Model Size vs. System Specifications

I am beginning to look at Solidworks for my company. I need to know
how big of an assembly can Solidworks handle? By handle, I mean to be
able to open the assembly model and actually work in it.

Our machines could have as many as 200,000+ parts in the overall
assembly drawing. This of course would be broken up in smaller
sub-assemblies. Would this be a problem for Solidworks?

What kind of processor and memory should I need to handle something of
this size? What graphics card would be needed also?

Thanks.

 

I am running an AMD 64 machine with 2GB of ram and a Nvidia FX3000.
Pretty much all you can ask for in a CAD workstation. Our largest assy
is 20,000 parts. Solidworks 2003 manipulated this assy with relative
ease with hardly no lag in rotating parts and rebuilds and such. We
upgraded to Solidworks 2004 and the assy is now noticeably slower in
pretty much all aspects. It is still useable but if the assy was much
bigger it would start to get frustrating. Multipage drawings of this
assy are even worse (slower) and would probably have to be divided into
separate drawing files with a two or threee sheets per file.

200,000 parts would take a lot of manipulation by suppressing of parts
and features that are currently needed to be very useable but a lot of
that would depend on the types of parts have and how they were modeled.
In my experience, the large assy models and drawings are the final
things due in a project and the last time you would want to be
experiencing slowdowns is deadline time.

I would be very interested to see other opinions on this but i wouldn't
be to sure that Solidworks is for you. It is a great product but
200,000 parts are more than I have ever heard of anyone using with SW.

Has anyone else noticed the slowdown from 2003 to 2004 and has the same
trend continued when migrating to 2005?

 

The guys who handle large assemblies don't seem to be inclined to answer
you, so I guess I'll give it a stab. My first guess would be that you're
going to have lots of problems with SolidWorks, but it's hard to be sure
without more to go on. How complex are the parts that make up the
assemblies? Parts with lofts and sweeps are harder to handle than
rectangular blocks. How many unique parts do you have? The more unique
parts, the more memory you'll be using. Still, even if you have assemblies
of just a few 200,000 rectangular blocks, I think you will probably bring SW
to its knees when you try to make a drawing, if not just opening the
assembly.

You'll want a fast processor, but you may not need the bleeding edge, just a
bit down from there. More important is getting as much memory as you can
handle. I would go for 4 GB of the fastest RAM.

I don't know, but more expensive is probably better. One of the very spendy
Quadro cards, possibly not the top of the line, as with the processor.


Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"

 

I haven't noticed a slowdown, but we don't do large assemblies or big
drawings. I have noticed the large increase in file size and the time it
takes to load and save files when we switched to 2004.

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"

 

Actually, it looks like David did answer you. It had been so long since I
read the group that there were more replies available than my news reader
was set to download at one time.

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"

 

Hi Kirk,

I am not familier with the Hardware selections. But I can suggest you
that, you can handle the bigger assemblies in Soldworks with some
production techniques. I mean, build the assemblies in planned manner.
I can imagine that it's not as simple as like the word "plan".
Presently I am trying to do a equipment with 100,000+ parts. Actually
my result should be the 2D drawings of the Outline Layout and the
Various sections of the equipment and later on the 2D detail drawings.
It would be appreciated if the equipment model is as much as
parametric!!!
The plan is,
- Design a base Layout(skeleton)
- build the "Sub and Main Outline Layout" model of the equipement
using "Skeleton" (here I have avoided most of the detailed parts that
is not really work with Layout models/drawings)
- I have fixed the eqp. layout design intend in this stage as much as.
- I beleive I can use the dimensions/requirements for the detailed
assembly from the sub/main layout models.

Anyhow I will defenitly have the day which all detailed sub assemblies
in to one whole assembly model. But atleast SW can work faster in
remaing days.

To build the SolidWork assembly models you should have to follow the
do's-and-don'ts in Solidworks. For examble you should careful with the
incotext feature. refer the link below
http://www.frontiernet.net/~mlombard/incontexttips.html

I assume in near future, high number of Solidworks users will be the
Large assembly builders. If it is...we need a strong knowledge base
for the PC hardwares, production techniques, do's-and-don'ts and
another important one is the "File management system".

Post your comments.

Best of efforts.
JR