sw2003 Performance 1

[Mindnumb]

Today I installed SW2003 sp0.

Its quite a bit slower than sw2001plus.

I have not run any benchmarks on it, but the graphic is notisably slower.

It improved a bit when I checked the software accelerated opengl checkbox, opende an assembly, closed it, and unchecked the box, but 2001plus is still much faster.

My config is as follows:

win2000 prof
athlon 1200
768 sdram
2x30Gb ide raid0 on dedicated card
Asus Geforce2 gts 32 mb ram, with quadro hack.

Virus checking is disabled at the moment.

 

[josephv]

Hello,

I think you are on the right track...

This appears to be graphics related. I am not familiar with the Quadro hack... but to fix this you can try...

1) Disable the virus checker
2) Uninstall the video driver
3) Install the latest video driver

Hope this helps.

cheers,

Joseph

 

[Mindnumb]

I have now installed the newest drivers , and reinstalled sw2003 with the antivirus software turned off.
This is the 41.09 drivers fro nvidia.

the performance is slightly petter, but still much worse than that of 2001plus.

I have tried and looked at the registry settings for solidworks, but I can not find any spesial setting there that sould cause this graphic performance degrade. It seems like SW have changed the opengl routines it is using in 2003 ,( I really have no clue on these things, I am just guessing ) because I am running both 2001 an 2003 on the same machine, with the same drivers and all. And of course the same setting internal in SW (At least I think so).

Does anyone know why it is so? anyone with similar problems ?

I have heard roumors that th perfomance of the prereleace version of 2003 had much better performance, espesially on the geforce line of cards. Can anyone confirm this?

 

[SBaugh]

If you are using a GF card I have found the latest driver to give bad pereformance for SW. I believe I use version 29.42 (Something like that) for omy home box. I have tried updating to the newer ones without much performance increase plus it just made more problems for other programs I used.

This is were I get my Nvidia Drivers at:

http://www.reactorcritical.com/download.shtml

Good Luck, Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies
credence69@REMOVEhotmail.com

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.3dmca.com

*When in doubt always check the help*

 

[Mindnumb]

To SBaugh

I have tried different drivers, and the problem seems to be there anyhow, that there is quite some difference between the 2001 and 2003 version.
Have you tried the Quadro hack? give me your mail an I will send you instructions and modified driver.

It worked wonders for me in the 2001plus version. The benchmark (only graphics run)went from 166 sek to 46sek ! Thats like 250% increase !

Thats with the 30.82 driver. The 41.09 is a little bit slower, 50sek benchmark.

I have not been able to benchmark th 2003 wersion, anyone have a tip on how to do it ?

Well, back to sw2003, It really annoys me that the performance is degraded, is this related to the GeForce cards only, or is Other cards affected as well? Now I tried a real Quadro card today, and the performance seem identical. The benchmarks for 2001 give the same result as with the softquadr card, and as far I can see, the performance is the same in 2003 as with th other card...

 

[pyarnall]

Hi... related concerns... I am running a fast Athlon, 765meg ram and the PNY (formerly ELSA)750 Quadro card which was offered at a discount on the SW site sseveral months ago. Also running a 3D Connexion Space Mouse, (HIGHLY recommended). I run dual monitors off the PNY and usuually have other applications on the second monitor. This system ran flawlessly w/ 2001+. With 2003 the program crashes out 1-3 times a day, with "unhandled error" messages. I do a lot of saving. Getting no where with my VAR (and they are trying) or SW. I am not happy, (this is what I pay my maintenance fee for?). Would greatly appreciate if anyone has any ideas.

 

[assembly28]

My entire machine design department just recently added SolidWorks and shortly thereafter upgraded to SW2003. We also have experienced the program crashing 3-4 times per day with the same message. We even had on-site training from a SolidWorks engineer and witnessed his system crash 3 times during a one-and-a-half day training session. There seems to be a problem with the new release.

We have been very disappointed with the software in general.

 

[SBaugh]

I think depends on how the software is installed plus the computer. I have installed SW03 on all 3 of my computers and I have yet to crash. All 3 systems are running some similar but also some different hardware components and software components.

What is the error you are getting DaavidM?

Did you have antivirus disabled while installing?

What are your Box specs?

Do you have "Use software Open GL" on or off? (Located in tools\system options\Performance You must not have any files open to have access to adjusting it)

These are just some of many questions your VAR should be asking you or have you contacted Tech support on this issue of crashing?

Just some thoughts that come to my mind.

Best Regards and luck to your group, Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies
credence69@REMOVEhotmail.com

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.3dmca.com

*When in doubt always check the help*

 

[assembly28]

Thanks for the comments SBaugh...

I am getting the "SolidWorks has terminated due to an unhandled error" message that I have seen several others post complaints about. Last night, my system crashed with this error and trashed my assembly so that when I opened it up again, it was filled with mate and rebuild errors that previously had not existed.

We have rather high end boxes:
P4 2.00 GHz Proc., 1G RAM, NVIDIA Quadro4 card with 1G RAM

We have been in touch with tech support and tried every combination of antivirus, Open GL, etc., etc., etc.

 

[desguy]

i've also seen this error on a regular basis.

out IT dept says they've been in touch with SolidWorks and has replied back to us that no one else seems to be having a problem.

from what i see here that doesn't seem to be the case.

 

[RawheadRex]

Hi Guys,

I'm joining the fray a bit late here but we've noticed some speed differences with 2003 here as well with diminished performance. And I've also seen the "SolidWorks has terminated due to an unhandled error" message a few time myself.

We're running dual-Athlons (1.7mhz) with 1GB RAM and Quadro4 video cards. 2001Plus worked great in this configuration. With 2003 we're noticing dips in rebuild time and unhanlded error crashes in SolidWorks.

Unfortunately the only thing I have to offer right now is solidarity with the other users experiencing similar performance hits. As it's not currently "killing us" we haven't screamed too loud to our VAR for resolution although we probably ought to. It's not unreasonable to expect a software "upgrade" to not have an adverse affect on the way one works in my opinion. Hopefully a service pack will be available in short order to address the issue.

Chris Gervais
Mechanical Designer
American Superconductor

 

[dsi]

Maybe I'll leave the SW2003 box on my desk for a few more weeks...

I thought that I recalled reading that you should completely uninstall the previous version of SW from your machine before installing 2003. But, for the life of me, I can not find it. For those who have problems, did you do this or did you simply install the upgrade? DimensionalSolutions@Core.com
While I welcome e-mail messages, please post all thread activity in these forums for the benefit of all members.

 

[SBaugh]

I have both SW01+ and 03 on my machine and niether of them are causing me in problems. You can add 03 on your machine by simply doing a new install instead of an upgrade install. In fact I think a new install is better than using an upgrade. IMO

I run both 01+ and 03 at the same time without problems also...I have to now that I'm doing Tech support.

all & have a Merry Chirstmas[santa2], Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies
credence69@REMOVEhotmail.com

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.3dmca.com

*When in doubt always check the help*

 

[RawheadRex]

"I thought that I recalled reading that you should completely uninstall the previous version of SW from your machine before installing 2003. But, for the life of me, I can not find it. For those who have problems, did you do this or did you simply install the upgrade?"

I wiped the 2001Plus installation and re-installed 2003 fresh. I don't recall seeing anything specific regarding uninstalling the previous SolidWorks version but you may be correct. You might remember seeing it mentioned during the installation routine where the user is notified that the preferred method of installation is now Windows Installer and that the Traditional Installation option won't be available in the next major release.

Initially, I did attempt to simply upgrade my existing installation using Windows Installer. I found out though that I couldn't open any of my files in SolidWorks after this (as a side note I duplicated this behavior on another workstation so it appears to be an issue between Windows Installer and Traditional installation). So I dumped the installation and started over fresh.

This seemed to work (aside from performance and unhandled error crashes) so like I said, I don't doubt that you probably came across the instruction to uninstall somewhere.

Chris Gervais
Mechanical Designer
American Superconductor

 

[rlee1]

in SW 2003 also getting "SolidWorks has terminated due to an unhandled error" Dell Precision 330 1GB RAM Diamond Fire GL2 64MB RAM. also using a Spaceball. It appears when doing wire drawing rotations with the spaceball. The system ran fine with SW2003 SP1 for months and just started acting up this week.

??

 

[MadMango]

So I'll assume that you are using SW03 SP2.0 now. If that is the case, it should be rather simple to revert back to SP1.0 to see if that fixes your problems. If it does, then you can send off an email to SolidWorks. You didn't mention what operating system you are running.

I just installed SP2.0 and so far, all seems well. "The attempt and not the deed confounds us."

 

[rlee1]

the OS is Windows 2K Pro. the "corrected" report I'm getting now is that they upgraded to 2003 and went straight to SP1. that's when the problems started. SP2 has the same problem. so it appears to be associated with SW2003. other systems with different hardware configurations are not seeing it. also, spaceball seems to be part of the problem. they can open a wire frame and do rotations with a regular mouse.

 

[SBaugh]

Try this method and see if that works for you. faq559-507

I have found it to work more often than reinstalling SW, which is sometimes the best answer for unhandled errors. I'm not crazy about giving that answer all the time, but that is why I always try this method first. If you do have to reinstall. faq559-488

As for the spaceball be sure you have the latest drivers. Also check out this thread if you haven't already thread559-44890
Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.3dmca.com

faq731-376
When in doubt, always check the help

 

[Jimijames]

I would see the unhandled error when I was running SW2001+ (sometimes several times a day), our IS guy working with our reseller and Solidworks was not able to fix the problem. We tried new vid drivers, software openGL, moving the paging file all without success. We recently upgraded to SW2003 and I haven't seen the error since. I made sure to turn off anti-virus during the upgrade.. maybe this corrected the unhandled error???

As for performance, has anyone noticed a hit in opening or saving/closing? I have a moderately sized assy (~500 parts) that seems to take ages to close. SW2001+ was noticably faster. I can literally leave my desk, get a coffee, meet a wife, raise a family, and retire before it finishes saving...ok, slight exageration, but I've seen save/close times well over 1 min in some cases.

 

[dasarge]

Folks i am also going to come out of the shadows after monitoring this discussion group for a long time. We have been having the termination issues since we installed 2003. i have followed all of Scott Baugh, CSWP instructions and have had no good results. we are running dell 330 with a gig of ram quadro 2 with the nividia driver specified for sw, done all the installation gymnastics and still the perfomance is anemic but now i only crash about every two or three days, what a comfort. we have 20 seats at this facility and have been sw users for 8+ years. we are going to try S.P. 3.0 next. sw better get their act together, this is the worse release that they have put out.