System Locking at 50% CPU Usage

[Bester2]

OK,

Here is my system
SolidWorks 2006 SP 4.1
Windows XP Professional SP2
Dual Core 2.0 GHZ AMD Opteron Processor
2.00 GB Ram
Nvidia Quadro FX 3450/4000 SDI

I imagine this problem is related to the dual core portion of the CPU. Is there anyway to change this so that Solidworks can access both cores. Currently when I am in any large assembly or large assembly drawing my system locks while my CPU goes to 50%.(large assembly being 100-150 parts). This usually happens when I am mating parts in assemblies or moving views in drawings. I have read the FAQ and changed my settings to use less memory but that did nothing for this problem. Also I have added the 3GB switch. I also made sure that my affinity was set to use both cores.

Any suggestions (besides throwing away the entire system, I only got it 5 months ago).

Thanks

Brian

PS: thread559-151928 this was the closest thread to my issue that I could find. I also read thread559-80802 but it was written in 2003 so I am not sure how current it is.

 

[JMirisola]

SolidWorks won't (can't?) make use of both cores. Are you opening/working across a network?

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
CAD Administrator
SW '07 SP2.0, Dell M90, Intel 2 Duo Core, 2GB RAM, nVidia 2500M

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/jeffs_blog

 

[Bester2]

Jeff,

I thought that might be the case. These files are all on my hard drive with out a PDM system.

Thank you for the response.

Brian

 

[Bester2]

OK,

I noticed that my CPU will go over 50% (I saw it go to 80%) when I regenerated a drawing. That lead me to believe that SolidWorks can sometimes access both cores. I did the regen again while looking at the processes and it verified the 80% number. So now I am confused. Does Solidworks have some internal setting that states what processes are allowed to access the second core and what process are not?

Brian

 

[AnnaWood]

SolidWorks is multi-threaded, (uses both cores) when re-generating drawing views.

How complex is your drawing? How many pages? Are there lots of sections, broken out views, crops, etc?

How much memory are you using when the computer appears to lock up?

Your 2 Ghz AMD processor does not have near the performance that an Intel Core 2 Duo would have.

You may also be hitting memory limits on your 32 bit system when opening your drawing. Drawings are very compute intensive and it is very easy to push the memory limits of your system with a large drawing.

This can result in some very slow opening times or lock-ups when trying to open large drawings.

Regards,

Anna Wood
SW 2007 SP4.0, WinXP
Dell Precision 380, Pentium D940, 4 Gigs RAM, FX3450

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/solidmuse

http://www.phxswug.com

 

[Bester2]

Anna,

The drawing is one page and only has two views, one of the assembly and one of a section view cut through the assembly. We make long tubular assemblies. The assembly in question is approximately 10 feet long and 2 inches in diameter. I am only using 900 MB of memory when these problems are occurring. I think that I need a processor upgrade.

Thank you for the response.

Brian

 

[AnnaWood]

Brian,

Here is a link to a somewhat un-scientific benchmark test that I have.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pz7wTpIkC7LA28ybEyxyTPw

Download the file and do a crtl-q re-build of the model. Then check Feature Statistics to see how long it took to re-build. Be prepared for it to take a bit of time.

In the Google spreadsheet are the times required to re-build the part with various computer systems.

If you would like to send me your files on one of your drawings. I will run on the Core 2 Duo system I have at home and give you an idea of time to open, and moving around the drawing.

Regards,

Anna Wood
SW 2007 SP4.0, WinXP
Dell Precision 380, Pentium D940, 4 Gigs RAM, FX3450

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/solidmuse

http://www.phxswug.com

 

[Bester2]

Anna,

I got the future version error. I am still using 2006 SP 4.1.

Brian

 

[AnnaWood]

Brian,

Sorry, I forgot that you are using SW2006. You can look at the spreadsheet and get a relative idea of where your computer will probably be in the list from a CPU performance perspective.

Regards,



Anna Wood
SW 2007 SP4.0, WinXP
Dell Precision 380, Pentium D940, 4 Gigs RAM, FX3450

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/solidmuse

http://www.phxswug.com

 

[CubicleHound]

Long shot but I had a microsoft mouse, and the intellimouse software was causing solidworks to lock up one of my cores and pause for 15-30 seconds every few minutes, usually when I was using my mouse to move views and rotate. I had to uninstall microsofts mouse button manager and install a 3rd party product.

SW/PDM 06 5.1/5.0 x64

 

[AnnaWood]

CubicleHound,

That is a good point. That happened to one of our engineers. To solve some unrelated issue our IT guys installed the Intellimouse driver on our engineers computer. It really screwed up his SolidWorks performance. Un-installed the Intellimouse software and his SolidWorks started working properly again.

FWIW,

Anna Wood
SW 2007 SP4.0, WinXP
Dell Precision 380, Pentium D940, 4 Gigs RAM, FX3450

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/solidmuse

http://www.phxswug.com

 

[Bester2]

CubicleHound,

Thanks for the advice but my mouse is by HP. I think that my problem is the actual assembly that I am working on. I pulled up another assembly file that was larger than the one that I was working on and I did not have any problems. I went through all of the parts making sure that the mating structure made sense and noticed that this problem only existed when I modified certain parts. I am really confused. The good thing is I finished with the major assembly. But I still do not understand why I am having problems with this assembly. The assembly file itself is only 5MB.

Brian