SolidWorks Crashes & Slowdowns – Part 5

In this week’s post, we’re going to talk a bit about how you go about creating, and working with, assemblies. Remember, these aren’t hard and fast rules, they’re more guidelines. As anyone who has used SolidWorks for any length of time knows, there are multiple ways to get from point A to point B.

When working in large assemblies (>5,000 parts) don’t get click happy. Give SolidWorks time to crunch numbers and catch up. The same holds true when switching windows. Let the graphics catch up.

Use configurations wisely. Deriving a derived configuration of a derived configuration may end up causing a SolidWorks conflaguration (yes, that is a word). This is not a pretty sight and may cause you, the user, unnecessary stress.

The next tip can be contentious. There are those who strongly favor in-context features and those that don’t. I happen to fall into the latter category. While I see the need for them, occasionally, I’ll generally break the relations so that the part can stand on its own. I’ve had enough bad experiences to not like them. There’s a good chance that I should have just left this topic out, but that just wouldn’t be my style.

When working in assemblies, fix your mate errors. Seriously, why wouldn’t you? By “leaving them ’til later”, you’re only causing SolidWorks to have to work harder. The same holds true for rebuild errors. I know I’ve been on the receiving end of an assembly that had more meatballs than an Italian restaurant. “Meatballs” being the red circles with exclamation points. Leaving an assembly in that state is a sure-fire way to start a cubicle war.

Ok, that’s it for today. Next, and last, installment will be out late this week or early next week.

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June 1, 2009 · Posted in SolidWorks Community, SolidWorks Tips

Comments

Tom

Amen! Although we'd call the meatballs cherry bombs because the assembly would explode or fall apart. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to go back to school to learn how to use SolidWorks properly.

BTW, don't forget about creating simplified configurations for sub assemblies and to use them in the parent assemblies. When doing this, it helps to use a naming convention that everyone understands.

JeffMirisola

Tom,
There are online training sites, video tutorials on YouTube, and blogs with helpful tips, tricks and lessons. There are also plenty of forums should you have questions (see my links on the right).
Good point on the simplified configs.

Jeff

gupta9665

Thanks Jeff for a well explained post.

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