Maximizing SolidWorks Performance (MSWP-12-#2)

OS Visual and User Settings

For our first test we are going to start with the category of “every little bit counts”. In this category falls the visual settings from the operating system.  This is one of Adrian's favorite settings and it proves that for us as engineers we should not let Microsoft control anything.

For WIN 7, these are set in the Visual Effects tab of the Performance Options Window (See instructions at bottom of article).  There are four settings in this tab; Let Windows choose...., Adjust for best appearance Adjust for best performance, and custom. By default, Let Windows choose... is set and if we look at the screen shots for that and Best Appearance you can see there is no real difference between the two so what we can gather from this is that Microsoft thinks an aesthetically pleasing work environment is what is best for us.  To achieve better performance, all of these options should be turned off and that is exactly what we get when we choose Adjust for best performance.

     

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.

So after we changed our settings for best performance our macro ran in 4:35:50, this had a noticeable effect in the areas of Opens, Rotations, Modeling and Switching Sheets.

This setting gained us a savings of 0:23:24 or 8.5%.

Attached is a document that will show you how to make the changes to your system Download How to set Visual Effects-Virtual Memory-Win7_7-2-12.

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:

• Maximize SolidWorks Performance White Paper (7/2/12)


• MSWP-12-#1 Introduction (7/9/12)


• MSWP-12-#2 Windows Visual and User Settings (7/12/12)


• MSWP-12-#3 SolidWorks Options Set to Optimal (7/17/12)


• MSWP-12-#4 Graphics Cards (7/19/12)


• MSWP-12-#5 Turn Off SolidWorks Add-Ins (7/24/12)


• MSWP-12-#6 Processor Clock Speed (7/26/12)


• MSWP-12-#7 Reducing SolidWorks Mates and Rigid Subassemblies (7/31/12)


• MSWP-12-#8 Number of Processor Cores (8/2/12)


• MSWP-12-#9 SolidWorks Graphic Settings (8/7/12)


• MSWP-12-#10 Network Storage and Anti-Virus (8/9/12)


• MSWP-12-#11 Level of Detail (8/14/12)


• MSWP-12-#12 RAM and SWAP File (8/16/12)


• MSWP-12-#13 Hard Drives (8/21/12)


• MSWP-12-#14 Lightweight and Large Assembly Mode (8/23/12)


• MSWP-12-#15 Optimal Configuration and Conclusion (8/28/12)

Thanks,

Josh Altergott, CATI Support Manager

Adrian Fanjoy, CATI Technical Services Director