Speed of smart dimension

[ericscottf]

Hi folks

I'm using SW2009 SP4
I upgraded from sw2008 sp3 recently

I was hoping it would fix a "problem" i was having, but it didn't.

When I'm doing a normal vanilla 2d sketch, no matter how simple the part is, how simple the sketch is, smart dimension takes longer to pop up than i would like it to take.

I'll draw something, say a plain old circle in a brand new part drawing with no other files open and click on smart dimension and on the circle.
It takes way too long to pop up the dialog to let me type in the size of the dimension. (by way too long, i mean approximately 1 second, half a second for the dimension thing on the left to pop up and another half for the dimension dialog box)

Am i being unreasonable? When I'm flying through a drawing, this 1 second slowdown can be really frustrating.

Is there any way to speed things up? I've got 4gigs of ram, a quad core 2.5ghz processor with a very nice PCI-E video card, and little else running on the system at the same time. Are there settings to tweak, scratch files to put on different drives... anything i can do?

Is this something everyone else experiences? Am i doing something fundamentally wrong?

thanks!

 

[greghenson49]

You don't have to wait for the dialog box. After you pick the circle you are dimensioning key in the size you want and hit enter. That might save you some time.


Greg Henson

 

[ericscottf]

I did notice that the keyboard input gets buffered, however, a subsequent click to dimension the next item won't be, so I still wind up waiting...

So I'm guessing this is a common problem?

 

[greghenson49]

Eric,


I don't see the lag so much but my system configuration is a bit different than yours.
Dell Precision Workstation T7400-64bit
Dual Quad Core Intel Xeon Processor E5405 (2.00GHz,2X6M L2,1333)
16GB, DDR2 SDRAM FBD Memory, 667MHz
Quadro FX 4600 Graphics Card
Windows Vista Business 64 Edition
SolidWorks 2009 SP4.1

Greg Henson

 

[ericscottf]

Would you mind checking out a video i just recorded of me dimensioning a part?

http://www.ericscottf.com/solid/
click on solid.swf (the html doesn't work for me for some reason, but its only use is to load the swf for you)

Let me know if this seems about what you get on your system, perhaps I'm just being silly.

thanks!

 

[greghenson49]

I looked at your video and it looks likethe same results I get when dimensioning. I guess I don't see it as much of a problem. I don't know if I helped youin any waybut good luck.


Greg Henson

 

[ericscottf]

That actually helps me, it means i should stop obsessing over it 'cos it isn't going to get any faster...

thanks for the help!

 

[carrieives]

I wonder if there is some kind of network related issue. I have seen it take a while when I am putting dimensions in my sketches (2009, SP 4), and I have have noticed that it takes quite a bit longer if I am at home using the VPN. I have the models on my harddrive. The VPN is for the license. But, there is definately a differnce in speed on placing (or changing) dimensions when I work from home vs at work.


Carrie

 

[ericscottf]

Is your home computer as fast as your work computer?
Somehow i doubt it checks the license server every time you dimension...

 

[Waidesworld]

Eric,
The speed of that looks fine to me. Solidworks is a large program and everything will take a little bit longer than a less powerful and smaller program.

Carrieves,
Using the VPN always takes longer. You are traveling across a network and while "tunneling" thru' the net, you are sometimes restricted by higher traffic. Case in point, we had a VPN between two machines 1300 miles apart (Boston and Minneapolis). At certain times of the day the VPN ran slower due to network traffic. Not much slower, but because we were performing real time data acquisition, it was noticeable.

You are stating the license is in work, yet you use SW at home. Where are your libraries stored?

 

[solidmonkey]

I definitely noticed a speed difference. I was used to placing the dimension and typing in the value straight away without looking, and then with 2009 I started getting a fraction of the valuse I wanted because the dialogue box would open half-way through typing! I've got used to it now-I actually look for the box...