Solid Configuration for Solid

Hi all

 

I'm coming to you because I need your experience to find a pc configuration that will allow me to work on Solidworks "normally". I currently have an Intel Xeon W-2223 CPU @ 3.60GHz with 32GB of ram , a Quadro P4000 recently bought to replace a pc that lacked power.

Unfortunately this PC does not hold the load and the pace that I ask of it despite all the options at least.

I spend my time waiting for these reactions.

The functions don't work properly, forget some of them and very often force me to close and then re-open the model and restart the pc...

 

The terms of use are;

Piping and general installation, so almost all in 3D sketch

Assembly approx. 1000 parts with the possibility of going over

Pipping for longer lengths in the assembly 

 

Can you tell me which PC components are needed for smooth use in these conditions ?

 

Thanks in advance 

Cyrille

 

Hello

If you do a lot of piping and piping, you should be interested in the solidworks module adapted to these trades.

The little I saw of it is very efficient.
On occasion, compared to the weight of a slightly long angled pipe, and with a fact with the standard module and the piping module, it makes a big difference in volume and ease of assembly.

Kind regards

 

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We agree, the pipping module is supposed to help.

I draw SKids, so a lot of devices connected to each other in very little space.

Sketches break regularly and for no reason in the pipping module for these small complex pipes and attachment points are very difficult to find. This makes it an unusable module in its current state

Hello @CyrilleEco 

I don't understand easy!

Your config doesn't seem to me to be in question, let's wait and see what our colleagues propose, including one who seems to me to have made assemblies of this type.

Kind regards

 

To get a little  idea of the state solidworks is in with 250 parts

 

 

 

Pour avoir une idée de l'état dans lequel est solidworks avec 250 pièces

You have to check that SW uses the Quadro card and not the card integrated into the motherboard (via the NVidia control panel), we had the gag lately.

I see that you use textures, are they essential?

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Hello 

Thank you for your help.

Indeed I had spotted these settings quite quickly because the card was not running in the task manager. I searched a lot and tested settings in there but I couldn't find anything. At best the graphics card is at 13% when it is in the middle of a problem and no longer knows how to represent circles during rotation .

The worst is probably the zoom, which can have a latency time of several seconds in 3d sketches and on the drawing.

 

Hello

A you do a formatting and a new clean installation (don't let windows find the drivers) of your workstation after your hardware modifications, it's long and annoying but it's good for the PC generally.

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Stupid thing too: for graphics card drivers you have to take SW certified drivers. There is a lot of risk of bugs otherwise.

Our CGs are also twiddling their thumbs. So on our last resorts I bought first price pro cards.

 

There may be problems related to the parts (or MEPs). For example, in V2020 on drawings, Solidworks handles complicated hatching very badly. We had houndstooth, scale factor 32 on the welds -> even on a plane with two views for a single part, we shot each other. Ironing the texture with a scale factor of 2 and a 'steel' type with few strokes solved the problem.

Have you tried to open the benchmark files that are now included in "solidworks Rx"? Do a performance test of your station and see if you fall the same as the other stations with the same equipment. If so, the problem probably comes from your parts / MEP.

You can also open and manipulate these large test files to see if you have the same kind of slowness issues

 

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Hello @ CyrilEco

I often say it on this forum!
The graphics card is hardly used by solidworks.
What for? A graphics card only receives information for display. Information from the calculation made in solidworks.
When is it necessary to have a super big big card it's when you do var gaming, in this case the number of pixels to display every hundredth of a second is Kolosall.
Solidworks probably doesn't use the primitives of the video card, it just uses the graphics processor of the motherboard for a large part of the calculation necessary for the display.

If you're in a version equal to or lower than the 2019  (post the file with a pack and go) I'll look at what it does on my machine. (In Mp if it's confidential).

Kind regards
 

Hello everyone and thank you for your help.

I was in apnea on a big project for the last few weeks but I was able to do the test and research you mentioned .

The results of the solidworks benchmark seem to be in line with equivalent material, I put you the capture of the result. Let me know if that sounds right.

I looked at the textures to see if any parts would be too heavy, but I couldn't find anything. Only colors on some piping pieces. I only use it on the back wall to represent an environment at the end of the project, and I wouldn't use it again. The slowdowns happen long before that. 

It happens around 200 parts in assembly and goes from bad to worse. In fact no tool works at normal speed anymore, it spits out 5 x on average in the day for no apparent reason, during the request for a function or rotation or nothing.

I cut the work as much as possible, I ask him for as little reconstruction as possible. I advance in increments of several modifications before reconstruction which requires between 1 and 3 minutes. Circles are polygons with very little face.... The lines of the stairs... I feel like I'm on win XP.

I searched on all my library rooms, all open to check their operation. When opening the assembly of 450 parts it takes less than 15 seconds to turn on the pc. 

The slowdown in the assembly module worsens until it takes 30 seconds to retract a side for distance constraint, when it does not ask for it again or crash.

To help him, I can turn off the pc, wait 5 min and turn it back on. With luck he understands what he does 15 min.

The backup takes him forever.

Small precision, I work locally on a m2 sata !!

I formatted, reinstalled the solid drivers (which seems obsolete) but nothing helps, looked in the settings of the card which was ok

The worst of the worst is the rotation and zoom in the 3D sketch. At the end of the project, it is almost impossible to modify it in the assembly. No matter how hard I looked, I find very few parameters to relieve the 3D sketch.

Unfortunately I can't share the complete assembly with you because confidential, I can share with you the core of my problem, the chassis.

It is very simple in this design with 50x50x2 tubes, 100x50x2, angle iron and Dn20 tube for the supports that are not on this assembly otherwise made impractical. All in AISI 304 stainless steel.

When I open it the rotation is good and the zoom too (at first), but in the 3d sketch it jerks and the lines can be difficult to snap. When I connect 2 lines together and constrain it on an axis it goes through all the states , tries all the solutions, passes me the sketch in red and then comes back to it and validates. It can take 30 seconds. Several back and forth in the edition of the sketch and it's a disaster, the model flashes in its movement.  In the drawings the lines of the chassis are very difficult to hang for the dimensioning, it never ends.

I use a lot of energy to develop Sioux tricks to ward off his big difficulties. Unfortunately, I lose performance and attention in my design.

My management doesn't understand that the pc they bought me 3000 6 months ago is not efficient and slows me down to this point.

I would like to believe in the hidden parameter that will make it work normally but for me the pc has trouble managing what I ask of it. 

 

PS: the reading of the step in Edrawing is catastrophic, at the level of win XP.

 


test_performance_solid.jpg

The chassis 


chassis_partage_solidworks.zip

- Are you in complex assembly mode?
- Are the rooms lightened as soon as possible?
- How is automatic backup set up?

On my machine I don't notice any particular problem except:
- external relations in the 3D sketch (and it eats up a lot of resources);
- personally, I avoid sketches, 3D or not, as complex. I prefer to make several sketches, which can cling to each other. It doesn't interfere with the mechanical-welding functions, you can select the members in several sketches.

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Hello Stefbeno and thank you for your help.

 

I am indeed in complex assembly mode from 200 pieces, 

The lightweight parts are not rebuilt automatically, and opening in lightweight mode does not change anything.

No automatic backup.

Fastest curve generation

On the other hand I don't access the wired image resolution and high quality, it  is blocked completely..

 

Good news if it works on your machine, can you tell me how it is equipped?

I don't understand what you mean by external relationships in the sketch. I don't find any constraints related to the sketch but all are on the welded parts. There are few parts on this assembly, the next one contains the extra clamps.

 

For the technique I try to simplify the work and not to constantly go in/out to make and bring back parts to make a complex assembly in which I would find myself regularly remaking the parts entirely according to the progress of the design. I work on complex skids and very constrained in place, subject to change during design, and especially as quickly as possible. My 3d sketches are finally dense but have few elements compared to what is possible with solid.

External relationships are relationships that exist between multiple files. This is noticeable when there is the "->" symbol after a function.

In your case, it is the 3D sketch that is linked to an assembly (you can find the names of the linked files by doing files/search for references.
In a sketch, by clicking on the icon in the form of a perpendicular symbol with an eye, we can filter to find the external constraints.

The machine I used is a ZBook17G6 with a Quadro RTX3000 card.
Later I will do the test with an older machine.

I tested on another machine: Z420 from 2014 with a Quadro K2000 card

It works well, if I change a dimension, yes it grinds a little for updated but it's still reasonable.

I opened your files under SW2020 Sp3.0 (it's clearly not the best): no real handling problems on my HP Z440 16GB Ram station, Pciexpress SSD, CG Quadro M2000, Xeon(R) CPU  CPU E5-1630 v4 @ 3.70GHz.

Is your station a commercial thing (dell, hp...) or is it something assembled by you (or by a local assembler)? If it's something built by someone who is not used to it, there can quickly be a problem with the driver or compatibility between the different components.

If you have problems with the structure alone, there must be a problem with the driver (or possibly with the choice of processor: not all Xeons are equal. We took a station for 1500€ with an anemic Xeon and the person who works with a lot of trouble).

On your complete assembly you use a lot of components with 3D files provided by the suppliers: it's practical but sometimes some files can be catastrophic because they are much too detailed (Rotork engines for example).

On SW2020 there are diagnostic tools that give the calculation times of the different parts: you had to test these functions. A small, cumbersome file repeated 20x on your model totally weighs it down.

I launched it and for example your 14 small stainless steel ball feet generate 4x more triangles than all the tubes of the chassis..... You open your foot again, make a revolution that hides everything and it should go faster.

The flanges with "Béné Inox" engraved on them in relief are clearly not great when you are going to try to do the drawing (same on all the components béné inox it seems to me) .... The models of the cylinders on the ball valves / butterfly valves are also too detailed with its small graduations. Same for the needles on the mano...

My advice: 'waste' time simplifying the templates you download. You'll regain it on all your subsequent assemblies and drawings (There's SW's defeature tool but it's often quite long: you should still test it).

The thing that is almost certain is that the problem is probably not the amount of Ram  or the CG (unless you are using a driver not certified for your SW version).

PS: don't hesitate to consult us the day you need a valve that you can't find from your usual suppliers :-)

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A priori, @CyrilleEco works with SW18.

The performance analysis function already exists in this version (evaluate tab, icon "traffic light with a stopwatch")
In addition to the feet that have a lot of facet, the system indicates that there are still appearances applied to the chassis.

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There is still little chance that my SW2020 will be much better optimized than the Sw2018 from @CyrilleEco  -> the problem comes either from the processor if it's a first price xeon, or from a driver/installation problem (personally I think for a software problem if his machine is slower than his old one).

After checking it shouldn't be the processor because the Xeon W-2223 is faster than mine according to the benches

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Hello

I also tested it on my machine after which I often complain because of its slowness, and I didn't have any particular problems except for a little latency when opening the main 3D sketch, but nothing dramatic.

As some have already said, external relations do not go in the direction of performance, even if in some cases we  have managed the choice.