Slow Solidworks Performance / Not utlilising 2nd CPU?

Hi All,
I'm having some performance issues with solidworks whilst doing
assembly drawings. PC spec seems more than adequate, in my opinion:

HP XW6200
Dual 3.2GHz Xeon
2GB DDR2
80GB SATA
Win XP Pro
HP FireGL 3100 Graphics

Whilst doing assembly drawings the general performance of solidworks
seems very slow. For example I had a drawing with only 50 smallish
parts (nothing too intensive) and when I tried to rotate the drawing
Solidworks seemed to more or less die on me although it did eventually
pick itself up after a minute or 2. When I checked the task manager the
CPU seemed to be only at 50-60%. I would've thought 2 x 3.2GHz Xeons
would've coped quite well under that scenario. As its only an
educational license that I have I don't believe I am entitled to
support so I'm hoping for some help here??

If anyone has any ideas or suggestions of things I could try it would
be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance

 

SW does not take advantage (to an appreciable level) dual processors
yet. ( I have benchmarked my dual Xeons and a single processor is
faster). Your usage shows 50% because SW will only max out one
processor, unless you are using Cosmos or other apps. Dual processors
shine when you are using multiple applications at one time, until SW
gets on the ball.

There are many techniques to make drawing creation faster, but little
can be done by ignoring these and trying to muscle SW with hardware.

Techniques like configurations with components supressed, hiding views
until needed, using shaded views, etc all seem to work well.
~Hope this helps!

 

I don't think SWX will utilize the second processor. But, under "tools",
"options", "performance" make sure that "use software open gl" is NOT
checked. Make sure you are using the latest certified drivers for your
graphics card, see SWX website.

Mike Eckstein

 

If you can wait for the educational version of 2006 which should happen
about 6 months from now you can utilize both CPUs on drawings. If you
have hung out on the newsgroup for any time you would know that dual
CPUs do next to nothing for the current version of SW although
PhotoWorks and Cosmos take advantage.

 

Does SW2006 use dual processors for drawings?