HANDLING LARGE ASSEMBLIES
USING SOLIDWORKS 2004 –
TIPS AND TECHNIQUES
Senthil Kumar
Manager, Engineering Services
Shaji Shereef
Sr. Engineer & CSWP

Barry-Wehmiller Companies, Inc.
Our Beginnings...
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Founded in 1885
Today...
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22 Facilities
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23 acquisitions in the past 15 years
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2600+ Employees
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350+ employees Dedicated to
Consulting
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Large & Diverse Client Base
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Revenues of $500MM
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Privately Held

Barry-Wehmiller Companies, Inc.
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Organizational Chart
Barry-Wehmiller Companies, Inc.
Barry-Wehmiller Packaging Group Barry-Wehmiller Consulting Group Barry-Wehmiller Corrugated Group
Design Group BWIR
Packaging Industry
Integrators
IT and Engineering
Services

Consulting Group Facts
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Employs 300+ Consulting Professionals with broad industry experience.
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Provided Clients with 450,000+ consulting hours in the last year.
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Executed hundreds of projects.
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2003 Revenue of $100M.
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Acquired an offshore consulting business to expand our resources and to provide cost effective services to our global clients.

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Product Design
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Automation / API Programming
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Modeling, Drafting and Analysis Support
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Legacy Data Conversion
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PDM Integration
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Controls Design
– PLC, SCADA and Schematics

Representative Clients

HANDLING LARGE ASSEMBLIES
USING SOLIDWORKS 2004 –
TIPS AND TECHNIQUES

• Define large assembly
• Problems faced
• Understand the issues and reasons
• How to improve performance of a large assembly
– Hardware
– Modeling features
– Drafting features
– Productivity tools
– Best practices
– System options

How do you define a large assembly?
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Any assembly which slows down your machine can be called a large assembly .
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This could be 100 parts for someone and
10,000 parts for the other.
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An assembly with 100 simple parts responds faster than an assembly with
100 complex parts.
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Complex parts mean parts with a lot of external references, curved surfaces, sweeps, loft features and more number of faces.

Problems encountered with large assemblies
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Slow
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Unstable
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System Crashes

Understand the issues and reasons
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Optimizing large assembly performance boils down to reducing the amount of work the CPU, memory and disk drive have to do.
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The goal is to take available hardware and do more with large assemblies (solve / evaluate designs).
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To improve large assembly performance we need to
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Reduce memory usage
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Accelerate retrieval time
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Improve regeneration time
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Increase display speed

But how?
We can optimize the performance by understanding the following in context of a large assembly.
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Hardware
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Modeling features
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Drafting features
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Productivity tools
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Best practices
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System options

Hardware
First and the most influencing factor on large assembly performance is the hardware.
Nothing could substitute for sheer system power!!
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RAM
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Faster Video Card
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CPU Speed
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Faster Data Transfer
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Network
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Service Packs
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Swap Space

Modeling Features…
Resolved / Suppressed / Lightweight features

Modeling Features…
Comparison of Components Suppression States
Resolved Lightweight Suppressed Hidden
Loaded in memory
Visible
Features available in FeatureManager design tree
Yes
Yes
Yes
Partially
Yes **
Yes ***
No
No
No
Yes
No
No
Faces and edges accessible for adding mates
Mates solved
In-context features solved
Assembly features solved
Considered in global operations
May be edited in-context
Load and rebuild speed
Display speed
Yes
Yes
Yes *
Yes
Yes
Yes
Normal
Normal
Yes ***
Yes
Yes
Yes
On demand **
Yes ***
Faster
Normal
No
No
No
No
No
No
Faster
Faster
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Normal
Faster
*
**
In-context features on resolved parts that reference lightweight parts update automatically.
Global operations include Mass Properties, Interference Detection, Exploded View, Advanced Selection and
Advanced Show/Hide, solving equations, displaying section views, and exporting to other file formats. When lightweight components are present, the software prompts you to either resolve them, or cancel the operation.
*** Lightweight components are resolved automatically when selected for this operation.

Modeling Features…
• The sketch can be used to define the location and angle for interrelated assembly components.
Unnecessary assembly components can be hidden or suppressed to minimize the visual clutter and the required system overhead.
This helps to improve performance and allows the designer to effectively focus on the task at hand. Assembly Layout Sketch

Modeling Features…
Advanced Show / Hide features

Modeling Features…
Envelopes
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Advanced component Selection (inside, outside, crossing)

Modeling Features…
• Organize Parts in Assemblies
Use Folders
• Organize Features in Parts
• Organize Mates for better control

Drafting features…
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Lightweight Drawings
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Lightweight drawings are analogous to lightweight assemblies.
When a drawing is lightweight, only a subset of its model data is loaded in memory. The remaining model data is loaded as needed.

Drafting features…
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With lightweight drawings, you can:
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Create all types of drawing views
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Attach annotations to models in views
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Specify edge properties
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Highlight and dynamically select edges and vertices
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Set drawings of sub-assemblies to lightweight or resolved

Drafting features…
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Detached drawings
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The term RapidDraft has been replaced by Detached. Detached drawings are those that do not need their associated models when opened.

Productivity tools…
SolidWorks Task Scheduler
• Unattended Automation Of:
– Drawing creation
– Publish eDrawings
– File import/export
–
Printing
– Updates
– Custom scripts

Productivity tools… eDrawings
Use eDrawings for communication.
Multi-sheet drawing with
6 sheets and 32 drawing views, 11MB
(part+drawing), becomes
2MB edrawing… (82% smaller..)

Best practices in part modeling…
Fully Defined Sketches
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Use Fully Defined Sketches whenever possible
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Do not use Over Defined or
Under Defined sketches

Best practices…
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Image Quality
Use Lower settings for Image
Quality for faster loading

Best practices…
Rebuild Errors
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Always resolve rebuild errors

Best practices…
Shaded View
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Use shaded view without edges

Shaded view with edges

Shaded view without edges

Best practices…
Advanced Features
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Minimize use of advanced features like Sweep, Loft etc., if possible
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These features take more regeneration time

Use simple features wherever possible


Best practices…
Functional Dimensions for Purchased Parts
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Model the purchased parts with minimum details (Ex: Bearings, Motors etc,) 


Best Practices…
Model purchased items as Parts than Assembly

Best practices…
Configurations
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Configurations are the most powerful tool to manage large
Assemblies
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Use simplified configurations for parts and assemblies
Default configuration Simple configuration

Best practices…
Geometry Pattern
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Use geometry pattern wherever possible
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Geometry pattern increases regeneration speed
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It also helps loading assemblies faster

Best practices…
Number of Steps in Feature Tree
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Try to reduce the number of steps in feature tree
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Plan ahead before modeling to reduce the number of features
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Combine features sensibly (mirror bodies etc..)



Best practices…
External References
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Remove all external references once the design is completed
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Lock the external references whenever possible

Best practices…
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Fillets & Chamfers
Add fillets & chamfers at the end of the of the model whenever possible
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Suppress fillets & chamfers in simplified configurations
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Combine fillets of equal size



Best practices…
Cosmetic Features
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Try to avoid modeling of conventional threading
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Use cosmetic threads representation
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Avoid too much cosmetic features which are not needed all the time in the design


<100 KB >900 KB

Best practices…
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Helix
Use only representation



Best practices…
Company Logos, Text etc
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Use simplified representation for company logos, text etc



Best Practices…
Configuration for Fasteners
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Make configuration to suppress fasteners in an assembly,
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It improves the file loading time

Configuration With Fasteners
 Configuration Without Fasteners

Best Practices…
Lightweight and Configure Options
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Use lightweight & select configuration while opening an assembly

System Options…
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Large assembly mode
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When working with large assemblies take advantage of the large assembly mode and customize the settings to increase the performance

How to switch on/off large assembly mode??

Other options to improve large assembly performance.
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Verification of rebuild (Switch-Off)
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Image Quality Settings. (Set it as low as you can work with)

Rollstand frame and Splicer
6000 components

Model II - Rollstand
3000 components

Slitter Scorer Machine
Over 5000 components

Process machinery line
Over 10,000 components

• So…. thoughtfully developed best practices, effective utilization of configurations and understanding the innovative features available with SolidWorks 2004 will help you to design larger assemblies without compromising the performance.

Questions ?

Contacts: jim.webb@bwir.com
senthil.kumar@bwir.com