PERFORMANCE:

DISCLAIMER: BOB Z. REDNECK ANSWER COMING!!! :~)>

oh hell yes, that is way too long! if bob z. has to wait on something for more than half a second, it is way too long. :~)>

bob z.

Is that why those wives are always complaining?

One thing I have found is that using Section Scope in a Section View can have a huge impact on rebuild times, on the order of ten times for my assembly of 2000+ parts. Using an assembly cut with scope on the other hand can reduce the time to create a section by a factor of four.

Also, having interference in the assembly can increase the time for a drawing to cut a section. I my case removing the interference reduces rebuild time by a factor of three.

Overall, from the original assembly drawing with inteferenece and scope used in the section view to using an assembly cut (create the section in assembly, not drawing) and removing the interference reduces rebuild time for the drawing by a factor of 50 times. This, theoretically, should reduce my drawing rebuild time to about 8 1/2 minutes for the same operations as previously noted by way of a workaround. But I will have to hand draw assembly arrows, etc.

TOP

Thanks for sharing -- I try and remember this post the next time I'm struggling with drawing section rebuild times

John Layne

I'm still not there yet. When I use an assembly cut-extrude I still have to select the items I don't want cut. Selecting through so many other entities is giving SW fits. Especially hard to select are helical surfaces. And SW random transparency sometimes gets in the way too.

TOP

TOP wrote in news:1185831680.821692.314250 @x35g2000prf.googlegroups.com:

Is it possible to create the assembly cut in an exploded view? That might be easier than endless "select other".

I've just started hiding subassemblies to weed out what I don't want. I tried using an envelope, but this can be awkward in this situation. One interesting observation is that an assembly cut will cut envelopes in sub-assemblies.

The selections possible in configuration manager just don't offer the flexibility that I need either.

I don't know if the trouble I have selecting is because of the graphics card/driver combination or SW just bogging down when so many objects are in it's "field of view".

One stinker when doing an assembly cut is that you have to pick components (parts) not the subassemblies that contain them. It would be so much simpler if that were the case. It would also be simpler if folders had a bit more meaning to selections.

TOP

I do hope you have the ear of someone who can do something about large assembly performance.

In the mean time, would it be worth the time investment to write a macro to create the cuts programmatically? Or at least to help build the selection sets? I have had at least one instance where a task was so tediously time consuming that the time spent coding the macro (even with my feeble skills) was recovered in the first use of the macro!

I agree that there needs to be more guidance from SolidWorks and tools specifically, possibly in a toolbar, that let you make appropriate choices and use of tools and settings to speed operations that involve sections even in small assemblies.

The worst for me, as I do not make "large" assemblies is that even in something with 10-50 parts, when I go to make a section in some of those assemblies, it will give an error message saying it can't do the section because of some anomoly (I forget the exact message).

My work around is to move the section plane slightly or dig through parts to try to find a model that has some sliver somewhere causing a problem. In other words, some "smarts" in the error message, like "The "diaphragm.sldprt" can not be sectioned" would be of immense help, because then I could concentrate on which part has the problem.

Right now, if it won't section, there is no real feedback/help from SolidWorks. We need better error notes built into SWks.

Thanks - Bo

Bo, I have seen this problem when a section line ends up tangent to a cylindrical surface in the assembly. SWX doesn't mind the slivers near as much as the tangents.

Mike

Actually, Dale, the large assembly performance isn't all that bad, at least not since I started fixing the sub-assemblies and mates. They used to use this model as a benchmark here till I "fixed" it (or most of it). Top level rebuilds are under two seconds and full rebuilds are under two minutes using the SuperRebuild macro. It is in the drawings where I am getting pummelled. SWX has had the original assembly and the drawings for over a year now and I haven't heard a peep from them. I don't really have the time to do all this fixing up and research into what is works and doesn't except by necessity.

As is often the case the user is as much a factor as the software and hardware. But it shouldn't be so easy to screw things up.

I'll get the components selected too.

The final solution may very well be to export the views into ACAD and finish there. That is what we do for General Arrangements most of the time anyway.

TOP

I agree, in that sometimes I want a section plane through two of the axes of generally round features with many details on them so I can evaluate the geometry in between the features and so I put a plane between the axes.

Sometimes it just won't cut it, to coin a phrase.

Bo

Sections will fail if it would create zero-thickness geometry.

WT

I don't think the problem at hand is with tangent sections. Otherwise the assembly would have trouble cutting the same section. And the geometry that I am trying to cut doesn't have cylinders oriented in a way that could cause this problem.

My hypothesis is that when SW does a section with the scope dialog populated it has to traverse up and down all the subassembly trees many times in order to make sure it has cut or not cut the section.

TOP

AutoCAD!!!

Tut tut, dirty word!!!!

Straight to the head master's office, BOY!

lol :-P

Lessons Learned:

1. Don't use scope when cutting sections of large assemblies in drawings. Do it in the assembly with configs and cut-extrude.

1. Using the section view in an assembly can increase top level rebuild time by a factor of 50.

2. In complex drawings hide everything but what you are working on at the moment.

1. In complex drawings set the line font to thin and set the graphics performance for wireframe to fast.

So we have two very handy features in SW that need some work to be usable with large assemblies.

And for some strange reason the one sheet drawing I attempted Friday without success because of rebuild time and crashes went like a breeze this morning. I have no explanation for this.

TOP

I would say this is a really fast machine, but it is not. It shows a problem with SPECapc properly timing results for the graphics card.

SolidWorks 2007 Workstation Benchmark User Name : xxx Computer Name: xxx Manufacturer :ASUS Model : K8V. OS : Microsoft Windows XP Professional OS SP : Service Pack 2 CPU : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+ # of CPU : 2 Memory : 2047 Graphics : Nvidia Quadro4 900XGL

**** Overall Test Results **** Note: All results are in seconds. Lower scores are better.

Test Number 1 Test Total = 141.8 Graphics = 3.97 CPU = 60.89 I/O = 76.94

Test Number 2 Test Total = 141.36 Graphics = 4.59 CPU = 60.94 I/O = 75.83

Test Number 3 Test Total = 140.25 Graphics = 4.63 CPU = 59.99 I/O = 75.63

Test Number 4 Test Total = 141.69 Graphics = 4.25 CPU = 60.94 I/O = 76.5

Test Number 5 Test Total = 141.54 Graphics = 4.19 CPU = 60.78 I/O = 76.57

Test Averages for 5 tests(s). Test Total = 141.33 Graphics = 4.33 CPU = 60.71 I/O = 76.29