Showing posts with label Free SolidWorks from Performance Constraints. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Free SolidWorks from Performance Constraints. Show all posts

Sunday, June 30, 2013

SolidWorks User Group - Kansas City

Kansas City SolidWorks User Group


On June 27th, I attended and presented at the
KCSWUG meeting hosted by MRI Global.  My
topic was presenting some of our findings with regards to making SolidWorks
perform with hardware sized for your SolidWorks models.  Also at this meeting we saw a presentation
from SolidWorks employee, Richard Allen. 
Richard is a Product Portfolio Manager for SolidWorks Corporation.  His role consists of “acting as the voice for
the customer” which means he tries to do the following:



  • Work with product enhancements

  • Increase performance and quality

  • Innovate new products


Richard also spoke of a new 3D Dimensioning standard on part
models to reduce printed or 2D drawings. The US government is already using
this for Military contract suppliers. 
This new methodology is estimated to save 28% of scrap due to better
understanding of dimensions on the 3D Model. 
Did you know that SolidWorks has had 3D Model Dimensions since
SolidWorks 2008 in the form of DimXpert? 
DimXpert for Parts is a set of tools you use to apply dimensions and
tolerances to parts according to the requirements of ASME Y14.41-2003 and ISO
16792:2006.


We also talked about obstacles that the group would face
trying to “do away” with 2D printed drawings. 
Several members agree that this would be strange in that most like to
write on drawings and this would not be possible on a screen image.  How would shops afford monitors, tablets and
other viewing devices for the production floor staff to view your models
on?  Just getting around the fact that we
like to hold and touch a drawing and use pencils or pens to write on them will
be strange.


Richard also mentioned that SolidWorks 2014 will ship
sometime in the October 2013 time frame. 
Beta 2014 is now open for registration. 
We urge all users to sign up for this, and try 2014 BETA on a separate
machine for testing and playing around.


SolidWorks has reached another huge milestone.  Over 2,000,000 users of the product now
worldwide!  Some schools across the globe
are placing SolidWorks educational software on student’s machines as young as 7
or 8 years old!  Can you believe that?  Customer satisfaction for SolidWorks products
has increased 5% since 2007, and is now close to 94% approval based on mailed
out surveys. 


Richard also demonstrated the new eDrawings Pro application
on his iPad.  This has the new Augmented
Reality feature which allows you to display your SolidWorks models using
eDrawings, and the camera function from your tablet to place virtually your
models in the room or environment seen by your camera!  Very cool technology.  These App’s run $2 or $10 from the Apple Store.


Check out this video for more information: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVcIaBAQSE4


For a stormy Thursday night we had a pretty good turnout and
the food is always great.  If you get a
chance to come next time, the meeting will be sometime in September and the
user group web site is http://www.kcswug.com/main/


Hope to see you there!


Thanks,


Brian Reel

CATI



Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Free SolidWorks from Performance Constraints (FSWPC-13-#21)

Optimal Configuration & Conclusion


In looking back at the past 20 articles we have posted about Free SolidWorks from Performance Constrains one of the items we promised in our first article was to give you the two optimal configurations that gave us the best overall performance.


Before we get to the results lets recap what we tested in our previous articles:



  • RAM

  • Processor Clock Speed

  • Number of Cores and SolidWorks

  • Hard Drive Speed

  • Graphics Cards

  • SolidWorks files stored in an older version

  • Windows Visual Settings

  • SolidWorks Options Set to Optimal

  • SolidWorks Image Quality

  • SolidWorks RealView Graphics

  • Level of Detail in Parts and Assemblies

  • Reducing Top Level Mates and Solving Subassemblies as Rigid

  • Defeature

  • Envelope

  • Large Design Review

  • SpeedPak

  • Save Assembly as Part (3 options)

  • Large Assembly Mode & Lightweight


In the list above you want to take note that of the 18 items we tested 13 of them are FREE.


The first scenario that we tested included all of the performance improvements explained above except Large Assembly Mode and Lightweight options. The environment looked like this:


Typical and Practical Hardware configurations


Configuration



  • SolidWorks Options Optimized

  • OS visuals set to best performance


Modeling methods



  • Level of detail reduced

  • Image quality reduced

  • Realview Graphics off

  • Top level mates reduced




In our first test the combination of the enhancements to our SolidWorks environment yielded some impressive performance results.


If we take all of the settings and hardware listed above and add in Large Assembly Mode and Lightweight we can see that it has even more of an impact in our results.




You can by looking at our deltas see that on our Practical machine we gained over 76% total improvement taking our benchmark run time down to just over 18min. If we look at the Typical machine we can see that the overall improvement is almost a 90% performance gain and our benchmark run time has gone from 4:43:44 to 0:28:50.


Conclusion


What we have found in our efforts conducting these tests is that improvement of a modeling environment must be approached at a system level rather than a specific component level. All of the hardware, configuration, and modeling methodology options work in concert to establish the performance capabilities of a workstation whether it's good or bad. Adding more processor power to a workstation that is short on RAM will help. But the improvement that the stronger processor yields will be much greater if RAM is added as well.


Understanding these several aspects of a SolidWorks modeling environment and how they work together can make all the difference in ensuring that you get the full value from your hardware and software purchase.


Adrian and I plan on continuing our testing for the next SolidWorks World in 2014 so please keep checking back for updates. We are planning on creating some new tests and new ways to display the results. If you have any suggestions please add a comment to this or any of our other articles.


Please
check back to the CATI blog as we will continue posting our
series of articles that goes further into the details of each of our tests. All
of these articles will be stored in the category of Free SolidWorks from Performance
Constraints and links to each with their
release date are listed below:



Thanks,


Josh
Altergott, CATI Support Manager


Adrian
Fanjoy, CATI Technical Services Director


 


 



Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Free SolidWorks from Performance Constraints (FSWPC-13-#20)

(Modeling Methodology - Large Assembly Mode)


The use of Large Assembly Mode and Lightweight is the one setting that made the largest impact in our testing. Large Assembly Mode allow a user to open an extremely large assembly without bringing in all of the computational data that defines it (Lightweight). The user gets the visual of the model without the over head of the math behind it. The user will then have the ability to resolve the portions of the assembly that they would like to work on. The data for just that portion of the assembly is then loaded into RAM and the user has the best of both worlds; the ability to work on a part or sub-assembly within the context of the greater assembly while dealing only with the overhead of the portion they are specifically working on. The testing we did involved very large assemblies where Large Assembly Mode and Lightweight can have its most pronounced effect on performance.






You can by looking at our deltas see that on our Practical machine we gained 58.7% total improvement taking our benchmark run time down to just over 32min. If we look at the Typical machine we can see that the overall improvement is 81% performance gain and took our benchmark run time to just under 54min.


Please
check back to the CATI blog as we will continue posting our
series of articles that goes further into the details of each of our tests. All
of these articles will be stored in the category of Free SolidWorks from Performance
Constraints and links to each with their
release date are listed below:



Thanks,


Josh
Altergott, CATI Support Manager


Adrian
Fanjoy, CATI Technical Services Director


 


 



Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Free SolidWorks from Performance Constraints (FSWPC-13-#19)

(Modeling Methodology - Save As Part)


The next tool that we are going to look at for reducing the level of detail in our parts and subassemblies is Save As Part. The ability to save an assembly as a part file gives us three different options; Exterior Faces, Exterior Components and All Components. Each of these options produces a different result so we chose to test each option and see which one gave us the greatest performance gain.




For our assembly once again due to the overall size we choose to use Save As Part on just the Cab Assembly. The stats on the Cab Assembly and its related files are the assembly file is 30.15mb and had has an overall folder size of 621mb.


Exterior Faces


This was the 2nd best option, our new part file size was 79mb and had 0 Solid Bodies and 8432 Surface Bodies.




Exterior Components


This was the best option, our new part file size was 120mb and had 1080 Solid Bodies and 225 Surface Bodies.




All Components


This was the worst option, our new part file size was 317mb and had 3668 Solid Bodies and 271 Surface Bodies.




You can by looking at our deltas see that paying attention to the options we have for different operations can either help or hinder our performance. On our Practical machine we gained as much as 25.9% total improvement and lost as much as 4.7%. If we look at the Typical machine we can see that the overall improvement is as much as 60% performance gain and took almost 3 hours off of our benchmark time or it cost us much as 95% adding almost 4-1/2 hours to our benchmark.


Please
check back to the CATI blog as we will continue posting our
series of articles that goes further into the details of each of our tests. All
of these articles will be stored in the category of Free SolidWorks from Performance
Constraints and links to each with their
release date are listed below:



Thanks,


Josh
Altergott, CATI Support Manager


Adrian
Fanjoy, CATI Technical Services Director


 


 



Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Free SolidWorks from Performance Constraints (FSWPC-13-#18)

(Modeling Methodology - SpeedPak)



031913_1504_FreeSolidWo1The next tool that we are going to look at for reducing the level of detail in our parts and subassemblies is SpeedPak.


The SpeedPak utility allows you to create a simplified configuration of an assembly without losing references. A SpeedPak configuration reduces your large or complex subassemblies into a subset of parts and faces of an assembly that you can use to mate into your top level assembly or reference with dimensions in a drawing.


For our assembly once again due to the overall size we choose to use SpeedPak on just the Cab Assembly, we also chose the option for Remove ghost as it states it, further reduces memory.




You can by looking at our deltas see that on our Practical machine we gained 30.7% total improvement. If we look at the Typical machine we can see that the overall improvement is cut by over 65% performance gain and took over 3 hours off of our benchmark time.


Please
check back to the CATI blog as we will continue posting our
series of articles that goes further into the details of each of our tests. All
of these articles will be stored in the category of Free SolidWorks from Performance
Constraints and links to each with their
release date are listed below:



Thanks,


Josh
Altergott, CATI Support Manager


Adrian
Fanjoy, CATI Technical Services Director


 


 



Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Free SolidWorks from Performance Constraints (FSWPC-13-#17)

(Modeling Methodology - Large Design Review)


The next tool that we are going to look at for reducing the level of detail in our parts and subassemblies is Large Design Review. Large Design Review lets you open very large assemblies quickly, while still retaining capabilities that are useful when conducting design reviews of assemblies.


When you open an assembly in Large Design Review mode, you can:



  • Navigate the FeatureManager design tree

  • Measure distances

  • Create cross sections

  • Hide and show components

  • Create, edit, and play back walk-throughs




Large Design Review is primarily intended as an environment for quick design reviews. If you want to ensure that all items are updated properly, you must open your assembly as lightweight or fully resolved.




You can see that our benchmark program failed to complete for Large Design Review. This is because when an assembly is opened with the tool our benchmark is not able to perform the tasks it is programmed to do.


Please
check back to the CATI blog as we will continue posting our
series of articles that goes further into the details of each of our tests. All
of these articles will be stored in the category of Free SolidWorks from Performance
Constraints and links to each with their
release date are listed below:



Thanks,


Josh
Altergott, CATI Support Manager


Adrian
Fanjoy, CATI Technical Services Director


 


 



Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Free SolidWorks from Performance Constraints (FSWPC-13-#16)

(Modeling Methodology - Envelope)


The next tool that we are going to look at for reducing the level of detail in our parts and subassemblies is Envelope. Both parts and assemblies can be set as an Envelope when inserted into and assembly or it can be set in the component properties. Envelopes have two main functions, can use them as a reference component or as a selection tool. Envelopes are ignored in global assembly operations such as bills of materials and mass properties.




For our assembly once again due to the overall size we choose to use Envelope on just the Cab Assembly.




You can by looking at our deltas see that on our Practical machine we gained 0.4% total improvement. If we look at the Typical machine we can see that the overall improvement is cut by a respectably 36% performance gain and took over 1hour and 42min off of our benchmark time.


Please
check back to the CATI blog as we will continue posting our
series of articles that goes further into the details of each of our tests. All
of these articles will be stored in the category of Free SolidWorks from Performance
Constraints and links to each with their
release date are listed below:



Thanks,


Josh
Altergott, CATI Support Manager


Adrian
Fanjoy, CATI Technical Services Director


 


 



Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Free SolidWorks from Performance Constraints (FSWPC-13-#15)

(Modeling Methodology - Defeature)


In one of our previous articles we talked about reducing the level of detail in our parts and subassemblies and one of the questions we have been asked is what features and tools that SolidWorks provides gives us the best benefit when working with large assemblies. We looked at all the different tools available to us and we are starting with the Defeature tool.


Defeature can be used on parts or assemblies and has a wizard style interface that walks you through several different steps to remove features from you file. The Defeature tool has many different options and while faster than manually defeaturing the your files you do have less control over the final results.


For our assembly once again due to the overall size we choose to use Defeature on just the Cab Assembly and used the options for removing the internal components and ended up with a single part file that was 401mb had 271 Surface Bodies and 1316 Solid Bodies.




Note: These changes can have a larger or smaller effect on each users performance depending on how many over detailed parts are defeatured and what options are used.




You can by looking at our deltas see that on both our Practical and Typical machine defeatureing our model added just above or below 20% to our benchmark. Where on our Typical machine that same 20% increase adds almost 1 hour to our benchmark vs. the 14 min it adds to our Practical machine benchmark. We figure that reason for the increase in our benchmark time is that this not being an assembly we created and have intimate knowledge of the assembly we took the default settings and thus costing us time vs. saving us time as we would expect.


Please
check back to the CATI blog as we will continue posting our
series of articles that goes further into the details of each of our tests. All
of these articles will be stored in the category of Free SolidWorks from Performance
Constraints and links to each with their
release date are listed below:



Thanks,


Josh
Altergott, CATI Support Manager


Adrian
Fanjoy, CATI Technical Services Director


 



Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Free SolidWorks from Performance Constraints (FSWPC-13-#14)

(Modeling Methodology - Top Level Mates and Flexible Subassemblies)


When an assembly is opened, all of the mates at the top level of the assembly are calculated as well as any mates that are involved in flexible sub-assemblies, you can see this in the AssemblyXpert screen shots below. Solving Subassemblies as Flexible adds a tremendous amount of extra calculations that would not be required if the flexible subs were turned off. In our tests setting our Flexible sub-assemblies to Rigid dropped the number of mates being evaluated at the top level from 1292 to 139.


Also when building your assembly you want to make sure that you structured it in a manner to minimize the need for top level mates. To accomplish having less mate in your top level assembly it involves utilizing more sub-assemblies than individual parts and taking advantage of other assembly features such as patterning components like bolts and screws.










You can by looking at our deltas see that on our Practical machine we gained almost 3.5% total improvement. If we look at the Typical machine we can see that the overall improvement is cut by just over 13% performance gain and took over 37min off of our benchmark time.


Please
check back to the CATI blog as we will continue posting our
series of articles that goes further into the details of each of our tests. All
of these articles will be stored in the category of Free SolidWorks from Performance
Constraints and links to each with their
release date are listed below:



Thanks,


Josh
Altergott, CATI Support Manager


Adrian
Fanjoy, CATI Technical Services Director


 



Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Free SolidWorks from Performance Constraints (FSWPC-13-#13)

(Modeling Methodology - Level of Detail)


There are many opportunities to display minute levels of detail with SolidWorks. Displaying this high level of detail while working with large assemblies or very complex geometry will be detrimental to performance. We have found that this issue occurs most frequently with components that are downloaded from vendors that have made their models available for easy access and configuration over the internet. Remember just because it came from the internet does not mean it is modeled correctly. It is essential that designers remove any excess detail from parts and assemblies as soon as they are downloaded in order to avoid these issues.


If feasible, CATI suggests:



  • Reduce the level of detail to outer walls and mounting points.

  • Save assemblies as parts.

  • Combine solid bodies.

  • Turn surfaces bodies into solid bodies.

  • Delete any unneeded surface or solid bodies.

  • Export and reimport files to reduce the number of features in a file.


There are other ways to achieve a detail free vendor part and these are just some of the ways we have used to remove excess details.




High levels of detail can also be found in manufactured components. Commonly, this is found in the form of threads being modeled into bolts and screws. Extruded text and extensive patterns are also some of the culprits that introduce these issues. When this level of detail is required, it is a good idea to have a configuration of the part or sub-assembly that suppresses the detail for use in larger assemblies and to change the options in your pattern features.


Because of the overall size of our assembly for our testing we cleaned up just the files in just the Cab Assembly. After we reduced the detail in the Cab Assembly we took a file that was 30.15mb and all the related parts were contained in a 621mb folder to a 12.74mb file that all the related parts were contained in a 554mb folder.


Note: These changes can have a larger or smaller effect on each users performance depending on how many over detailed parts are being used.




You can by looking at our deltas see that on our Practical machine we gained almost 23% total improvement. If we look at the Typical machine we can see that the overall improvement is cut in more than half at just over 54% performance gain and took over 2hours and 33min off of our benchmark time.


Please
check back to the CATI blog as we will continue posting our
series of articles that goes further into the details of each of our tests. All
of these articles will be stored in the category of Free SolidWorks from Performance
Constraints and links to each with their
release date are listed below:



Thanks,


Josh
Altergott, CATI Support Manager


Adrian
Fanjoy, CATI Technical Services Director


 


 



Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Free SolidWorks from Performance Constraints (FSWPC-13-#12)

(Modeling Methodology - RealView Graphics)


SolidWorks has the capability to display designs vividly with RealView Graphics. While these features allow for a very pretty and realistic model in general they are not needed for everyday modeling. RealView Graphics and Shadows in Shaded Mode are tow setting that take a large amount of system resources and have an effect on our rebuild, refresh, open, save and close times. You can turn off RealView Graphics and Shadows In Shaded Mode in the View (heads-up) toolbar as shown below.






If you have a need for having a RealView appearance then it is best to set that as a Display State or Configuration for the part or assembly.


Note: This setting can have a larger or smaller on each users performance depending on how many parts were using RealView Graphics.




You can by looking at our deltas see that on our Practical machine we gained 2.7% total improvement. If we look at the Typical machine we can see that the overall improvement is a respectable 20.2% performance gain and took over 55min off of our benchmark time.


Please
check back to the CATI blog as we will continue posting our
series of articles that goes further into the details of each of our tests. All
of these articles will be stored in the category of Free SolidWorks from Performance
Constraints and links to each with their
release date are listed below:



Thanks,


Josh
Altergott, CATI Support Manager


Adrian
Fanjoy, CATI Technical Services Director


 


 



Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Free SolidWorks from Performance Constraints (FSWPC-13-#11)

(Modeling Methodology - SolidWorks Image Quality)


SolidWorks has the capability to display designs vividly with extremely high Image Quality and while this feature allows for a model with extremely high resolution, in general, they are not needed for everyday modeling. Higher Image Quality is intended to give better visual definition of very small components or components that contain very fine detail. The effect of this is a model that takes longer to calculate its visual data and a significantly larger file size. The former affects rebuild and repaint times while the latter affects model opening, closing, and saving. Both affect the amount of RAM required which amplifies the performance hit.




The best place to change the Image Quality setting is at the assembly level and selecting the option to propagate that through to all the sub-assemblies and part components as the Image Quality setting is per document. We have found that the sweet spot for this setting is around 25% up from the low end.


Also one item to note is that when you change the setting at a top level assembly it will adjust all of the part file but it will not adjust the sub-assemblies Image Quality level ony the parts in those sub-assemblies.


Note: This setting can have a larger or smaller on each users performance depending on how high their Image Quality was set.




You can by looking at our deltas see that on our Practical machine where we have enough hardware to support our model it added 15% to our benchmark. Where if we look at the Typical machine we can see that we pay the price for not having enough hardware to support our model set and it cost us almost 300% and took over 14 additional hours to run our benchmark.


Please
check back to the CATI blog as we will continue posting our
series of articles that goes further into the details of each of our tests. All
of these articles will be stored in the category of Free SolidWorks from Performance
Constraints and links to each with their
release date are listed below:



Thanks,


Josh
Altergott, CATI Support Manager


Adrian
Fanjoy, CATI Technical Services Director


 


 



Posted by at No comments:
Labels:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)