Drawing Blocks moving very slowly

I cannot figure out why after moving from Solidworks 2006 to 2008, moving several blocks in a drawing goes very slowly. When blocks are selected and the move command is selected the blocks stay pink or light blue and slowly turn black until it finally lets me select a point to perform the move. It always worked very quickly in 2006. Anyone have any ideas? I do all my electrical drawings in Solidworks, and they worked good in 2006, but are now very slow to move or copy.

Thanks,

Reply to
blisspikle
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Post your system specs.. 2006 to 2008 is a big jump as far as the amount of resources needed to have a good experience..

Reply to
tnik

It does the same thing on the new Dell Workstations that we bought recently that have way better specs, but mine is a

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7500 @ 2.20GHz Processor Speed 2.14 GHz Memory (RAM) 2048 MB Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Professional NVIDIA QUATRO FX360M

Reply to
blisspikle

I'm guessing thats a laptop?

I would go ahead and max out your RAM, turn the 3GB switch on, and check your pagefile settings (set the min and max to the same number, I normally set it to 1.5-2.5x the amount of RAM I have)

RAM is cheap enough these days, tho thats probably not your problem.

You have a decent CPU, so the only other thing I would try is different driver versions.

As for the Dells, I would get the recommended driver from SolidWorks

formatting link
search for your dell system there..

Reply to
tnik

Actually I JUST read something that said that with 4gb of ram on a 32bit system (the max allowed) that a pagefile will actually slow down the system.. I'll try it out and post back my results..

Reply to
tnik

I just have to think that this is either a solidworks option causing the problem or the new way that solidworks treats blocks is slower. It seems that a lot of the handling of blocks changed and something slowed the use of them way down.

I thought that maybe it was because my blocks were saved in Solidworks

2006, and Solidworks 2008 never asks me to save them as Solidworks 2008, like it would if you were opening a part. I tried resaving some of my blocks after opening them in 2008 and that didn't seam to make a difference.

I would think that a block should be one of the easiest things for CAD software to do. I mean, it is only a little sketch and multiple copies of it. I open a fairly large assembly with lots of bolts, etc, and rotate the thing around, copy parts, and everything works great and fast, but it takes forever to move simple little blocks.

Has anyone else had this happen?

Reply to
blisspikle

I've been using since 2007, and running 2009 atm, never had any problems with blocks.

now, just wondering, did you update to 2008, or do a fresh install?

did you heed my advice and check your driver versions? You didn't mention it above..

Have you contacted your VAR about this problem also, it never hurts to have an extra couple eyes trying to figure out a problem.

Reply to
tnik

Blocks changed in their definition sometime, I don't remember just when. When SW developed the ability to use sketch entities in a motion type of analysis, then blocks changed in that environment. But that being said, I don't see a major slowdown in moving blocks. I have always seen SW struggle with large sketches, but if I can just get that sketch into a block, it seems to move pretty well for me.

WT

Reply to
Wayne Tiffany

I tried the new drivers, which didn't do anything. However, when I look up my graphincs card they have a driver listed for performance for AutoCAD 2008, that says on some functions should speed it up 10x. I thought I would give it a try, but it kept telling me that it couldn't find AutoCAD 2008 on my PC, which I do have installed. So I didn't get to try that one out, but I just loaded the regular driver, and nothing seems any different.

I wish I knew how to make a movie of it happening, because it is really weird. I select multiple blocks and then the copy command, and solidworks puts a blue dot everywhere the individual blocks insertion points are and it turns all the text pink and all the lines blue, and then slowly starts dropping the blue dots and turning the lines into black until it finally turns everything blue and lets me select a point to offset by. I am not sure what it is trying to figure out.

Reply to
blisspikle

I called support and they told me that this is normal Solidworks behavior. If the entities are selected, then Move command is executed, Solidworks has to figure out which blocks are within the selected entities, and they move slow. If you pick the Move command first, then solidworks just selects the items as blocks and they move a lot faster. I am so used to selecting all the entities first, that it is going to take some getting used to.

Thanks for the replies.

Reply to
blisspikle

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