amount of expenditure
would by far pay for itself in a short time.

I posted this because I have never seen it discussed here but see much
discussion on poor performance. We are seeing very significant benefits.

D.

 

so what happens if the power goes off?

And when exactly _DOES_ it save to a hard drive (local or network)?

Or what happens when SW crashes? Which I know it will. What happens to the
previous 6 hours of work that I've done?

pardon me if I seen a bit confused/concerned about the whole thing.

--nick e.


Speaking of alternate "drives"....and Completely Offtopic(tm)..has anyone
seen this method of "installing"?
http://zero-install.sourceforge.net/index.html
Zero-install. basically "run" the program off the internet. Or,
alternatively, off a central location on your Lan I suppose. Interesting to
say the least. I suppose it would make keeping all your clients up to date
with the same version a snap.

 

but isn't it saved to the ramdisk? or am I missing something?

-nick e.

 

I believe you are missing something....

I would not suggest that you save your models/drawings to ramdisk. Only
the SWX application gets copied to the ramdisk.

If you save your models to the ramdisk, the data would be lost unless,
of course. you used the neato keeno backup 'feature'in SWX.

 

so really only a power loss would kill your work right? which is a risk
without a UPS in any case.

when does (or when would) superspeed actually save to a harddisk?

-nick e.

 

Look at it this way Dale. Imagine a hard drive that had a 512Mb buffer and
it only commits your saves to the platters whenever it feels like it. You
don't know if it's now, later, or much later. And it takes away 512Mb from
your available ram pool. Would you buy it?

- Eddy

 

Ok, I'm gonna give up on this soon but one last thing... If you're only
running Solidworks off the ram drive then you're only saving the time it
takes to load Solidworks. It doesn't make Solidworks any "faster". Read
the reviews on the website carefully and you'll see the phrase "loads
faster".

- Eddy

 

Damn, I know we want to let this thread die but I have to add something here
too. I was considering a controller just like that for my server. I was
going to pack it full and use Raid 0+1. I found out something
interesting... that much controller buffer only really benefits Raid 5.
And Raid 0+1 is typically "marginally" slower than Raid 5 when using only 4
disks. I bought the controller that had a fixed 64mb buffer thinking I
would use 0+1 but tried both and their engineer was proved right. I wished
I had paid for the controller with the dimm slot, except that it was double
the price.

For my new workstations I went SATA Raid-0, and all the SW data and project
data are shared over the Gigabit network off the server, and therefore fast
and safe. the local drives running Raid-0 are meant to serve Windows and
it's swap file. Also, I make a disk image of the workstations onto the
server after they're built and have scheduled back ups to the server tape
drive so if something goes south locally it doesn't take long to get it back
up. We're fast and safe and all local ram is available for OS or Apps.
I've been doing this for awhile

- Eddy

 

Come on David,
Let "neato keeno" go, you've been in Australia for a while now.
Try: Maaate, how are ya? or Wanna go for a blat in the Monaro?
You know, get with the program!!!
;-)

Shane

 

Gee wouldn't this all be settled by running a benchmark or two and comparing
it to similar systems?

 

i have a trial version. once the ram disk is created, there is an option to
create a backup folder on the hard drive. you can copy the contents of the
ram disk to this backup folder, *** this has to be done manually ***. upon
startup, the contents of the backup folder are then loaded to the ram disk,
this is an automated feature.

as long as a ups is present, i see no reason not to have data on ram drive.
but beware of the following,
- coping from ram disk to hard disk is a manual operation, if you forget
you're screwed.
- if you lock up your system and have to restart, you're screwed.