Dell Precisions slow to save...

We have just purchased (5) new Dell Precision 360's (P-IV 3.06 Ghz, 1
GB RAM, Quadro FX500) and are running Swx 2003 SP3.1. We purchased
these machines because of time wasted saving models locally on our
antiquated P-III 667's. My experience at home w/ a P-IV was one of
significant speed increase across the board... but we're not
experiencing this increase with these Dells. In fact, it seems to be
worse.

Any ideas? Are there any settings that need to be set in the bios?
Drivers? We're running XP Pro SP1 and I've installed the Swx certified
video drivers for the Quadro card. Is Hyper Threading a hinderance?

Any help would be greatly appreciated as my users are getting pretty
frustrated.

Thx,

Eric Swartz

 

Did Dell certify that model for SolidWorks?

What kind of scores do you get on the SW benchmarks?

 

The video card has nothing to do with file saving. The operating system
has a bit to do with it but not much.

Unlikely.

The speed at which files are loaded/saved is primarily a function of the
hard drive used to do the loading and saving. Once the OS tells the I/O
system what needs to be saved, it is simply a matter o how fast the
transfer can take place. Typically, even old processors are blindingly
fast at moving data compared to some modern hard drives.

In January, I spec'ed three machines for my department, and I selected
15,000 RPM Seagate Cheetah SCSI hard drives with a capacity of 17Gb.
Not much storage in comparison to typical IDE drives, but the transfer
rate is 320Mb/sec.


Jim S.

 

Did you take the out-of-the-box OS setup or did you wipe the machines
and install from scratch? One thing that we found to make a
significant difference is running the Chipset update. It should be a
part of the Dell checklist, but it can be missed.

 

We wiped the machines and started w/ an image of XP we had created for
our business (set it up w/ as little cheese as possible). I then
installed all the drivers, chipset drivers included... software, so on
and so forth.

We've narrowed the problem down to a network issue we haven't resolved
yet. However... simply disconnecting the system from the network
brought the save time back to normal (2 sec's vs. 15 sec's when
connected, for the same model) with 100% CPU usage while saving
(previously it bounced around 10-15%). And yes... we are working
locally (did a file->find references and copied everything local...
even though most if not all of it already was).

We stumbled upon this by setting up one of the older Win2K machines
just to test them side by side... but it was no longer a member of the
domain so the guy who did it didn't log onto the domain (he didn't
know how). The significantly slower, older machine saved the same
model in a fraction of the time the new one took.

So... I'm thinking it's an OS issue. Any thoughts on this? Although
I'm dreading the thought... I am considering wiping one of the
machines and building up an identical Win2K image to see what happens.

Thx,

Eric

 

Thanks for the info... however... the max throughput of that SCSI
drive is more than the current PCI bus can handle. Thus... you're
probably not seeing much, if any performance increase over an ATA-133
7200 RPM IDE drive.

Eric

 

Make sure that the files are being opened locally...if there is a
tilde file (~) on the network when the file is open it can screw up
the times as well. Make sure that there is no other network location
for files that are in use during the session. I know that these are
obvious, but still...

 

Just thought of another obvious thing...are you using Anti-Virus
software? If it is set to scan all files (including SoWo files) it
takes longer to open and significantly longer to save. I have seen
the issue with any Anti-Virus software, not just one specific
manufacturer.

 

Hey thanks... that's a good point. But... our McAfee is set to scan
only default files. I've made a change to a couple of the systems
(disabled file and printer sharing and the Qos Network Manager). I'm
testing to see if that makes any difference. It's a long shot, but I
could see the Qos Manager confusing things.

I've also put back together an older Win2K machine to try and narrow
the issue to the operating system, if in fact that's the case.

Eric

 

Eric (and any others,

We use a number of Dell machines here and have noticed some of this
issue. This is information that I can add, but no solution. I use a
Dell Precision 620 P4 1 ghz machine with WinNT4 sp6, another user has
a newer Dell Precision 530 P4 1.7 ghz with Win2k latest service pack
(i can't remember what the number is but I know based on our problem
we updated to try to solve it). All other specs are the same between
the machines other than graphic card but both are 64meg cards mine is
a Elsa and his is an Nvidia of some flavor. We both run Novel 4.83.2
and use the same server to store parts. (the server is a Novel server)
We can open the exact same assembly, and his machine which should
smoke mine, takes 2 min 30 sec, my machine takes 1 min 45 sec.
Rebuilds, opens and saves all take noticiably longer on his machine.

This is rough but it is a data point that maybe will spark something
from a genius out there.

Bryan

 

OK, I know that I am reaching now, but bear with me. Do you have
primary and secondary DNS servers on the network? Is it possible that
one of them is unreachable? This is a very slim chance, but I have
seen slow response times when a primary DNS is unavailable even for
local work. I think that there is a time-out period for the primary
to respond before going to the secondary, even if there is no reason
to be looking to the network. I told you it was a reach. I just
can't come up with anything better. By the way, what are a genius?

 

Are the hard drive sizes different? Different specs also?

 

Try disconnecting your network shares and see if there are any
improvements and/or error messages when running Solidworks.

 

I appreciate all your replies... but we found the problem. For one
reason or another it's tied to the users' profile.

I found this out by reloading a machine with a base image (WinXP) and
Swx (sp3.1). I had the user log in and all was well. As soon as I
copied his profile (previously backed up) back over to the machine (so
he didn't lose all his "stuff"), the system went to crap. I blew away
his profile, had him log in again to rebuild a new one based on the
default profile and viola... it works perfectly. Solidworks is once
again saving large models in a matter of seconds, whereas before it
was taking a matter of minutes (literally).

Thus... I've asked him to monitor the system's performance and if it
goes to crap again... to tell me what he did last that could've caused
it.

Thx,

Eric

 

Eric

We had the same problem. I'm embarassed to report that it was due to the
option "Save edrawings data with document" being turned on.
Having recreated profiles for a number of users, with all the hassle that
entails, I'm a little red in the face.
The speed difference in our test case took the save time (for a drawing of
an assembly) from 1 sec to 35 seconds

See if this helps in your case (Tools/Options/System Options/General)

rgds

Andrew Troup