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Best Practices in Managing Large Assemblies

The document provides best practices for managing large assemblies in SOLIDWORKS to improve performance, including loading components as lightweight, using isolate to hide unnecessary components, creating nested subassemblies, utilizing configurations to simplify parts, patterning bodies instead of features, and mating parts to primary planes.

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rajuhaveri
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98 views9 pages

Best Practices in Managing Large Assemblies

The document provides best practices for managing large assemblies in SOLIDWORKS to improve performance, including loading components as lightweight, using isolate to hide unnecessary components, creating nested subassemblies, utilizing configurations to simplify parts, patterning bodies instead of features, and mating parts to primary planes.

Uploaded by

rajuhaveri
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Best Practices in Managing Large Assemblies

Load Components as Lightweight


When you open a large assembly in SOLIDWORKS, you have the option under Mode to
load your assembly as Lightweight. This automatically loads all of the components,
including parts and subassemblies, as lightweight components.

When components are set to lightweight, the full model data for these components is not
loaded, which greatly increases system performance - especially if you are working with
a large assembly. Setting components to lightweight greatly reduces rebuild time because
these components are not rebuilt every time the assembly is rebuilt.

You can still perform many assembly operations without resolving these components, but
some things, such as directly editing a component, cannot be completed unless a
component is first fully resolved. For a full list of assembly operations that you can
perform on components in lightweight mode, please visit Note: If you need to access the
full model at any time, all you have to do is right-click on the component in your design
tree and select Set to Resolved.
Large Assembly Mode and Lightweight Assemblies:

• Lightweight is an amalgamation of Options settings that result in improved


Performance
• Includes an option setting for triggering Lightweight assemblies
• A threshold based on number of parts in the assembly can be set to trigger Large
Assembly
Mode
• Can be activated on the fly: Tools > Large Assembly

• When activated, Large Assembly Mode makes certain Options settings un-editable
(options appear greyed out) when de-activated the options return to being
editable
Large Assembly Mode Options:

• You can change Large Assembly Mode settings: Tools > Options > Assemblies

Under “Assemblies” you will find the “Large assemblies” section. The first option
defines how many components are required before SOLIDWORKS goes into large
assembly mode. If you are on a less powerful hardware you may want to lower it
down to force SOLIDWORKS to go into large assembly mode with fewer
components.
•
Performance

• Performance related settings are found at Tools > Options > Performance

1. Turn off high quality transparency


2. Decrease the level of detail for curvature generation as shown in the figure below
• “No preview during open” allows faster opening of the model but does not provide a
preview – it is not controlled by Large Assembly Mode.
 Make sure the slider in Image quality is set to low and save the file.

Use Isolate

• Use Isolate to quickly hide all but selected but selected components
• Temporary setting which allows easier selection and model manipulation
1. Create Nested Subassemblies
As much as possible, break your design into smaller subassemblies and work on these
subassemblies individually. Minimizing the number of top-level components is good
practice and it allows you to reduce the load on your CPU. Nested subassemblies can
also be loaded as Lightweight which further reduces your rebuild time.

2. Utilize Configurations
Simplifying your parts before inserting them into your top level assembly is easy and
can save you a significant amount of computational power with minimal effort. When
I know I will be inserting a part into a large assembly, I automatically create a
configuration called "simple" which is void of fillets and other cosmetic features
which take extra time to rebuild.

In the example below, the rebuild time of this "blaster" was reduced by almost an
order of magnitude (from 3.4 seconds to 0.44 seconds) simply by suppressing the
fillets in one configuration. Again, during the final documentation and rendering
phase, it is trivial to load the fully detailed configuration of this component. While
working on the assembly, however, this level of detail is unnecessary and can become
cumbersome if you are working with thousands of individual components.

Before

After

3. Pattern Bodies - Not Features


SOLIDWORKS gives us a huge amount of freedom when it comes to how we choose
to create our designs. There is almost always at least a handful of different ways to get
the exact same model. If you use patterns in your models and you are experiencing
performance issues, you may want to consider taking a closer look at how you are
creating these patterns.

Whether we're looking at complex part design or large assembly design, it is always
good practice to pattern bodies instead of features to reduce rebuild time. This is often
as simple as going back to the feature you want to pattern, un-checking the "Merge
result" box so that a new body will be created, patterning the new body, and then
doing a Combine on the resulting patterned bodies.

To demonstrate this, let's take a closer look at one of the parts in the Star Destroyer
assembly, part 3934. If open up the Statistics for this part (Tools > Feature Statistics),
we can clearly see that the two Pattern features are taking the most rebuild time
(62.4% of the total). Taking a closer look at the definition of these features, we can
see that the designer chose to pattern the extrude features and fillets rather than
patterning bodies. After re-working the part to pattern bodies instead of features, the
rebuild time for this part dropped by nearly 40% with the pattern features dropping
down to 7th and 8th place in the list of features ordered by rebuild time.

Before After
4. Mate to Primary Planes
As you design parts, it is good practice to create mates that reference default reference
geometry, like planes. If you plan on mating to flat surfaces, create your parts in a
way such that these surfaces line up with the default planes (Front, Top, and Right).
Unlike faces and other geometry, primary plane positions don't need to be calculated,
saving you some computation time. This will also reduce mate errors that occur with
part updates, saving you time and headaches

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