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SW help?

I have a customer who is using Solidworks and is having a HUGE problem. I have been a SW user since 1996, and have never seen anything worse than this, although I have seen many of the symptoms in the past. We have to get some of this fixed TODAY. I have known about the problem since only Yesterday.

The problems occur with multiple parts and assemblies. And alledgedly also occurs on different machines although I have not seen that yet. I also believe that is a user/modeling issue, that may or may not be unrelated. SW2008 SP3.0. 64bit machine. Windows Xp. At least 2G ram. ATL FireGL 5x00 graphics.

Symptoms:

  1. When a part/assembly is opened it requires multiple rebuilds on some features. The features are typically cavity features, but after successfully rebuilding those parts/features there are others that require rebuilding. Ctrl-Q does not help.
  2. When in sketch mode, sometimes you cannot select sketch elements, or hover over them and have them highlight.
  3. Sometimes when editing/modifying features that are part of a cavity function, the feature dialog box will close, when you click on OK, but the green/red check in the corner stays active, as if the feature is still trying to rebuild/solve. Clicking on the red X exits.
  4. Sometimes the cavity design part is missing/lost after a feature that impacts the cavity is modified. Restarting solidworks clears the problem, and shows the revised cavity function.
  5. Some parts take very very long to rebuild, although the file sizes are only 30-50M, but the shapes are quite complex, and with multiple cavity features.
  6. The system seems to have hidden processes running in the background, OS type stuff, or maybe SW, but there is very little 2-3% processor time consumed. Just highlighting surfaces/features etc sometimes takes unbelieve-able amounts of time.
  7. Sometimes .STL files look fine on screen, but generate seriously flawed parts. The .STL parts typically pass through the .STL diagnostics on the RP system, but come out with bad/extra triangle surfaces...

Pretty JACKED up, I know. And I suspect multiple causes. BUT the Multiple rebuild problem I HAVE seen, and Cavity slowness I have seen in the past. I can't remember what causes the multiple rebuild at startup. The files save without errors. But sometimes take forever to save. The overall slowness is also something seen in the past, but that I think is a very complex set of causes. (Hardware, graphics, memory, modeling techniques, that I am working through) I do suspect there are some graphics card/driver causes. I really don't like the ATI cards. But the mutiple rebuild is something else, right? Or not?

CAn anyone address the multiple rebuild issue, and some of the rest? The dealer has been somewhat involved. I don't know if SW corp has, Working on that this morning. Also trying to get the files on a different machine, but there are extraneous issues with that to be dealt with today as well.

HELP? Please e-mail direct as I do not know if I will have newsgroup access at the customer later this morning/today.

ca

Reply to
clay
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ca,

I would suggest going to the VAR to see if the bugs are known and to see if bug reports have been filed. There may be known workarounds.

Matt Lorono

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Reply to
fcsuper

This would be a good route with a solid VAR. Clay & I share the same VAR, and unfortunately these guys are all `home on the range' type folks. You know the song: "never is heard a discouraging word and the bugs don't exist ; go away".

I called them a few months ago because I was having problems with a part that gave me the message "failed to save document" after making a bunch of revisions to it. The guy's response was to send him the file and he would look at it. He had never heard of this issue and didn't seem to grasp the idea that if I couldn't save it, I couldn't send it to him.

Clay-I have not seen these issues myself, so all I can say is good luck. Only insight I may have is that ATI cards don't seem to be the best choice for SW. I have been using different nVidia quadros for years with few issues.

jk

Reply to
John Kreutzberger

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Reply to
j

my first thought is that you either have issues with some of the way it is modelled or there are serious bugs. in either case resolving the problem may not be done today so I have to ask what is it that actually needs to be done today? perhaps it functions correctly with those cavity features suppressed if you just need to get a dwg of the assy out? or you can 2d draw some basic details on the dwg referencing other sheets for the cavities themselves which you do later? ...or... some other plan of rat-like cunning to get something out the door...

re stl files I am surprised you would have them in the model they bog down graphics cards and as you say there are frequently problems with the triangles..if your graphics card is having to cope with a very large number of tiny faces in the view I would suppose selecting something would take a while I would create the form in sw tools myself if I could.. I wonder how you have used them in this case and if you do not have several million faces under SW consideration during rebuilds?...

Neil

Reply to
neil

I spoke with Clay this morning and the issue is probably BIOS related. I also told him that you SolidWorks putz's ought to migrate to Catia - the solution I use with Vero Internationals line - and wake up. I have none -ZERO- of the issues that cost you guys thousands of hours of productive time and billable hours.

The only reason you guys tolerate SolidWorks is the tremendous investment, third party or otherwise, that you have in a rudimentary product. It's like MasterCam users saying they can do any job with that product. The statement is true but geeze, at some point you mature to fully configured software.

Or NOT.

Reply to
John R. Carroll

We need to get a clean model in order to output .stl files, to be run first thing monday AM. Not having cavities is NOT an option. The Cavity is the basis of the final product.

The cavities work the first go round, Fails later during subsequent feature revision. As if the stack of numbers gets more unstable and eventually fall apart. I have done some incredibly complex SW models, but there are definite techniques to avoid. There were some modeling technique issues, that I have addressed. We will see if that works the next go round. SW doesn't seem to know AFIK, what the cause is, and in my experience addresses each situation separately. Anyone seen Graphics/drivers affect this or related issues?

Working on the Bios issue. Mbit AMD 64bit MB. I can't find what rev the bios is anywhere. Gotta find the Mbit utility to discover that.

ca

Reply to
clay

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