TIP of the day!

If you have more than one seat of SW, do NOT point your Template links to a
folder on the server.
This will slow down your PC.
Instead copy the templates to a folder on your local drive, and change the
link to suit.
When there is a change to a template, make a new folder on your local drive
copy the new templates and add another link to these templates,
Do NOT delete the old template folder or remove the old link.
If you have notes on a drawing template and you have deleted the old one,
when you reload the template with the new one, these notes will be lost.

 

And if you are administring this how do you make certain that everyone
is using the correct templates?

What about the other 20 or so file locations that should be on a
network drive?

 

What kind of speed difference are we talking about... is it significant? Is
is noticed when creating a new part, or during all operations?

I plan to set up this way (templates on the network); if it'll affect
performance I'd like to know why and how, and I'll consider another setup.
Thanks,

Brian

 

That is where the Design office manager's job comes in. the only person that
should be able to make any changes to the templates. We use design change
request forms, once a week( in my case on a Wednesday), these are looked at
and if a change is valid, then it is implemented. Once the master templates
are updated, these templates are copied to the "local" machines.
The templates are named to ensure that the current templates are used.
I.e:-
yPart
zPart
yAssembly
zAssembly
yDrawing
zDrawing
Starting from z, ensures that the latest template is at the top of the list,
in this case "y".
The local machine has a folder called, "Templates", with sub folders called,
"Jan04, Jan05, Feb04, Mar05, etc..
But only if there are changes in a particular month, is a sub folder added
This ensures that there can only be maximum of five changes any sub folder,
and not a load of sub folders to trail through.
If there is a need to have a change every month, then someone is not doing
their job correctly.

Please list the 20 or so other files locations, Excel, Toolbox, Design
library and pdmworks are the only ones I use.
but a list would be great.

 

The slowness I mentioned, is in solidworks in general, as the years have
gone by, solidworks has got slower and slower and I only started on 2003!!!

It's a bit like Microsoft Xpeee Windoze, windows 3.1 was a racing car in
comparison.
Both have become bloatware, yes I know there are more features, but I don't
use them all, maybe there could be switches to turn them off, lol.

The speed difference with having toolbox and design library being on a
server is not very noticeable to having it on your local machine. But I
would stress, have a 1Gb network minimum, otherwise you will go very slow.
But do not have the templates on the server of current usage, only a copy,
put the templates on the local machine.
A lot of crashes have been avoided this way, especially when the server gets
busy.

 

Look in Tools/Options/System/File Locations

 

I think this level of problem is better fixed with a faster network.
Didn't somebody just tell me hat a gigabit network greatly speeds up
loading of assemblies. The same would be true of this issue. The only
file you want local is the journal because SW is constantly writing to
is. I guess the backup directory would be another.

 

Well the only reply I can give to that, is that in my experience, keeping as
many things off of the server is best.
Local drive access will always be faster than network access, no if's or
but's.

This is not mentioned lightly without any background knowledge, I built the
Pc's and the network system here and have tried many combinations to see
what works best. That's one of the reasons why all of the desktop's now run
with WD Raptor Sata drives in raid 0 and the local data on Raid 1. 4 drives
per machine, but the speed increase is well worth it.

There is also the network clashes to deal with, yes they do happen and the
data has to be re-sent, all which helps to slow things down.

Even with just the Toolbox, Pdmworks and Design office on the server, when
having a large assembly open, the network traffic is huge whilst saving,
rebuilding and checking-in.

Now add more people on to the network and your network server access time
slice is lowered.

This is on a 1Gb network, but one thing to remember, the network speed
difference between 1000 and 100 is not linear, there are lots of other
factors to take in to account.

Moving many things off the server have eliminated the Solidworks special
white washed screen display, that used to happen.
I totally disagree about the backup directory being on the server, you would
have almost constant network access depending on how many, backup after so
many changes, you have set.

This my 2 cents, but has cost me a lot more cents to get here.

 

I don't understand how putting your templates on the server affects
performance at all. The templates are accessed only when creating new
files, right?

Eric

lost.

 

I would be surprised if one can actually measure the amount of time
spent loading a template. If it can be measured with a stop watch then
something else is probably wrong. So I agree.

 

If the Templates are on the server, then there is a link to that folder,
your pc will scan every network link that you have quite often, not just
when you want to use a template.
If you look under my network places, tools, folder options,view, there is a
tickbox, to select, Automatically search for network folders and printers.

On my system this is disabled, otherwise it almost continuously scans the
network
Connect a laptop and unless there is a full firewall, the drives, shared
folders etc... on this pc, will be added to your network places.
Even if there is a firewall, your pc, will still try to scan it. This is the
same for every pc connect to your network.
Now multiply, just this time, spent by 10, 25, 50, depending on how many
users and network links you have.

If you had a hub or switch on the server, just watch the led indicators!,
they flash like they are having a party, even when no one is using a pc.
This is the server continuously scanning the network to ensure everything is
correct.
Now add, internet access, printers, scanners, time synchronization etc, to
your network,
That server is working all of the time, time that your small link to the
templates, have to share with it and other PC's.

I am not saying it is ridiculously slow, but one bottleneck and one
potential hiccup gone, with some time gained, is a bonus right?

 

Blinking or not, having templates, etc. on the network doesn't even
show up on the XP radar. I am speaking of the taskmanager network
utilization display. I just opened a largish assembly of 3500 parts.
There were five peaks lasting less than a second during the resolving
part of loading. The highest peak was 50% utilization and the other
were between 25% and 35%. 60% or more of the time was spent
regenerating. After the assembly was loaded there was no discernable
traffic. Opening a subassembly from the assembly made an almost
indiscernable glitch in network traffic. Other than that there is
nothing going on.

The lights may blink, but they will blink for a single byte going by.
While I work I watch my firewall indicator . There is really no
correspondence to activity in SW unless I am loading or saving.

 

As the title suggested, this was a tip of the day, not a hard and fast rule
for everyone to follow.
I made a valid point about a problem that effected my system, and found an
workable answer, it may not effect your system, but may effect others.

 

Pete,
I will not speak about network traffic other than to say;
We have our 40 plus SW users connected to various servers and the SW
"Templates" & "Formats" directories are on one of the servers. We have
never had a performance problem with SW "File Locations" on our
servers. (In total, we have over 240 PC connected.)
As far as your last comment concerning deleted notes, you are correct
but this is only true if you do not follow a procedure. In our case,
the procedure for replacing a Template with a Format, the user is
instructed to select & copy the notes. This action puts them on the
"clipboard". After the format is inserted, then the notes are pasted
back. All other information in the title block and notes is updated per
Drawing, Part & Assembly "File Properties", regardless of whether they
are "Custom" or "Configuration Specific".
I write standards, procedures, techniques & methods to perform
countless SolidWorks tasks. Our users are then instructed & taught
using all company guidelines. I guess this is really the battle.
Determine, test and then follow the Company Procedures.

 

Here is a thought that has just crossed my mind whilst watching Nicole
Kidman and George Cloney!

Don't ask!, my brain is ticking all of the time, lol

My work stations have Sw2005 sp 0.1 and Xp Pro Sp 2.
I even set up a mini network today with just three Work stations, pdmworks
on one of the work stations. All have the firewall enabled and I still got
the same slow response when accessing the templates.
Are you running these updates also?
I will disable the firewalls tomorrow and see what happens.

 

Pete,
Couple of Things:
We do not have an "internal" fire wall so this in itself could be an
issue. However, I still contend that once a drawing is started, a
template becomes part of the drawing object. No link exists.
Another thing to consider is "spyware". If you have such a program, it
could be set where it is constantly monitoring all files and this could
be the cause of poor performance.
Eddie

 

And for that matter, is the anti virus set to watch files on the fly?
If so, turn it off.

 

Another possibility for slow performance over the network is if you have
virus checking enabeled for solidworks files. I set ours to exclude
SolidWorks file extensions (never heard of one that contained a virus)
and the performance increase was very notable.

Dave H

 

I have looked at that here, but the Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition
software doesn't appear to allow file extensions longer than 3 characters.
Anybody else figure that one out?

WT

 

I am Running McAFee VirusScan Enterprise 7.0.0
I have setup, the exclude files, to exclude every SW file extention, that I
can find.
But thanks for trying.