P4 2800, 1GB Ram, 30gb Hard drive Solid Works 2006 runs really slow

Our SolidWorks CAD drawer is complaining that his machine is running
really slow when he has about 4-6 drawings open at once. The tech guy
said that when opening complex drawings the CPU is running at 100%, Ram
being used is only about 600MB, and theres 8GB free left on the Hard
Drive.

It seems that when a drawing is opening the Hard Drive is going mad, so
could it be that the HD performance is slowing things down.
I've heard if we increase the Page File this will make a difference.

What can we do with either the Solidworks software or Windows to speed
things up.
Or
Is it the PC thats just to slow and needs an upgrade.

 

It would be really helpful to know which model MacIntosh he is running
on.

 

Sorry:- Windows 2000 SP4

 

Oops, me bad. It's in the subject line.

P4 2800, 1GB Ram, 30gb Hard drive Solid Works 2006 runs really slow

First off, we can attribute a major portion of the slow performance to:

1. Intel processor. A P4 2.8Ghz cpu is way out of date. (Dual core
AMD64 2X 4800+ is about state of the art and 2006 should take advantage
of the dual core in drawings.)
2. Pagefile setup. Your pagefile may not be setup right. See the SW
website for instructions on how to set this up.
3. Insufficient RAM. Make sure you have enough RAM. 2GB should be
enough.
4. Fragmented hard drive. Clean out temp and defrag hard drive.
5. Poor assembly technique. Clean up your assemblies for performance.
See SWW presentation on assembly performance.
6. SW. SW has steadily degraded performance over the years.
7. Not hiding section, detail and other high overhead views when not in
use.

Now some perspective:

I run one of the fastest systems on the newsgroup and it took me an
hour to place 5 dimensions on a complex large assembly detail view two
days ago.

And look up XPTC and read it before implementing it.

 

You dont mention your GPU... Grapchic card... it's crucial part of the
SW performance...

 

The GPU is a Nvidia 64MB Quadro 4 580 XGL, Direct X version is 7.0. The
page file says 523MB used / 1903MB available.
The hard drive has already been defraged.

 

If windows task manager performance tabs values result in "commit
charge" > physical memory total-available, then the system is paging to disk
and more ram will be a big help.

 

The next thing is a visit to the benchmark doctor.

http://www.engtran.com/SWBM001.html

Run Ship in a bottle and STAR2.1. Let us know what you get.

A graphics card doesn't really help with drawings that much. Drawings
are 2D and most of the heavy lifting is done in the CPU. The GeForce
issue won't crop up unless you have had a lot of SW windows open. Since
you have a Quadro the point is moot.

Also, make sure you have your journal file set to a local disk in
Tools/Options/File locations.

 

GPU Drivers are also as crucial... and mayby most recent directx helps
also (cause the most recent drivers are ment for it)