Speed Up your Performance with Large Assemblies in Solid Edge

No one likes wasting time waiting for parts and assemblies to open, and once they do open waiting for the software to catch up to rotations, zooms, adding features and parts to assemblies is very frustrating. Let’s go over a few settings that can greatly enhance your performance with large assemblies in Solid Edge.

Shown above are the default settings in Solid Edge for assembly opening. From the opening Solid Edge splash screen follow this path: Application button/Solid Edge Options/Assembly Open As. Set the Open As setting based on your hard ware configuration and personal preference.

For example, you have a really powerful desktop with a huge amount of RAM let’s say around 20 GB, a dual 2 GB video card setup, and a 15,000 RPM SCSI hard drive, “because who wouldn’t want a get up like this”? With a workstation like this you could easily open 2,000 part assemblies with all parts active and all design features turned on, but if you’re like the other 95% percent of us using adequate equipment to get the job done the settings are very important and often ignored or over looked.

 Using the default options, we get an assembly open with all parts, including sub-assembly parts inactive. By inactive I am referring to the parts that are visually seen but not fully loaded into memory thus saving load time. Keep in mind parts that are inactive are not usable until the are activated, which is simply done by right clicking on the part and setting it active.

Another option on the Open As settings panel is to use simplified parts in lieu of designed parts. Shown above you notice what the ‘use simplified design’ will do for you. If the bolt quantity is 200 then you will have 200 complicated helical features that have to be calculated every time you rotate the screen. Helical features are synonymous for being memory hogs, therefore, if the feature doesn’t have any bearing on your design there is no need to have it shown. The time savings gained by taking less than a minute to simplify the design will greatly be compounded in the assemblies the parts are used in.   

For those of you whom prefer to set or change the Open As permitters also have the option to tweak all the individual Open as settings from the open dialog box.

I use this when I open a large assembly that has not had features simplified or if there has not been configurations created that may have time saving benefits such as allowing the user to only open and see the part(s) wanted. I am sure to change the setting to open with all parts turned off. Once I have my empty assembly open, which opens quickly regardless if theres five or 50,000 parts, I begin turning on parts and subassemblies making configurations and simplified parts as I go through the assembly structure. Or if you have the time just say open, go get lunch, maybe a run to the post office, or perhaps wait for the cable installer to show up - it’s really your choice!

Once the assemblies open, there are still many the settings configure. Under the view drop down there are settings for the quality of geometry and the style of viewing such as “Default, High Quality, and Rendering.” There are also settings in “View Overrides” that allow you to turn on reflections, bumb maps, textures, high quality shadows etc. Keep in mind that the more “fancy-flashy” looks take a toll on performance if you don’t have a quality video card to drive them.

Speaking of video cards, there are several selections to choice from based on your video card performance. Shown below are these options. If you uncheck the Automatic selection box, the option to change the settings manually appear. Here is a list of  of the definitions available for selection given by Siemens PLM:

• Graphics Card Driven (Advanced): This option provides full acceleration for all 3D displays and should provide the smoothest display possible for manipulating graphical objects or editing profiles and sketches. To achieve this higher quality display, Solid Edge requires a higher level of graphics card support. Such support may not exist for older graphics cards. This option is designed specifically for use with the latest mid-range and high-end graphics cards.
• Graphics Card Driven (Basic): This option provides full acceleration for all 3D displays and should provide a stable display across a wide variety of midrange to high-end graphics cards. While all displays are hardware accelerated, this option avoids accessing graphics requests that may not be widely supported. Choose this option if Solid Edge is unable to generate consistent displays when using the Graphics Card Driven (Advanced) option.
• Graphics Card Driven (Direct3D): This option is available for the Windows Vista operating system only. This option is intended for Windows Vista users who are unable to generate consistent displays using one of the other graphics card driven options. 
• Backing Store: This option provides a mixture of graphics card and software generated displays. When you manipulate a view, Solid Edge directs all display requests to the graphics accelerator to provide the fastest frame rate possible. When the view manipulations are completed, the final display is generated using a slower, more stable software method to provide a consistent display for all possible configurations. Choose this option for older, legacy configurations, especially when working with graphics cards that are not designed to support CAD applications (gaming or consumer-level graphics cards), or if Solid Edge is unable to generate consistent displays using one of the graphics card driven options.
• Software Driven: This option is provided for diagnostic purposes and should not be used for normal displays. The primary reason for this option is to isolate the source of any graphic anomaly that might occur. In most cases, the graphics driver contains a flaw or is out-of-date. This option should only be selected if directed by support to verify such a condition.
• Use Display Lists: A display list is an OpenGL(r) capability that allows the CAD application to load geometry to the graphics card memory. This off-loads that data from the system memory. Using the dedicated resource on the graphics card is much faster than using shared system memory. This option is set by default for most midrange to high-end cards. A display list increases the performance of the Graphics Card (Advanced) method so that the display rate approaches and sometimes matches the display rate of the Graphics Card (Basic) option.

There is no special combination of settings and configurations that you should set. Every computer is different and some settings do not work great on certain computers. My Dell Laptop doesn’t render correctly when set to Advanced, but works great on Basic. I hope some of these tips help to speed up your performance in Solid Edge!

Dylan Malek
Application Engineer
Swoosh Technologies

View the current Solid Edge training schedule here!