I have an assembly that uses a linear pattern (5 x 2) to generate 10 copies. When I import the original assembly (pattern suppressed) into Visualize I get 1,442,900 polygons. and the performance is fine. I set it up to link to the assembly files with Automatic grouping.

Then I went back to the assembly and un-suppressed the pattern. It took about 90 minutes to re-import the model! And the polygon count is now 13,988,898. Doing anything in Visualize is now very slow (surprise!). Then saving the model took almost as long as importing it.

My assembly has a lot of fastener type parts that are too small to see when rendered, so I wonder what is the best practice to follow?

Do I just hide those small parts in the assembly? Will Visualize then ignore them?

Or do I need to suppress the parts in the assembly?

Or should I just import the model with Appearances grouping and not worry about the updating?

I have set all my appearances in SolidWorks so I don't need to make many changes in Visualize. I am using Standard.

Thanks, Bill