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Have you ever wanted to lock your SolidWorks model in a certain spot to keep it from rebuilding and save some time? Well, you can’t do it. But you can be part of making it happen.
Deep in the heart of Wisconsin, a guy named Lloyd told a guy named Lenny, “You gotta help me out. SolidWorks needs to add a way to put a ‘Geometry Lock’ on a SolidWorks model that would reduce rebuild times. Can you dig it?” (embellishment added)
I can dig it Lloyd and we’ll help out. An enhancement request sound like just the right medicine.
Let’s help Lloyd out. Go to your SolidWorks’ Customer Portal, log in and select Enhancement Requests in the My Support area.
In the columns select Other, then Rebuild/Rollback/Suppress, then Performance. On the next page, just select next unless you see “Geometry Lock” as a the radio button option, then fill out your contact info and on the next page type in the following title and bullet points.
Geometry Lock
- As used in a part model, anything before the “Lock” would not be rebuilt, but everything after the lock would rebuild as needed.
- I can also see this used in the mate list in the assembly, where everything before the “Lock” would not be rebuilt, or changed by SolidWorks, and everything after the “Lock” would be rebuilt as usual.
- The “Lock” should have a toggle to allow the user could temporarily “unlock” the geometry for a change or rebuild.
Now, just sit back and feel happy you helped out a fellow sw user.
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Is SolidWorks a democracy whose citizens are it’s users? I guess we’ll find out…
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The guy that controls the spreadsheet all the enhancement request go on is very powerful.
I already did this, and let’s hope everyone else does too. This has the potential to save me HOURS EVERY DAY. No, I am not kidding. I’ve even resorted to “import part” workarounds for the most complex parts; how’s that for “design intent”.
Thank you for listening to my rant.
This sounds an awful lot like a feature SolidWorks added in 2007. The ability to save your part file with the rollback bar anywhere you want in the Feature Manager Design Tree does pretty much what you guys are talking about. Everything above the rollback bar rebuilds and everything below it does not. What am I missing?
yeah, but you can’t see your features (in parts) and can’t rollback over parts in assemblies. It’s like inserting a part with load references option turned off, but adding a sort of toggle you can switch on and off for components you do have loaded. make sense?
Jeff,
There is a difference between the proposed “Geometry Lock” and the use or the roolback bar.
As you explained, the rollback bar rebuilds the model “Before/Above” the rollback bar, and not after.
The proposed “Geometry Lock” would work opposite of the rollback bar in that all of the geometry “Before/Above” the lock would be “Locked Down” and not rebuilt, and the features after the lock would rebuild as normal.
Lenny
Oh now I see. Thanks Josh and Lenny for helping the slow guy. I’m caught up now and I agree that would be a pretty cool feature.
This article lays out some specific steps to submit this enhancement request. However, the specific request that starts with, “The ability to remove automatic rebuilding…”, is actually a different request altogether. It has been a little over a week since since my enhancement request has seen any type of exposure, and it has not yet earned the status of having it’s own radio button.
If you add the comments listed above, they will probably understand your intent. But it might be a good idea to create a new request from scratch and make reference to a “Geometry Lock” in the title. This will ensure that your request gets recorded properly.
Thanks
Hey Lloyd, sorry about that, I was trying to make it super easy. I’ve updated the post to reflect your comments and I’ve resubmitted an enhancement request. Let’s hope the people going through those know know the difference too.
thanks.
Is this what SolidWorks already does? I mean, it doesn’t currently rebuild the entire tree, only from the edited feature down. Typically, only a control q (Force Rebuild) will rebuild the entire tree.
As for locks, I’d like to see the ability to lock configurations. Or at least a better tool for managing them. The new Modify Configus tool in 2008 is a step in the right direction.
Jason,
There are a number of events that trigger a full rebuild in SolidWorks. One such event is deleting a feature half ways up the feature tree. Depending on a user’s sytle of working, this might be a common occurance. Another event is switching between configurations.
Regarding configurations, I would see the “Geometry Lock” to be a big help in that area as well. As an illustration, you could place the lock at the end of a group of common features (used in all configurations). Switching configurations would still perform a full rebuild, but only on those features after the lock.
Lloyd
Lloyd, that makes since. Howver, I tried deleting a feature and it only rebuilds from that feature onwards….it didn’t do a complete rebuild.
Configurations seem to be the weakest link on this issue. Changes to the model prompt the configurations to rebuild fully when activating. Sounds like the programmers took the easy way out by just flagging the config as dirty on any change and then do a full rebuild to cover it. It sounds like SolidWorks should just extend the current functionality of rebuilding from the last changed feature to configurations.
This lock thing just doesn’t sound necessary to me or could be more transparent behind the scenes.
I guess this is meant for pretty complex models that you guys are running. I haven’t gotten anything that intensive as of yet. Probably is a good idea since you guys mentioned it.
If you need to lock your model one option is always to save it as a parasolid and then re-open it. It will then be imported geometry. Of course if you do this you cannot go back. The thing I guess I can’t completely understand is if you created relationships that need to rebuild then you obviously wanted those relationships. If you don’t want the relationships you created to rebuild then why did you use them?
I am more curious, and maybe I don’t completely understand the problem.
AL
yeah Al. I’ve been thinking more about how this would be done. If your using a lot of top-down design, locking geometry will almost be irritating, at least in the initial design phase. you will both prevent changes top-down and within the part itself. not sure how they would get around that. simply, i guess, it just would not allow you to make that change. Seems it would lock up the entire external reference though. I need to make a change to this part, it’s geometry is locked, it’s driven by another part, but that part is locked because the other part has locked geometry referencing it.
If it’s handled like suppression states, maybe you could make changes, but have to unlock the affected parts/assemblies in order to rebuild.
This idea was intended for features in complex part models. It may not be as useful when applied to assembly mates (especially top-down assemblies). The main purpose is to eliminate some of the rebuild time currently required. While inserting a parasolid file accomplishes this, a “Geometry Lock” would also provide a way to make changes if that would become necessary.
This functionality could be an actual feature, or maybe, it would be a behind-the-scenes part of SolidWorks. In either case, the more people who submit this request, the more chance that SolidWorks will invest resources to address the specific issue of rebuild time.
Ok, I can see that. I do however have a lot of trouble understanding how exactly that would work. I can see it working in a part that has no external references. What I see happening is you lock the geometry and then you later decide… oh I wanted to change this… or that and then you model just explodes with rebuild errors. as soon as you “unlock” it you are just waiting for all those rebuild errors to come alive. At least by creating a para solid that will not happen. That being said, if they can do it all the power to them.
If you really want to save time across the board get SolidWorks to make use of multiple processors.
As I’ve mentioned before, SolidWorks already does handle this to some extent. It will not rebuild earlier features unless you do a “Control Q” or switch configuration. It rebuilds from the last edited feature. An Enhancement could be made here to extend this to configurations.
I have seen bugs where every new feature added or change would prompt a rebuild from ealier in the tree. Since this model had over 500 features it took a while to rebuild. After investigating the model, I found the feature responsible and fixed the problem. The rebuild went away when adding new features.
Other things that may cause rebuilds could be circular references and equations using reference dimensions.
As for multi processors, I believe there have been some benchmarks done that show Solidworks is using multi processors when rebuild. I think certain model techniques may better utilize multi processors.