Entries Tagged 'Troubleshooting' ↓

Mike Puckett has posted that the upcoming SolidWorks 2010 Beta test will be starting up within the next two weeks.  To participate, simply go to the SolidWorks Beta Program page and follow the directions.

Please note that you will need to have access to the SolidWorks Customer Portal in order to participate.  This is your chance to see what’s new in the upcoming version, get a jump start on any migration issues, and to help SolidWorks by reporting any issues that you may have.

Are you going to be participating in the Beta Program?  Let us know!

Our friend Ben Eadie of SolidMentor fame has started a new SolidWorks site called SolidJott.  The format is a microblog that anyone can post to (requires a free account) and other users can reply in the comments.  You can add tags to your posts/questions so that you can more easily find them later.  Anyone using Twitter should feel right at home.

There is an RSS feed so that you can get all the posts pushed to you, and Ben is also working on a SolidWorks add-in so that you can post and answer to SolidJott from right within the SolidWorks Task Pane!  Be sure to check the SolidJott site for more information, as this add-in will be going into Beta before long.

This is not any new ground-breaking information, but when it was mentioned last week in the CAD Manager session at the SWUGN Summit in Nashville, there was quite a stir in the room and several follow-on questions about it.  I have also received a few calls and emails about this since, so I thought that I would write an article about it and maybe help a few others.

(Note that Matt over at SolidWorks Legion has recently published an article dealing with this same issue in his SolidWorks Performance Blitz! series while I was on travel and in the middle of writing this one.)

Windows uses a pagefile, which is just a temporary file that Windows writes information from memory into when it needs more room.  The performance issue is that by default, Windows manages the pagefile by growing or shrinking it as demand comes and goes.  After a while, the pagefile becomes fragmented as it grows due to other data being written on the adjacent tracks of the disk.

To keep the pagefile from becoming fragmented, you should set the pagefile initial and maximum sizes to the same values, so that the pagefile is in one contiguous space on the disk.  I have seen several different rules of thumb for what values to use, from 1.5X to 4X your system memory.  Personally, I use 2X, and that works fine for me, but YMMV.

You can follow the steps below to tweak your pagefile to your liking:

1. Right-click on "My Computer" and choose "Properties".
2. Go to the "Advanced" tab and click "Settings" under the "Performance" section.
3. Go to the "Advanced" tab and click "Change" under the "Virtual memory "section.
4. Select the radio button for "Custom size" and set both the Initial and Maximum sizes to the same value, as shown in the image below:

Note that the sizes are in MB, so if you have say, 4GB system RAM, you would enter 8192 MB for 2X system memory (2 X (4 X 1024)).

Another item of note is that if you have 2 or more separate physical disks (ideally on different channels), you can also help increase performance by splitting your pagefile across them.  This enables you to write to each disk channel at once, increasing file-swapping speed.

If you have been running Windows with the "System managed size" option selected, chances are very good that your pagefile is fragmented.  When I perform this tweak on a system that has been up for a while, I will choose the option "No paging file", reboot, defrag, and then set the custom sizes as shown above.  If you have a large enough disk with empty space, this step is probably not needed, but it doesn’t hurt.

I hope this tip helps you tweak your system to improve your SolidWorks experience!

Ricky needs your neutral CAD files – but here’s the kicker:  he only wants your really messed up files!  No, he hasn’t gone off the deep end, he is just trying to prepare his presentation for SolidWorks World 2008.

So if you think you have a screwed up neutral format file, check out his post and send him your files!

It was announced earlier today that the SolidWorks 2008 Beta Program was now open for registration.  Here is the standard post that seems to have been the "official" press release across all the forums:

Sign up today to participate in the SolidWorks 2008 Beta program. We have added over 200 enhancements to SolidWorks 2008 to help designers better Focus on Design, and not CAD, reuse their existing Designs to save time and design with confidence. This year, for the first time ever, the grand prize winner will receive a full commercial copy of SolidWorks 2008 Office Premium and a one year subscription service.

I have already signed up, and if you’re a subscription customer, I hope you will too.  The more eyes and hands that are on it, the more (hopefully) stable it will be when it’s released!