Tech Tip: Network Slowdown
Does SolidWorks sometime feel like it’s working at a turtle’s pace? The problem might stem from being connected to a network!
Working on a network is great, and in today’s age it’s basically required. Unplugging from the network could solve a lot of issues, but usually isn’t feasible. The problem is that so much stuff is looking to the network it can sometimes slow down SolidWorks. There can be a ton of reasons for this, some can be fixed! Here’ are a few tips to make your performance a better while working with SolidWorks.
- Don’t work over the network!!! One of the biggest slowdowns you can cause in SolidWorks is by trying to work with files that are located on the network. If the files aren’t on your local computer, every time you open them, temp version of them are made in the directory they’re opened in. Every change you make has to get written to those. Every time you save the main files get written to. All of that going over the network is going to slow down SolidWorks. Copy files locally to avoid those issues.
- Backup/Auto-Recover: You should not have these locations be on the network. If these locations aren’t local, SW will again be constantly working and writing over the network and slow down. The backup option to put the backups in the same place as the original file can double the issue if you’re working on files over the network as well.
- SolidWorks Search: The SW Search is useful, but if you don’t use it, turn it off. If you do use it, make sure to set the indexing to “only when the computer is idle.”
- News Feed: Turn off the option in the general area of the options to “Show latest news feeds…” It may be minor, but it’s one more thing to slow down SW.
- Stop Streaming: Turn off things like streaming audio, unneeded web pages, and any other non-essential programs. The less trying to fight for resources the better.
- Stop the CPU War: Everything you’re running on a computer is constantly fighting for you CPU. When you’re on the network, even more things are fighting for it. If possible, dedicate a CPU core to SolidWorks. Windows defaults everything to the first core, once that’s full, it’ll start using other cores. Most of SW can only use one core, so the more it’s trying to fight with the slower it will run. If you can dedicate a core, it will reduce the chances of a slow down.
None of this is a fix all, but the more of it you can do more likely you’ll keep SolidWorks rocketing along!
Tags: IT, SolidWorks, SolidWorks Best Practices
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Comments (5)
Gary
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Can you expalin how to dedicate a core to SolidWorks?
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Nick Beattie
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Hi Gary,
It’s actually fairly easy to dedicate cores. I guess the better way to describe it is to lock a certain process to one core. To do this, start your Task Manager. Using the Task Manager you can keep an eye on your most processor intensive tasks. Once you have those set, if you right click on the process, you can “Set Affinity.” Using that option you can set a process to only run on certain cores. What you may want to do is limit all other processes to a couple certain cores, then let SolidWorks be left one or two of it’s own.
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Jeff Cox
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What do you do about large assemblies that access a lot of network shared directories? What about common libraries of components?
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Nick Beattie
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Hi Jeff,
There are a few options to help things out if you have files distributed across various parts of a network. The best solution would be to have a PDM system such as SolidWorks Enterprise PDM. That way components can be stored in parts of a vault, but checked out and copied locally to work with them. The PDM system would prevent others from updating those parts while they are checked out and would avoid the problems that could be created if you did a Pack and Go to work locally.
If I PDM system is not an option, using Read Only can help. If the parts on those various directories are rev-controlled or if they are not going to be changed, make them read only. this can prevent SolidWorks from wanting to write to those files and slow things down.
Working with the files lightweight will help with these type of assemblies as well as SolidWorks will load less data and not require as much bandwidth on the network.
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Tech Tip – Dedicating a Processor | Symmetry Solutions Blog
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[...] by Nick Beattie on January 9, 2012. Posted in SolidWorks, Technical Tips In a previous Tech Tip, Network Slowdown, we discussed some options to help your SolidWorks performance when operating over a network. One [...]
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