Very Large File Sizes

It's hard to say exactly what features or such may be causing this (if it is) without knowing a little more info. Is this a part or assy? The reason I ask is I had someone at my last place have an assy file that he modeled a ton of screws with exact helix sweeps and threads and such. (he was new).

But the first thing, try "save as" to your file and give it a different name, then check the file size. If you have a lot of configurations that control things like sweeps, wraps and/or lofts, etc, the size will creep up on you after load different configurations, but I'm not sure about exponentially. I've had 70mb files reduce to 15mb after a save as.

Scott

You might look at your feature statistics to see if anything jumps out at you, such as some feature that is taking a whole lot of time, or grows faster than other features.

WT

I have had file sizes shoot up when inserting parts into parts, but that was somewhat predictable. Unfortunately sometimes even with lean modeling methods your files can become unwieldy. A few times when I cant figure out exactly what is causing the problem I save out a parasolid and work from there. Either that or try to roll it back to the last place that it was predictable and start from there again with even leaner modelling methods if possible.

As an aside have had decent luck in reducing file size by suppressing portions of the feature tree, and saving. I empathize with your pain. Our Engg dept recently started using Solidworks for certain projects. Coming from UG they were aghast at the file sizes that Solidworks generated.

You can always use feature statistics to give a hint at where the work is being done.

Horizontal modeling might also help.

TOP

Back when I first saw SW in 1995/96 I was so very enthused by the fact that it was faster than anything else we had (I had a Pentium 166 with

300mb ram), had extremely small files compared to Anvil or Pro-E and hardly ever crashed.

Back in the 3Amigo days I was running a 900Mhz machine with 1Gb and this was cutting edge. But still a 100Mb model was extremely difficult to work with. Most other things were acceptable.

If I used those same criteria today, the decision would be to look somewhere else.

You have to wonder how SW can make the statement that they have improved performance when that P166 couldn't even load a blank part template today.

TOP

TOP,

I'd have to completely agree. back in the days of SW97/97+/98 i just was amazed at how stable it was and how small the file sizes where and also, as you did, how good it was performance wise. I had 700+ part assembly running on a P2 300 and even though it wasnt blazing it was very useable and handled it well etc.

Today, its a dog of a thing. File sizes are ballooning massively for no apparent reason. And it dogs down much faster systmes on simple things such as a file save!

ARGH!!

They need to STOP upgrading for a version cycle and concentrate on Speed/Performance increases, stability etc

-DWH

amazed at how stable it was

performance wise. I had 700+

useable and handled it

apparent reason. And it dogs

Speed/Performance increases,

If I had a part file ballooning for no reason and a Save As didn't reduce file size, I'ld take the Save As file and start deleting key Features or groups of Features and Save As again until I saw the file size drop back to "Normal".

I'ld to the same with an assembly by deleting part or subassemblies until "normal" file size returned and then try to figure out what is going on.

The only thing I ever created which absolutely throttled SolidWorks to a GLACIAL PACE was straight cylindrical knurling (or double helical diamond knurling which was even worse), and Diamond Knurl on flat surfaces. IT ABSOLUTELY KILLED the ability to do darned near anything in SolidWorks. To show a knurl, I left a very tiny segment of the desired knurl as a detailed form and the file operations were acceptable.

Bo