In SOLIDWORKS 2019, there have been several improvements to the drawing environment which includes; reduced time to open your drawings, progress indicators, additional section view types, improvements to tables and more.
In this blog however we are going to focus on the improvements in the time it takes for you to open a Drawing with the model not already being pre-loaded.
Setup
For these tests we will not be using the highest spec Workstation but rather an average CAD Laptop with an Intel Xeon E3-1505M Processor, NVidia M1000m Graphics Card, 16Gb RAM and with everything running on an SSD. The results should show the improvements that most users will be able to achieve at a minimum. The higher end workstations should scale up and have greater improvement in general.
All possible variables will be kept the same for all tests so;
The Models being used
For the tests we will use two different sizes of models by using; a small/medium sized assembly and a very large assembly. The simpler assembly was from the “Using PDM” File Set and the large assembly was from the “What’s New 2019” Demo File Set.
Notes
It should be noted that in some of the test below we will have the new SOLIDWORKS 2019 option “Enhanced Graphics Performance” turned on. This option will not explicitly speed up any load times as it is designed to improve the performance of compatible graphics cards when you rotate, pan, zoom in/out or perform similar actions on a model. This new feature scales up with higher end Workstations or rather higher end Graphics Cards. Even though this isn’t designed to improve load times it will still be tested to see if there are any improvements.
Testing – Medium Assembly
Testing – Large Assembly
For the large assembly, Large Assembly Mode was used along with the “Lite” configuration where most components are simplified, and this is kept consistent with all the runs. Due to the time it would take everything to update/open it was deciding that the tests for this model would be carried out with only a single sheet containing an isometric view with ‘Shaded with edges’ turned on. This assembly contained 7220 components and contained many imported bodies and complex components which over makes this a very taxing assembly and drawing to open, hence the much longer times.
In the result above the “My Time” is the time I got on a stopwatch from the second I clicked ‘Open’ till everything was open and I could zoom/pan in the drawing. The “Open” and “Rebuild” times are those output by SOLIDWORKS using the “Performance Evaluation” within the drawing environment.
Conclusion
Looking at the results of both assembly tests the time it takes to open the drawings in 2019 is on average quicker than it was in 2018. Looking at the overall trend it appears that the larger and more complex your model is (and therefore the more complex the drawing is) the better SOLIDWORKS 2019 can handle the required performance with only some minor improvements with more trivial drawings.
Therefore, if you company works with some very large or complex models you should see some improvements with 2019. The biggest improvements to SOLIDWORKS 2019s’ performance will however come with general use in the part/assembly environment as the “Enhanced Graphics Performance” option provides large improvements to panning, zooming, rotating, etc.
It should be noted that performance in SOLIDWORKS, as with any program, is always dependant on your specific computer configuration so if you feel like you performance is consistently slower than what you would like or compared to colleagues who have a newer (higher spec) PC then it may be time to upgrade your rig.
Craig Girvan is an Applications Engineer at TMS CADCentre, a SOLIDWORKS Value Added Reseller in Scotland.
You can read more from Craig on the TMS CADCentre blog
Kategorien: SOLIDWORKS 2019, Technical Communication