Very complex parts

I'm wokring on some parts that are extremely processor intensive, and
was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on how I might improve the
performance of adding features, etc.

Imagine a screen door, in which it is necessary to model every hole.
There are thousands of them. If I make an assembly that resembles the
final part, by mating individual tiny parts together, the performance
is not bad. But if I get all of these features into a single part,
it's terrible. Any thoughts?

Thanks.

 

Thanks. I've tried some different methods with varying degrees of
success. One thing I did not mention is that I do not need the final
model to be parametric. So, at times I have done something like the
following:

Model a small portion of the array in a part. Bring this part into an
assembly and pattern it so that it represents a larger portion of the
final part. Export that as a dumb multibody solid. Open that solid,
combine bodies, and again export as a dumb solid, this time single
body. Bring the single body dumb solid into a new assembly and again
pattern it so that the array continues to grow. Repeat until I have
the final array.

In some situations this works, but sometimes the geometry is not
conducive to this kind of approach, and obviously it's less than
ideal. However, using this approach I have made parts in a few hours
that would have taken days if I left everything fully feature-based.

 

Do you need all those holes for a visuel effect or is it to be
exportet to a lazor-cutter or similar?

If you need it to be cutted, simply just make the sketch on the
surface, but do not make the cut feature.
On the drawing you can "show sketches" and if you were to export it
will still show.
At least thats how we do it with all our sheet-metal parts which has
loads of holes (patterns, letters etc.)


If you want it for the visuel 3D effect for some use? You will have
some problems.
The pattern feature is very heavy and dividing it into smaller pieces
will speed it up some.
So fx if you made a row of the holes 1 by 1, and then made a pattern
along one axis for each of them.
It really comes down to how much time you want to use making each hole
as a single feature compared to making them all in a pattern.
There is defo some rebuild/handling time to save... But it will still
be heavy.