How To Make Drawings Bigger In Solidworks

What was the final fourth dimension that yous worked on a SOLIDWORKS file that was slooooow? Probably correct now.

Simply you lot tin make them faster. Sometimes y'all can make the load fourth dimension go from tens of minutes to a few seconds!

Here'due south how to practice that.

Maurice Moss still works with SOLIDWORKS 2012 SP0

Is this you?

Related blog posts
Mensurate the performance of a deadening drawing first
File open settings
1. File open mode
2. Select sheets to open
3. Detailing manner, new in SOLIDWORKS 2020
4. Disable preview while loading
Model bug
1. Complex features
2. Imported parts
3. Corrupt templates
Display style influences
1. Typhoon quality vs high quality
2. Turn off edges
Hardware issues
1. PC power settings (2x faster!)
2. Processor speed
3. Network drives
4. Driver issues
Tiresome drawing be gone!
An ebook about SOLIDWORKS performance

How to ameliorate SOLIDWORKS macro speed 10x
SOLIDWORKS of a sudden extremely slow? Check your graphics drivers.
I think SOLIDWORKS drawings are assemblies – and it blew my heed
The complete guide to fixing slow SOLIDWORKS models

two: Measure the operation of a slow drawing outset

The Performance Evaluation tool is available for all models types, fifty-fifty for drawings.

Javelin wrote a nice blog post about it. The next few images are taken from that post.

I have too learned a lot from their Aristocracy Problem Hunter Alin Vargatu, who is the Canadian VAR's big assembly specialist.

Performance Evaluation

The tool generates a study similar this. A different kind of report gets generated for parts and assemblies.

Performance Evaluation Report

This should give you a few pointers to notice which sheet, feature or view is the main reason for your PC'due south headache.

3: File open up settings

3a: File open fashion

You have probably seen the open up window a gazillion times. But do you use the extra options to the fullest?

These are the available options for drawings:

drawing open modes

Mode:
- These are ordered from fastest (Quick View) to slowest (Resolved).
- Quick View is a read-only mode that is blazingly fast because information technology only read the drawing file itself, not the referenced files.
- Lightweight loads almost half of all data for components and it loads about 50% faster.
- Resolved loads everything and is the slowest (and default) mode.
Select Sheets: run into the next section
References:
1. Lets y'all edit the list of referenced files. Information technology does not change the loading process itself.

More info on this window in the SOLIDWORKS Help hither.

3b: Select sheets to open

Yous don't need to load all sheets! Merely striking theSelect Sheets push button.

drawing open modes

You can choose to load a unmarried canvas or merely a few of the 50 sheets that your monstrosity of a drawing has somehow turned into.

Solidworks speed up slow drawing

3c: Detailing Mode, bachelor from SOLIDWORKS 2020

Detailing Mode does non load the underlying part or assembly, but like a discrete cartoon does. Detailing mode is really built to supercede discrete drawings in the long term.

SOLIDWORKS does this by saving extra information to the cartoon when y'all are in release mode. That means saving in release manner volition be a trivial slower (sometimes a lotslower) but yous can speedily edit the drawing in Detailing Mode after.

solidworks slow drawing detailing mode

SOLIDWORKS is however actively building Detailing style, so its capabilities grow stronger each year. Here is the official assistance page for detailing manner in SW2022.

What you can do: You can add all kinds of annotations: dimensions, notes, balloons and symbols. You tin also move views and add revision tables.

What you cannot do: You lot cannot create drawing views, create other kinds of tables, add center lines or heart marks, or select model faces. These deportment all require the underlying model, which isn't loaded. The disengage function likewise doesn't piece of work (however).

Read all the details about this welcome improvement in this article past Canadian reseller Javelin.

3d: Disable preview while loading

SOLIDWORKS e'er shows you a crude preview while the file loads. It sure looks nice, but it makes the loading take longer.

You tin disable the preview in the SOLIDWORKS System Options > Performance > No preview during open (faster).

4: Model bug

4a: Circuitous features

When a model is overly complex, its cartoon will be besides. Try suppressing parts (for assemblies) or features (for parts) and see if you notice a 2x or even 10x speed improvement. Helix features tin cause major slowdowns, for example.

4b: Imported parts

SOLIDWORKS documents come to a grinding halt when a single imported part has troubles. I've heard stories where a massive assembly opened 10 times faster after a unmarried faulty imported part was suppressed.

Do y'all accept views in a boring drawing that show up with a very low quality or parts that completely go missing in a drawing? Imported parts can cause this as well.

So you need to gear up the gaps or cleaved faces. Find out more in this blog post past TriMech.

Earlier and later on fixing imported model issues

4c: Corrupt templates

I accept no idea how to determine if a corrupt template causes your poor drawing performance. Just by now I have heard of a few occurrences where this was the instance.

When upgrading SOLIDWORKS versions, near companies tend to import their old templates and save them in the new version. This however also saves all kinds of legacy crap and hidden errors into your brand new template.

The official advice is therefore to always create fresh templates from the default templates when you switch to a new SOLIDWORKS version. It takes a little more work to copy all your settings but information technology will salvage y'all many headaches in the coming year.

SOLIDWORKS tin can create new templates for you in a few seconds.

v: Brandish style influences

5a: Typhoon quality vs high quality

You can show drawing views in draft (depression) quality or high quality. I detect the names misleading, because draft quality really only shows the graphical approximation of the model, whereas high quality besides adds geometrically right lines and edges.

Typhoon quality only loads the information that is absolutely necessary. It's very similar toLightweight mode. Loftier-quality views require all model data.

SOLIDWORKS creates drawing views in high quality by default. More than info here.

5b: Plough off edges

SOLIDWORKS draws your model in 2 layers: graphical + parametric (run across the previous section). So displaying a model as Shaded is way faster than Shaded With Edges. When you turn on edges, the parametric model has to be loaded as well.

Not displaying edges volition greatly speed up your model

6: Hardware problems

6a: PC power settings: 2x faster

This was a surprising one for me. SOLIDWORKS forum user Peter Medina did a examination and plant out that the Windows power settings have a big influence on the speed of your model.

He was able to obtain a factor 2increment in speed by changing the ability setting to Loftier performance. When yous're not working on a laptop, this is a no-brainer.

Go twice equally fast by selecting High performance

You lot can observe these settings by going to Kickoff > Settings > search for "ability" > Power and sleep settings > detect a way to enable High Functioning.

6b: Processor speed

When you open an assembly (and we know that drawings are secretly assemblies), the program goes through five singled-out phases:

Locating files (unmarried-threaded)
Loading files into memory (single-threaded)
Locate each model in space / solving mates (multi-threaded)
Resolving associates and in-context features (unmarried-threaded)
Generating graphics (multi-threaded)

Most of these tasks can simply be executed on a unmarried core of your processor. This means SOLIDWORKS really benefits from processors with a loftier clock frequency.

6c: Network drives

You lot shouldn't piece of work with files from a network when you desire peachy performance. Information technology'south that simple.

Working with a local copy (preferably using a PDM system) is dramatically faster compared to network storage. Even a gigabit network (max 1 Gbps) doesn't come shut to the speed of local Thou.2 SSDs that accomplish over 50 Gbps.

When you lot work with a PDM system, bank check out files that yous are working on so others tin can work on their parts. Y'all'll really appreciate version control afterward a colleague accidentally throws away your work.

6d: Driver issues

Rogue drivers can cause all kinds of weird behaviors. A faulty or corrupt driver can prove parts that were deleted weeks ago, I take seen it happen. That's non something that really points directly to the driver.

Unfortunately, this nonetheless is an issue that pops up semi-randomly once in a while.

SOLIDWORKS maintains a list of verified graphics menu drivers and yous can run SOLIDWORKS Rx to run across if you are currently using a verified driver. Your VAR should also be able to help you with this.

Slow drawing be gone!

I surely hope you identified at least one culprit. Did you increase the performance by a factor of two, or x?

An ebook about SOLIDWORKS performance

This post has been read over 100,000 times over the past years, so I know that operation is still a large issue.

That is why I accept written down everything I know about SOLIDWORKS operation in a 127-page ebook.I read every article, watched every video and collected the best bits. The complete packet fifty-fifty includes 3 handy cheat sheets, plus models and macros to improve functioning with.

You can cheque information technology out here.