Paging file size

[pdybeck]

I have a machine running SolidWorks 2003 SP 3.0 and occassionally open assemblies with greater than 100 parts. A few of the parts have greater than 50 features. Lately I have seen some performance degredation as the assemblies I have been editing have grown in size along with the project I am working on. The processor is an Intel Pentium 3 - 930 MHz, and I have 382 MB of RAM (Not DDR). Currently my paging file size is set to 574 MB. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what the recommended paging file size should be? I used the 1.5*RAM as the general rule of thumb. Has anyone played around and found a more optimized relationship? Thanks in advance.

PDY

 

[APPENG]

Generally the paging file size should be 3x the amount of physical RAM. Also the MIN and MAX settings should be set to the same value that way your swap data is guaranteed not to be fragments causing unecessary slow downs. (1200Mb for your system)

What I would do in your case is first upgrade my RAM to 512Mb first at least, and set my paging file accordingly for a 512 I would use a value of 1500Mb) next take a look at your video card... you should have something with no less that 64Mb of VRAM this can cause a nice bottle neck too if you have an sub par vid card.

Also you should take a look at your system options as well to make sure that you have them optimized for the best performance.... By comparison 100 part assemblies and parts of 50 features are small when compared to alot of the things i run into... I work with assemblies that are over 3 and 5 thousand components and I work with a P4 2.1 Ghz with 1 Gb RAM and 128 Meg Video card.

Hope that helps


Regards,
Jon
jgbena@yahoo.com

 

[pdybeck]

Thanks for the reply Jon,

Unfortunately my hands are tied here as far as what I can do the hardware improvements. I will try to plead to the IT dept once again. I would very much like to have a machine that is modestly outfitted, but with the system here I have to wait my turn for an upgrade. In the meantime I will reset the min and max paging file size to roughly 1150 MB (384*3). I'll see what that does for my performance. I have had the settings under tools options in SWX optimized for perfomance gain. Again, thanks for the reply.

 

[JNR]

Oh my, I hate to tell you this, but you need to upgrade your hardware. A 900/P3 with 382 RAM is awful slow for newer revs of SolidWorks (or similar programs). I would not even run 2001 on it, let alone 2003. I realize it may be a budget problem, but you are going to run out of steam completely pretty quick. At least go and buy as much RAM as you can stuff into it if you can't afford to upgrade the whole thing right now. You might also look into just upgrading your graphics card, which is less expensive and could be move up to a new system later to spread the cost out. But do look in the older posts to find out the real story on graphics cards before you jump on that one. Much of the on-line info on card compitibility is out of date.

There are some other things you could try in the meantime. Again, look in some of the older posts on performance/2003/or anything relating to speed or general SW2003 problems.

BTW: Your part and assembly sizes are really tiny compared to ours and a lot of other users. That should give you an idea of the hardware capability issue.

 

[JNR]

Oh my, I hate to tell you this, but you need to upgrade your hardware. A 900/P3 with 382 RAM is awful slow for newer revs of SolidWorks (or similar programs). I would not even run 2001 on it, let alone 2003. I realize it may be a budget problem, but you are going to run out of steam completely pretty quick. At least go and buy as much RAM as you can stuff into it if you can't afford to upgrade the whole thing right now. You might also look into just upgrading your graphics card, which is less expensive and could be move up to a new system later to spread the cost out. But do look in the older posts to find out the real story on graphics cards before you jump on that one. Much of the on-line info on card compitibility is out of date.

There are some other things you could try in the meantime. Again, look in some of the older posts on performance/2003/or anything relating to speed or general SW2003 problems.

BTW: Your part and assembly sizes are really tiny compared to ours and a lot of other users. That should give you an idea of the hardware capability issue.

 

[APPENG]

Okay!

I understand the hands being tied on hardware... try to plead your case if you can.. just the the bean counters that its wasting valuable time and they will gain their ROI on increased perfomrance and efficiency... they should understand that.

In the mean time.. try setting your graphics to use software openGL and see if that makes any diffence.. I have done this on some other machins that have subpar vid cards and made a nice gain in perfomrance.

Close all open documents in SolidWorks then go to: TOOLS/OPTIONS/SYSTEM OPTIONS/PERFORMANCE... and near the bottom of the dialog box you will see a check box that says "Use Software OpenGL"...check that box and see if there are any performance gains.

hope that helps


Regards,
Jon
jgbena@yahoo.com

 

[MadMango]

Pdybeck,

Another trick you could try is to convert some of your feature-heavy parts to dumb solids. This will reduce the rebuild time for your parts, and should speed up your assemblies.

If you know you have parts that aren't going to get modified (design is set) you can Save As a parasolid, then open and Save it back as a SLDPRT file. It should drop all your rebuild times under 1 second per part. Just save them as different file names, so you don't loose the features of your original parts.

Also, try suppressing small features in your models that don't add any benefit to your top level assembly. This would be things usch as small radii, hidden features, ect.

Appeng, I always thought it was 4x physical memory?

Wanna Tip? faq731-376
"Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities."

 

[APPENG]

Hey Mango!

Nice to see ya Well actually the official is 3-4x physical RAM I have had great luck with 3 but a lot depends on how much disk space ya have!

Regards,
Jon
jgbena@yahoo.com

 

[JNR]

Oh my, sorry 'bout the double post...... dumb machine told me the first had failed due to ".....exessive traffic....". Guess we were all trying to be helpful at once! Well, that's not a bad thing.

BTW: I doubt if Software OpenGL is going to help with your hardware and SW2003, but it's definintely worth a try. You will just be bogging down the CPU with even more stuf to do. BUT ya never can tell. You will have to set the Software Open Gl settings in both the graphics driver and in SolidWorks options (do not have any files open while you do it), PLUS play with the slider control.

We have had identical machines (built in house too) perform differently for who know what reason. I mean, you can even switch or ghost the drives!! Seems to be more prevailent with XP.......... These are high end machines, but that's not the point - strange things do happen. One we finally gave up on and IT swopped it for an identical machine from Software Engineering - worked fine for everyone - go figure!

 

[APPENG]

JNR,

the slow machine is probably the one the UPS guy dropped!

But you would be surprised at the diffrence that open GL can make on a vid card... I have a 933 machine here that was just abhorishly slow.. it has 256Mb ram, and a 64 meg vid card... but it would take 3-4 seconds on an extremely simple part (an extruded rectangle) just to click on a line and wait for it to highlight... I tweaked everything I could and then tried the Software OpenGL as a last resort and it made a HUGE difference.. i have had this success on other machines as well...

This tells me that I need to upodate the driver perhaps and if that does not work then I will just leave the thing on till I can get superior hardware!

Regards,
Jon
jgbena@yahoo.com

 

[SBaugh]

When you are building a system to run SW on you don't want to spend all your money on one area of your system like RAM. You need to spread the love over the entire system. When building an Engine you don’t spend all your money on the Dome pistons, you need to spread the cash over the entire thing. You spend money on the crankshaft, Cam, Roller Lifters, Roller Rockers, Pete Jackson Gear drive, Get the heads ported and polished, better Intake, 750 Double Pumping Demon Carburetor, etc…. I should stop there .

I understand your building a system here but you need to know that with minimal Hardware your going to get minimal results. If you had better hardware you would get better results. Just like the example above if I only used minimal engine components I would run 30+sec. in the ¼ mile, but if I use the better high performance parts. Then I can run 8sec. flat in the ¼ mile or better. Speed will require better hardware.

You never did say what video card you are using. You need to make sure that your Video card passes the tests at the SW website and don’t just get any card with 64mb or more on board, get one in the Green. Also check out the help file under all the Tools\Options\System Options for a break down on what is better to setup for better performance.

I had to use that analogy! My boss told that to me and I just took it a few step further…he knew what I liked and he compared in a way I would understand…I hope you guys understood it too .

Best Regards,


Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376
When in doubt, always check the help

 

[APPENG]

The old addage Scottie....

Speed is a question of money.... how FAST you wanna go???

Dont get me going on the racing stuff!!!! I can empty a wallet faster than anyone!

His problem is thought that he is locked into his current hardware config until he convinces the powers that be to rise to occaision and spend the money so I am just trying to help him maximize with what he has to work with!

i would like to talk him into the 16 injector slide valve fuel injection system, carillo rods, and a dry sump oil system with 4 scavenge pumps, billet crank, wiseco pistons, Hewland transaxle, Brembo brakes.... traction control... arrrgh i ran outta money AGAIN! Ahhh fond memories though!

Regards,
Jon
jgbena@yahoo.com

 

[CadAndy]

Ok Here's a question?

We have a Nvidia 900 XGL Video Card
512 MB of Ram, 1.8 GHz CPU on a Dell
Intel Xeon Processor. We are also
running Service Pack 3.1

Our swap files our 1500
Our Large Assemblies is at 50 and
turned off.
Our shaded feature is only at 0.03 and
we are having problems with assemblies
over 100 Pieces. Our system will crash
while we are adding constraints and when
we try and move the part to see how it
will be analyzed in Working Model it will
only move once and then you can't move it back
inless you click the green check mark.

Can you help out with this one? Solidworks
Tech Support says it might be because we
loaded Solidworks 2003 with Virus Protection
on. But we haven't seen a difference when we
reloaded 2003 with it off. We did see a difference
when we turned our large assemblies to 50 from 500.

Any other Suggestions?

Andy