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Maximizing Solidworks Performance

This document provides recommendations for optimizing SOLIDWORKS and Windows settings to improve performance. It describes settings to change in SOLIDWORKS options like General, Drawings, Display Style, Colors, and Performance. It also recommends turning off unused add-ins and excluding SOLIDWORKS files from virus scanning. Optimizing these settings can save up to 82% of processing time according to testing done by Desktop Engineering.

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Nikola Stefanov
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71 views16 pages

Maximizing Solidworks Performance

This document provides recommendations for optimizing SOLIDWORKS and Windows settings to improve performance. It describes settings to change in SOLIDWORKS options like General, Drawings, Display Style, Colors, and Performance. It also recommends turning off unused add-ins and excluding SOLIDWORKS files from virus scanning. Optimizing these settings can save up to 82% of processing time according to testing done by Desktop Engineering.

Uploaded by

Nikola Stefanov
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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Maximizing SOLIDWORKS Performance

SOLIDWORKS 2015 Optimal System Setting Options


This document was created as a quick reference for SOLIDWORKS users and IT professionals. It
shows how to optimize SOLIDWORKS and Windows settings to make SOLIDWORKS run as fast as
possible on any system. Extensive testing was performed by the editors at Desktop Engineering.
Below are the important summaries every SOLIDWORKS user should know. For a more in depth
explanation on SOLIDWORKS options see: http://files.goengineer.com/docs/support/SolidWorks-
Tools_Options.pdf

The screen shots that follow show the changes you can make to SOLIDWORKS’ default settings
(outlined in red boxes) to achieve the best performance.

Go to the Options click on the General clear settings in red. Make sure that When rebuild error
occurs is set for Prompt.

888.688.3234 | GOENGINEER.COM
Go to Options then click on the Drawings option for settings in 2014 and earlier. For 2015
the settings have been moved to the drawings/performance option as outlined in red
above

888.688.3234 | GOENGINEER.COM
Go to Options and click on Display Style under the Drawings option and follow settings in
red boxed outline

888.688.3234 | GOENGINEER.COM
Go to Options and click on the colors option and follow settings in red boxed outline

888.688.3234 | GOENGINEER.COM
Go to options click on display/selection option and follow settings in red boxed outline

888.688.3234 | GOENGINEER.COM
Go to options click on Performance option and follow settings in red boxed outline

888.688.3234 | GOENGINEER.COM
Go to options click on Assembles option and follow settings in red boxed outline

888.688.3234 | GOENGINEER.COM
Go to options click on External Reference option and follow settings in red boxed outline

888.688.3234 | GOENGINEER.COM
Go to options click on Feature Manager Option and follow settings in red boxed outline

888.688.3234 | GOENGINEER.COM
Go to options click on View option and follow settings in red boxed outline

888.688.3234 | GOENGINEER.COM
*Turn off common SOLIDWORKS Add-Ins that are not in use
*Have virus detection exclude .slddrw .sldprt .sldasm on local machines and on servers if
allowed- See how to exclude in your virus detection brands help!

888.688.3234 | GOENGINEER.COM
Productivity Highlights
Overall Desktop Engineering researchers were able to decrease the baseline time of 5 hours, 1 minute
and 35 seconds down to just over 55 minutes. Here is a breakdown savings of the above settings

Optimizing SOLIDWORKS’ settings saved 27 minutes, 28 seconds, a 9% improvement.


Turning off common SOLIDWORKS Add-Ins saved 32 minutes, 42 seconds, an 11%
improvement.
Reducing SOLIDWORKS’ image quality saved 1 hour, 24 minutes, a 28% improvement.
The Macro benchmark ran 13% slower than when working over the network with virus
scanning on and 18% slower when scanning on both client and server.
Check Your Templates
Longtime SOLIDWORKS users should check their templates. In the past, SOLIDWORKS set a high level
for its image quality on the default templates. Anyone who based their templates on those old defaults
may still be carrying that
legacy.
“Users may not know that image quality can be stored inside
of a document template,” - says Joe.
“The only way to be sure is to check each of your templates
and modify them accordingly.”- says Joe.

Image quality can be changed at the Assembly or Drawing


level, and propagated down to all of the individual parts.
Joe Engineer, Know It All, GoEngineer

Be warned, using these settings will not make your models appear to your graphic cards best. Users
can adjust settings found under the image quality sections for compromising best performance/best
appearance trade-offs.

888.688.3234 | GOENGINEER.COM
Maximizing Windows Performance for SOLIDWORKS
How to Set the Virtual Memory and Windows Performance Options
1. Go to Start then right-click on Computer, then select Properties.

Windows Start button\Computer\properties

2. Select Advanced system settings.

888.688.3234 | GOENGINEER.COM
3. Select the Settings in the Performance area of the Advanced tab.

Advanced tab under system properties

888.688.3234 | GOENGINEER.COM
4. From the Visual Effects tab, select “Adjust for best performance” to turn off all of
Windows’ aesthetics.

*These setting really are extreme on the side of performance. At a minimum


GoEngineer recommends unchecking “show windows contents while dragging” and
unchecking anything that starts with “Fade” or “Smooth”.

888.688.3234 | GOENGINEER.COM
5. Back in the Advanced tab, select Change in the Virtual Memory area.

6. In the Virtual Memory window, set the Initial and Maximum sizes to be the same
amount, which should be twice the amount of RAM in the machine

In Desktop Engineering the baseline state, the macro script took 5 hours, 1 minute and 35 seconds
to complete the common SOLIDWORKS operations. With the optimal configuration, the program
took 55 minutes and 19 seconds to complete — a time savings of 82% over the baseline state. In
other words, the optimal state configuration completed its engineering tasks 5.5 times faster than
the baseline state.

Desktop Engineering has reviewed many ROI calculators to help estimate the value earned from
workstations that make design engineers more productive. For powerful workstations that cost
between $3,000 and $4,000, a 25% improvement in engineering productivity will typically result in
an investment payback in six months.

Also consider using SSD hard drives and as much and as fast as memory as possible for any given
machine.

For a more detailed “video” description on some of the above settings see this video link.
http://www.goengineer.com/libraries/solidworksvideos/?open_video=5882#prettyPhoto

888.688.3234 | GOENGINEER.COM

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