Solidworks problems...any clues??

Hi all,

This is Kav from Australia. I have been using Solidworks for a couple
of years now with different versions upto SWX2005. Currently I am
working on SWX2003 Sp3 and I facing three problems which is driving me
nuts.

I am working on a top down assembly of a kettle(100mb) where lot of
surfaces in a part are referenced from other parts. The problems are -

1. There are three or four errors in different parts of the main assy,
which I resolve and save everytime I am closing solidworks but one of
them keeps popping everytime I open the assebly file.

2. In two or three parts files of the assy there is a rebuild icon
embeded on to one of the features which don't go away even if I do
`ctr Q' and the working becomes miserably slow even if you touch the
roll back bar 'cause the entire assy rebuilds.

3. Solidworks crashes.... ah..very frequent problem with all of us. My
VAR told me not to save my files on the server while working 'cause
sometimes when the network is slow and solidworks is not able to
retrieve the data it crashes. I have saved the data in the local hard
drive. It was o.k. for two days but again SWx crashed and it gives a
message of `unhandeled error or internal error contact your local
support'. I had sent the files to the VAR but he was not able to
reproduce the crashes.

If anyone is able to throw some light it will be of great help.
Thanks in advance
Kav

 

Kav,

You have just expressed the main reason why most people don't use "top
down". It gets unpredictable when used in depth. It is a good marketing tool
though (cringe !!!)

You may want to re-think your approach.


Regards

Mark

 

Dale,

I did say "in depth" which I guess is pretty ambiguous.

I do limited top down myself. Like you I know what's safe and what isn't.
Many people tie themselves up in knots and loops learning these things. I
guess I just couldn't think of a simple answer, (probably because there
isn't one).

Mark

 

Kav,

It sounds like you've got allot of circular referances. This is very easy to
do, with top down methods, as SW is totally open in this regard.

Regards

Mark

 

Hi Kav,

We use top down (or in context) modelling heaps over here in Perth WA.

With your green light that won't go away - check to see if you have
supressed a feature in the part that won't rebuild. If so, you may have to
supress it's sketch also (sounds weird, but supressing the feature doesn't
supress the sketch; whereas, supressing the sketch will also supress the
feature) - it may be that a sketch has a reference to something that is now
out of context in this configuration.

Another thing to help reduce 'cherries' - try to make your in context
references to a sketch rather than an edge (eg. show the sketch used to
create the feature and reference/dimension from this - it is much more
stable).

Large assemblies will always bring SW to its knees. Where possible make
your large assembly up from a number of sub-assemblies, this way you do not
have to have the whole model open all the time, plus it lends itself to a
better drawing/detailing process.

The best single bit of advice that I can offer for in context modelling is
to use a driving part. This is a part that contains the driving sketches
(plan and elevation layouts), plus all of the relevant planes & axis. This
driving part can then be inserted into each of your major sub-assemblies and
much of your incontext references are made back to this part (this way it is
on the first level high in the feature manager so rebuilds don't have to
delve down many levels (ie change part 1 before part 2 can be changed,
before part 3 is updated, etc...)

HTH

Merry

 

See your temp directory (ies), and clear files left over after crashes.
Delete all files, and do it often.

 

Clues?
Where's jb?

 

If so, you may have to

Boy-O-Boy, you really do learn something every day.
I never knew that!

Thanks Merry,
Muggs

 

On top of everything else dig thru the features in the offending parts and
look for a syblol something like " ->?" it may be that in one part you
have a sketch segment referencing a sketch segment in another part that no
longer exists.

These little buggers can drive you crazy with symptoms you describe.

2¢
Whit

 

Pardon my spelling, more coffee please...

whit wrote:

syblol
=
symbol