Comments on: Ask the Reader: What Do You Love/Hate About Upgrading to SolidWorks 2009?

By: Big Moe

Big Moe — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:08:08 +0000

Way to go, Tom! I'm tired of IT getting the heat for another department's overzealousness. IT's job is to provide a stable and productive environment for users; not to verify the latest bleeding edge release of every software package the company employs. We're here to help users get what they need, even though it's not always what they want. Why shouldn't the Engineering department have to do a ROI analysis when requesting an upgrade? Believe it or not, upgrades are not free in either dollars or resources.

After our upgrade to SW 2009, which the Engineers requested, they are complaining that the network must have slowed down because the new Solid Works is SOOOO SLOW! Of course – it's the network.

By: Derek T

Derek T — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 12:33:14 +0000

According to SolidWorks (I double checked), their application is OpenGL only.

By: Mark Carruthers

Mark Carruthers — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 07:30:09 +0000

Josh, No joy with solidworks as they quote the same software which only runs on 2007. I would like to know if anyone has ever experienced getting two machines to give different answers to the same assembly simulation / analysis? I have experianced precisly that problem with my two machines one running 209 SP2.1 on Vista and one running 2009 SP 1.0 on XP Pro.

By: Mark Carruthers

Mark Carruthers — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:36:25 +0000

Josh, I have asked my solidworks support agent to sort this out and give me an updated version if one exists so I will let you know the results.

By: Josh M

Josh M — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 12:14:48 +0000

Mark, I was at a session yesterday on hardware optimization. They were using the SPEC Benchmark http://www.spec.org/gwpg/apc.static/sw2007.html to find issue between the cpu and gpu. basically they narrowed a lot of issuesdown to various issues with the cpu. might give it a try.

By: Mark Carruthers

Mark Carruthers — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:07:00 +0000

Josh, Franfly given the insistance on certain graphics cards and the critiques from elsewhere I thought that SW simply would not function on my HP at all let alone be as quick or quicker, which came as quite a surprise. I have spoken to a SW rep who commented that they prefer 32 bit SW on 64 bit as it can use 4Gb RAM rather than 2Gb, which given that 64 bit ships with 32 bit SW is quite a claim. I dont know which motherbourd my Del Precision 690 Workstation uses but I think that all of the upgrades such as addition CPU, RAM were authorised by Dell etc. I am hoping that Solid Works have the resources to fix 64 bit version as having to use 32 bit is frustrating.

By: Josh M

Josh M — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 10:41:33 +0000

Hey Mark. I found 09 more stable than 08 as well. I remember being surprised after using 09 for a while and getting my first crash and that probably wasn't related directly to SolidWorks. I have seen some very odd behavior from some computers with older AMD motherboards. I'm not sure right now if that is the problems, but the newer hardware is working much better.

By: Mark Carruthers

Mark Carruthers — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 09:25:38 +0000

I found solidworks 2008 64 bit about as stable as a earthquake even thugh the machine was a Dell X64 maintained by IT proffesionals bought from Dell and repeatedly rebuilt on the software side from the OS up. It uses a approved Quadro FXcard and has the latest drivers etc. Eventually I dumped it in favour of SW2009 32 bit which is very stable in comparison. However SW is still very slow even slower for example than my laptop which is a DV7-1125EA from HP, which has the wrong graphics card and OS and runs 32 bit only. In fact the difference is so stark I am wondering if there is a hardware issue which my desktop cannot cope with.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:46:30 +0000

"IT needing reason why/why not to upgrade. To me, the main reason is... The ENGINEERING dept. is asking you to do it."

Except that when the new software is unusable, the engineering department is now telling IT to 'fix' it. Right now.

But we can't fix it right now, because the other 5 departments we support are all upgrading to the latest and greatest (read: beta, buggy) versions of their respective software packages.

The end result is a productivity loss across the board, which could've been avoided by doing a proper upgrade assessment before jumping in head first.

By: Josh M

Josh M — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 04:11:53 +0000

Hey Gord. I wish i could comment on the 5600. I haven't had a chance to try it out. I've been using nVidia Quadro series since having bad results with ATI years ago. I tend to set the application preference to SolidWorks in the Card options. Occasionally I'll mess with some of the performance settings, but I always use the defaults when setting others up. Do you feel the 5600 is performing well? smooth rotation? no clipping?

By: Gord Metcalfe

Gord Metcalfe — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 04:37:07 +0000

I just installed SW 2009 because I started a new job at a manufacturing startup and, having used SW since 2001, when asked for my opinion, it was the choice to go with. I got a new workstation put together on a budget and settled on an Intel E8400 w/ ATI FireGL 5600 and 4 gig DDR2 RAM, etc. Mixed results so far. I'd be appreciative of any input with regards to settings in order to achieve a level of performance that exceeds that which I experienced previously with a very cheap GeForce card and an entry level Pentium IV processor and 2 gig DDR RAM. I have read mostly very positive reviews indicating very good performance from the v5600 in Solidworks but I a not feeling the love yet.

By: Hugh

Hugh — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 21:31:05 +0000

Thanks for the tip, it is better than before now, still a little slow compare to 2008, I will have to upgrade the graphics card one day. Cheers

By: Josh M

Josh M — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:34:35 +0000

Hugh. check this out. I've ben finding that some workstations running an FX auto enable OpenGL which will slow solidworks down to a crawl. when you have a model open, go to Tool, Options, Performance ans see if Use software OpenGL is set. If it is you need to shut down solidworks, go to your desktop and do the following.

1. Right-click on desktop and Nviddia Control Panel
2. In 3D Setting, make sure 'let the 3D application decide'
3. RESTART your computer.

Changing it to this will allow SolidWorks to use DirectX instead of OpenGL. good luck.

By: Hugh

Hugh — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 11:03:20 +0000

I run Fx1400, they say it is compatible with 2008, rotating a built model is fine, but open and edit a sketch is now so so so slow, a very simple sketch now takes ages to zoom in and zoom out, sigh…

By: Josh M

Josh M — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 13:43:07 +0000

exactly my thought ion, dust is horrible. A lot of companies don't have IT involvement. It usually comes in varying degrees. I've had some emails specifically about this and it involved IT needing reason why/why not to upgrade. To me, the main reason is… The ENGINEERING dept. is asking you to do it.

Now if I were a Solidworks Admin, I'd have them install it on my computer (if I couldn't do it myself). I'd gather results from testing and share that data with them, telling them we need to upgrade or wait until, such and such happens.