Large Assemblies

Dear All,

We are currently using Pro/E, but have been looking at changing to
Solidworks.
One of the things that concerns us is the ability to work with large
assemblies.
Firstly, is this a "real" problem with Solidworks?
Secondly, how many components are in assemblies that you are using
comfortably.
(We have just invested in state of the art Windows workstations)


Thanks in advance for any assistance.

 

Andy,
A loaded question if I ever heard one. "Real" problems often-times depend on
who you ask. What follows is my opinion only, and is not meant as a slight
to anyone that may be experiencing large assembly issues.

I spent 4 years working with SolidWorks designing and documenting industrial
machinery composed of some 3000-4000 parts - mostly big ol' chunks of steel,
sheet metal, and 80/20 aluminum extrusions (fully detailed). Load times for
our largest assemblies and assembly drawings were in the neighborhood of 5
to 7 minutes fully resolved, and over the network. Rebuilds, mates,
switching drawing views, inserting new parts, etc. wasn't always
"instantaneous" but the waits were minimal at best. I ran a Pentium III
866MHz with 1GB RAM.

I am currently working for a company that manufactures Boom Trucks. Again,
lots of steel and sheet metal. I am using a Pentium 4 2.60GHz machine with
1GB RAM. The assembly I am working on now (I just started recently) has only
481 parts and loads in 26 seconds - mates, updates, and inserting new parts
happens in real time.

I do some work at home for a friend working on a kind of electrical switch.
My home computer is a Dell Latitude running at just under 500MHz (all I can
afford right now) and the largest assembly is 1215 parts. Fully resolved it
loads in 78 seconds. The rebuilds, updates, and other CPU intensive
functions cause some lag, but that would be expected with the system I run.

Obviously the computer specs have a lot to do with performance. But with
your recent equipment investment, I don't see a problem with even the
largest assemblies. Another opinion only - I think top-down design is
overrated. A good designer or engineer can use bottom-up design just as
effectively, and eliminate some of the linking/in-context problems that will
occur with all parametric CAD systems.

Of course, not everyone will share my views. Your best bet is to get out and
talk to some other users and see for yourself what kinds of parts/assemblies
they are doing. Ask the local VAR for some references, or contact members of
the local SolidWorks user group and ask them. See for yourself what
SolidWorks can do before making the decision to switch. The ease-of-use, the
fine reseller network, partner products, the SolidWorks community, and the
company that stands behind the product are reason enough for me to recommend
the move to SolidWorks.

And when you do decide to switch, I expect you will not be disappointed.

Richard Doyle

 

If you can spare the time and effort, you can get a free 90 day personal
edition of SWX to 'kick the tires' yourself. Just try duplicating some
of your current work and you will soon some to a conclusion.

Generally, SWX is slower in large assemblies, but there are some good
reasons for this, IMO. SWX assemblies are not history dependant as ProE
assemblies are. Thus, a lower component in the feature tree can affect
the position of a higher component. If you have worked with ProE's
mechanisms extension, this is similar to how all components behave in
SWX. In the end, this means SWX must solve ALL assembly constraints
simultaneously, unlike ProE, which can solve assembly constants 1
component at a time in a much more linear manner.

The benefit of the SWX approach is that assemblies behave more real-
world-like. The downside, of course, is it takes more power to solve
all those assembly constraints simultaneously. Also, constraint
management in SWX can be more difficult and confusing.

Like others have said, depending on your situation, SWX's ease of use
can outweigh any performance advantage ProE may have (or vice versa).

 

All,

please do not forget to check out the 'best practice' section of the
Solidworks website. They have some excellent tips on handling large
assembly models and documents.

regards,
tjt

ps. the new 2004 version has addressed the large assembly issue again
with some nice enhancements