6 Replies Latest reply on Jun 19, 2017 6:01 PM by Tom Gagnon

    Large edrawing assemblies really slow and laggy

    Walter Slamkowski
    Walter Slamkowski Mar 9, 2016 2:03 PM

      Saving large assemblies as an eassembly not working well. When opening eassembly to view assembly, it is very slow opening, and when it does open, its almost impossible to move it around screen. It moves really slow, or just really jerky. I am running Solidworks 2016. We just upgraded from 2014 about 5 months ago, and we still can not get a fix for this issue.

        • Re: Large edrawing assemblies really slow and laggy
          Venissa Walsh
          Venissa Walsh May 26, 2017 10:53 AM (in response to Walter Slamkowski)

          We have eDrawing viewer on some PC's in the Shop and they can see our Vault (read only)  but there viewer is very choppy and slow.  I'd love to see if you find an answer to this.

          • Re: Large edrawing assemblies really slow and laggy
            Tom Gagnon
            Tom Gagnon May 26, 2017 11:37 AM (in response to Walter Slamkowski)

            I have been disappointed with performance of eDrawing also, so much that I avoid it entirely. I don't even deploy it to new PCs in our business. It is a flawed product. It is unsuitable for professional use. People who do use it likely do not know that alternatives exist. Improving or fixing this product is not a priority for its creators, even though it is sometimes the very first impression of the flawed 3D design software package upon new users, salesmen, business leaders (i.e. decision makers), and other non-designers. I could defecate on it more, but I think you may get the point by now.

             

            Adobe Reader replaces this application entirely.

            For viewing 2D drawings, this is very simple and straightforward, and shouldn't need further explanation.

            For viewing interactive 3D models, including taking measurements and creating section views on the fly, I use 3D PDFs. Although I know it has been covered before, I cannot find the discussion to link. I'll summarize the issues.

            Creating a 3D PDF

                 * Save As. Save as type: Adobe Portable Document Format (*.pdf). Then check the box below [√] Save as 3D PDF.

            Opening a 3D PDF

                 * This must be enabled through Preferences -> 3D & Multimedia -> [√] Enable playing of 3D content.

                 * This must be set on every users' installation separately (at least those that will be opening it). It persists.

            Interacting with 3D PDF

                 * Find a demo on YouTube. I won't elaborate. There are many options and controls for views.

                 * A 3D mouse is helpful but not necessary. To use it in Adobe Reader, I had to upgrade the mouse driver.

                 * Click one edge or face, then tape measure icon to measure it. Click two entities to measure between them.

            Known issues:

                 * It doesn't always work. This is always the case when assembly contains a horribly broken and error-filled imported component. If this hinders your use, then do not use horribly broken and error-filled imported components, but rather fix it completely, suppress that item, and/or replace it with an appropriate placeholder component.

                 * Very large assemblies are accordingly slow to create, load in viewer, and interact in views. Still, it's way better than eDrawings.

             

            EITHER: Provide your shop users expensive design workstations to merely view eDrawings, or adapt to 3D PDFs on moderately capable PC's, tablets, phones, hololens, cerebral implant, or whatever hand-me-down hardware they use normally.

            3D PDFs most notably do not require impressive hardware specs to perform well!