Thursday, August 23, 2012

Maximizing SolidWorks Performance (MSWP-12-#14)

Lightweight & LAM


The use of Lightweight and Large assembly mode made a tremendous impact in our testing.  These tools allow a user to open an extremely large assembly without bringing in all of the computational data that defines it.  The user gets the visual of the model without the over head of the math behind it.  The user will then resolve the portions of the assembly that they would like to work on.  The data for just that portion of the assembly is 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 Lightweight mode can have its most pronounced effect on performance.


 


LAM-1 LAM-2


If you remember from our first article; our test baseline had a runtime of 5:01:35 and we measured time for the areas of Opens, Rotations, Modeling, Rebuilds, Switching Sheets, Saves and Closes.


After we changed our SolidWorks settings for Light Weight and Large Assembly Mode our macro ran in 0:34:18, this had a noticeable effect in all the areas we measured.


This change gained us a savings of 4:27:17 or 88.6%.


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 Maximizing SolidWorks Performance and links to each with their release date are listed below:



Thanks,


Josh Altergott, CATI Support Manager


Adrian Fanjoy, CATI Technical Services Director



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