Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

Register Log in
  • Congratulations waross on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Huge Assy Questions

Status
Not open for further replies.
PhoenixDynamometer

PhoenixDynamometer

Industrial
Jan 6, 2011
97
0
0
US
Hello all,
We are working on some very large assemblies (maybe 5,000) parts including hardware, along with a building layout. We work with PDM Enterprise and it takes about 10 minutes to load a model. Just wondering how do companies that make Extra Large assemblies work with SW. There must be companies that have assemblies in the 10's of thousand parts many of which probably move either mechanically, hydraulically, or pneumatically.

Thanks,
PD

Dell T3500 Xeon
12 GB RAM
Nvidia Quadro FX 1800
PDM Enterprise
 
Replies continue below

Recommended for you

Sort by date Sort by votes
1. Extensive use of sub-assemblies
2. minimize top level mates (keep below 300). Don't add the third mate to hardware (clocking)
3. Use component patterns or patterns in general vs inserting and mating more instances of the same component.
4. Make use of "speed-pak"
5. Minimize in-context references

-Dustin
Professional Engineer
Pretty good with SolidWorks
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
5000 parts is not that big an assembly. What is the assembly? Is it feature rich? What specifically is the building layout? A really complicated AutoCAD files dropped into a sketch or something else?

What cpu model (be specific) is in your computer?

Is the 10 minutes taken up be moving/opening the files over the network or the rebuild/regen after SW has moved all the files into ram? You can tell this stages of the open process by viewing the taskbar on the bottom left in the SW window. Time the stage of retrieving the files and the seperate regen/rebuild time to where you can really work on the file.

It could easily be a slow or poorly configured network. How good is your network? Are you hopping through a bunch of hubs and switches? Is the whole company retrieving files from one server?

Details.....

Cheers,

Anna Wood
Xeon W3680, Nvidia Quadro 4000, 12 Gb RAM, WD Velociraptor, Dell U3011 Monitor
SW2011 SP1, Windows 7 x64
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Shaggy - thank you for your suggestions.

JMirisola - The building is really just the 4 walls and roof trusses, and all done in SW.

Anna - See attached pics for the general layout of the room and equipment as well as further system specs. Some parts are imported STP files like electronics, fittings, etc. No Autocad stuff.

The 10 minutes is during the opening from the vault. Rebuild times are less that one minute.

Sorry, but I have no info regarding hubs and switches so if you can tell me what would be ideal while having to work over the network that would be helpful.

Additional info below:

Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet Controller
1000 Mbp/s

Hope this helps,
 
 http://files.engineering.com/getfile.aspx?folder=36df79f0-82c3-4ed1-9dc3-2f1b5a90d572&file=system_specs.JPG
Upvote 0 Downvote
Going off of your answers, I'd say you have a network issue. There's a bottleneck somewhere. I'm assuming that if you save the assembly to your hard drive, it opens much quicker?

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
Design Manager/Senior Designer
M9 Defense
My Blog
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
One thing to take note of in regards to SpeedPak (mentioned by ShaggyPE):

From SolidWorks help:

"When you make changes to an assembly, such as adding, deleting, or moving components, the changes are not automatically incorporated into the SpeedPak configuration, even when you rebuild the assembly. You must manually update the SpeedPak configuration to incorporate the changes."
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Have you tried opening the file locally versus across your network?
What other software do you have running on your PC? What sort of system usage (memory/CPU) do you see when opening the assembly?

As for those that don't experience the problems you're seeing, they probably have their systems, and network, optimized for SolidWorks (or whatever CAD/PDM system they're using). There really are quite a few environmental factors that can adversely affect an install, be it one seat or many.
Your best bet would be to get your IT department involved. See if they'll set up a workstation that's on the server side of any switches/routers/hubs and see if the assembly doesn't open quicker. If it does, you'll know it's your network. If it doesn't, then you'll need to start looking at the workstation itself.

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
Design Manager/Senior Designer
M9 Defense
My Blog
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
My company does work for a mining company, And we may HUGE models probably 50,000 parts. I can tell you that the worst thing you can do is use imported model geometry. Also we suppress hardware on all high level installs. We also use simplified configurations. Our website has a picture of one of the giant models we helped create.


Looking at your picture, it looks awesome, but you pay a price for that look. I wonder if there is "stuff" inside those cabinets? Does there have to be?

StrykerTECH Engineering Staff
Milwaukee, WI
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Stryker - This is exactly what I am talking about. Could I ask for 3 things rom you (if you have the time)?

I would be very interested to see a screen shot maybe of what Assembly Expert tells you about that model. It will give you toal parts, total unique parts, # of top level mates, etc.

Can you tell me what type of network situation you have going on and what type of PDM system do you have in place?

Last thing would be your PC specifications.

This would be EXACTLY what I was hoping for so I hope you have the time.

Thanks,
PD

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
We use Adept as our PDM system
Assembly expert stats.
Parts: 72420
Unique parts: 10312
Subassemblies: 1014
Maximum depth: 21
Number top level mates: 38

Make no mistake this model isn't snappy. But is it usable for major interaction checks and training.
And rarely do we have everything turned on, except for pics :)

Our computer for "heavy lifting"

Dual Intel X5680 6 core - 3.33 Ghz
64 GB RAM
4 - Velociraptor 300 GB in Striping RAID 3-Ware Controller
2 - Quadro FX5800 graphics cards using SLI
XP 64bit.

Network is 1000 base T, don't know much about that, but this is opened locally, can't move something this large over a PDM.

StrykerTECH Engineering Staff
Milwaukee, WI
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Stryker - Thank you very much for the information. I was also browsing the website over there and it looks darn good. The company seems to be very diversified in the services they offer.

Thanks again.
PD
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

aleseg
  • Locked
  • Question
Migrating to SolidWorks, questions
Replies
18
Views
21
SpaceCadetEdelman
SpaceCadetEdelman
plutoniumsalmon
  • Locked
  • Question
Oblique projection in Solidworks drawings questions
Replies
4
Views
16
3DDave
3DDave
pamakela
  • Locked
  • Question
Adding a rolled-back assy/part to assy 3
Replies
3
Views
12
SBaugh
SBaugh
TiagoFigueiredo
  • Locked
  • Question
Several questions about Solidworks
Replies
4
Views
5
Theophilus
Theophilus
10mm
  • Locked
  • Question
Routing and asme vessel flanges on the finished welded tank... questions
Replies
2
Views
3
10mm
10mm
Back
Top