I have recently upgraded my SolidWorks version from 2016 SP5 to 2017 SP3. I work with some large assemblies that have a lot of external references across parts. When I try to open these assemblies, SolidWorks sits there loading it for a wile then goes unresponsive. I have left it going overnight, and this still failed to load.

I thought SolidWorks might be trying to convert all the parts to 2017 file type and open at the same time, so i decided to pack and go a sub assembly and open each part individually and save as a 2017 file. I found that the parts that had external references would take much longer to open, but they eventually did. Once all part files where in the new version I tried opening the assembly file. This had not changed and fails to load and SolidWorks goes unresponsive...

I was wondering if anyone has had a similar experience with upgrading versions, and if so, is there a solution to fix this that does not include making a new assembly. Any advice would be much appreciated!