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Use of SpeedPak

Question asked by Matt Lombard on Mar 13, 2018
Latest reply on Oct 20, 2020 by Solid Air

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I see that there are some recommendations on the forum to avoid SpeedPak. I'm writing that chapter in the book now, and I'd be interested in knowing how many people use SpeedPak anyway?

The comments I read seem to say that SpeedPak is "unstable". I had the software lock up, or at least take a very long time to do the Quick Include, such that I shut it down. Plus, it seems that editing the SpeedPak turns on your floor reflections for some odd reason.

So any comments you have on SpeedPak, and whether you use it or not for assemblies or drawings would be welcome.

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Don Carter Mar 14, 2018 6:57 AM
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Matt,
Our end product is a drawing, and not a SWx drawing, but an eDrawing or a PDF. SpeedPak does not appear on these. Therefore, it is pointless to use it at all.
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Andy Sanders Mar 14, 2018 8:36 AM
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I looked into them. The conclusion I came to was that just making simplified configs was more straightforward for me.
I didn't get enough confidence in Speed Pak to be comfortable with using them.
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Dan Pihlaja Mar 14, 2018 9:33 AM
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I have never used SpeedPak. Not because I don't think it is stable or anything.....the reason I don't use it is because I simply haven't had the time to flesh it out and introduce it here. I don't want to try something out on a production run.
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Matt Lombard Mar 14, 2018 10:34 AM
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Wow, in a way I'm surprised, and in a way I'm not surprised. It's surprising to see SW put a fair bit of effort into a piece of functionality and have users not see much value in it, especially something aimed at large assembly drawing performance. But at the same time it's not surprising because with some of these tools, SW looks like it's desperate to find something innovative that addresses speed, a big weakness.

I personally don't use it either, but I don't do many drawings, and when I do drawings, they are either complex parts or small assemblies. The benefit isn't really clear to me.

Thanks for the feedback.
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Alin Vargatu @ Matt Lombard on Mar 14, 2018 11:01 AM
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There is so much to say about SpeedPaks, I wish I would have enough time for that now. Will provide you with my take before the end of the month, if that is acceptable.

This is is another example where SOLIDWORKS came up with a great concept that was implemented about 95% of the way. The missing 5% might look like not much to the developers, but that is the exact reason, most users tried and abandoned this tool. It could not be integrated in their workflow because of a tiny problem or lack of functionality.

I do not know how hard would be for SOLIDWORKS to focus on tying the lose ends in this functionality, but I know the effect of doing that would be huge for anyone who works with large assemblies and drawings.

This is just a short list of the bugs and ERs that need to be implemented in order to push the use SpeedPaks mainstream:

SPR 999176 Ability to define route C-points to SpeedPak
SPR 773041 Ability to dimension SpeedPak elements in drawings
SPR 442399 SpeedPak Drawings User would like to be able to create speedpak views in high quality
SPR 567670 Ability to create a detached drawing containing a view of a SpeedPak configuration of an assembly
SPR 556714 A DXF generated from a SpeedPak assembly drawing misses all lines based on ghost geometry
SPR 539720 Detail views cannot be created from section views that have SpeedPak applied

For example, last week delivering a Large Assembly Service, what was important for my customer was to create high quality PDFs from drawings of huge assemblies. The only way to achieve the desired degree of quality was by using High Quality Drawing Views. Unfortunately, SpeedPaks can be used only in Draft Quality Views. The problem is that the drawing looks fine in SOLIDWORKS, but not so good in PDF.
So, the solution here would be to either find a way to use assemblies containing a SpeedPak subassembly in High Quality Drawing Views, or simply to improve the quality of PDFs created from Draft Quality views.

What about finding a way to create a Mixed Quality view? In a huge assembly of a truck, where only the engine is SpeedPak'ed, why can't SOLIDWORKS superimpose the High Quality view for the assembly minus the engine on the Draft Quality View of the engine???

It is all about thinking different. And that what this forum is for.
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Rick McDonald @ Matt Lombard on Mar 14, 2018 11:12 AM
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We have not even looked at it, mainly because we are a small company - 5 cad users that are engineers that do everything from concept, design, prototype, some machining, assembly, installation and service. Our systems are small - most less than 200 parts and with all the other tasks we do, we mainly do the primary design as an assembly and then each part has a single drawing (usually) - almost never do any configurations, and almost never get assembly or sub assembly drawings done (drives me crazy) - but management feels the part drawings are enough most of the time since we remember or can easily determine how to assemble and adjust the systems and have pictures and procedures to follow. We document the assembly when / where needed and never seem to get the time to do a full & detailed document package (again - this drives me crazy).
With all this, speed pack would just be another part that would never get used by us.
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Paul Risley Mar 14, 2018 11:29 AM
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Over the last 9 years or so I have used Speedpak on 3 occasions.(Large assemblies 5000 + parts).

The biggest issue I had with it was the updating of the speedpak slowed everything down. The next biggest problem I had was issues with transfer of documentation, in this case e-drawings. I know that the Speedpak functionality has changed some since I last used it. When I used it there was limited features you could utilize as functioning features in your top level assembly. Every time you had to change a feature you may need to mate to it would update the whole speedpak.

It has been several years since I have tried to use it. I find configurations and display states along with lightweight assemblies/models performs pretty well and have not looked into using speedpak again.

If you have to send out customer e-drawings Speedpak does not work very well.
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Steven Dod Mar 14, 2018 11:54 AM
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We tried using SpeedPak because we have a lot of large assemblies with some of those being imports from vendors (trucks, engines, etc). SpeedPak would work well enough until we started using PDM Pro (EPDM). After the assembly and drawing are approved in PDM the SpeedPak will always show it is out of date and needs to be rebuilt. This shows as a gold error in the Feature Manager Tree and is VERY annoying to have to drill down to find out why only to find SpeedPak is throwing a hissy fit. I cannot say if that has been fixed in the last couple of years but that's is why we do not currently use it.

Steve
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Jim Proctor Mar 14, 2018 12:17 PM
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We were seeing very poor performance with our large assembly drawings so I looked into how SpeedPak might help. I found it can work, but ran into some of the issues listed by Alin (particularly the non-support of section views and high quality views), and users just didn't feel comfortable with the results.

Our best results with came from substituting mature large subassemblies (unlikely to change much) with SpeedPaks. This improved performance working at upper levels of the assembly.
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Ian McLean Mar 14, 2018 3:11 PM
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When Speedpak first came out I assumed it would work like Pro-e shrinkwrap. Shrinkwrap gives you the entire outside surface of an assembly in a single step. Speedpak requires selection of every single surface that you want to be selectable. It's just not very useful.
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Alin Vargatu @ Ian McLean on Mar 14, 2018 3:25 PM
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Ian McLean wrote:

When Speedpak first came out I assumed it would work like Pro-e shrinkwrap. Shrinkwrap gives you the entire outside surface of an assembly in a single step. Speedpak requires selection of every single surface that you want to be selectable. It's just not very useful.
You can always get the faces used in mates selected automatic.
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Steve Calvert Mar 14, 2018 3:36 PM
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Matt, I'm still several version behind on SW2015 but I use (we use) speedpaks here. Mainly it's for larger faceted fuel meter bodies that just take too long to load in upper level assemblies.

Steve C
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Steve Calvert @ Ian McLean on Mar 14, 2018 3:38 PM
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Like Alin has said, just mate the part and then create the speedpak based on those mates and you're finished real fast.

Steve C
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Ian McLean @ Alin Vargatu on Mar 14, 2018 3:54 PM
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For us, ou
Alin Vargatu wrote:

Ian McLean wrote:

When Speedpak first came out I assumed it would work like Pro-e shrinkwrap. Shrinkwrap gives you the entire outside surface of an assembly in a single step. Speedpak requires selection of every single surface that you want to be selectable. It's just not very useful.
You can always get the faces used in mates selected automatic.
Our assemblies are quite complex and we need to be able to check things like voltage clearances, cable bend radii, connector alignment, clearance for installation, so we need more than just mating surfaces.
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Adrian Velazquez Mar 14, 2018 4:27 PM
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I haven't used it in a couple of releases but in my past experience, the time spent generating a good usable Speedpack (for mating purposes) was about the same as generating a simplified version of that model. but don't remember having stability issues with them.
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Alin Vargatu @ Adrian Velazquez on Mar 14, 2018 4:13 PM
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Adrian Velazquez wrote:

I haven't used it in a couple of releases but in my past experience the time spent generated a good usable Speedpack (for mating purposes) was about the same as generating a simplified version of that model. but don't remembewr having stability issues with them
The advantage of the SpeedPak being that can be updated parametrically from the parent configuration.
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Alin Vargatu @ Ian McLean on Mar 14, 2018 4:14 PM
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Ian McLean wrote:

For us, ou
Alin Vargatu wrote:

Ian McLean wrote:

When Speedpak first came out I assumed it would work like Pro-e shrinkwrap. Shrinkwrap gives you the entire outside surface of an assembly in a single step. Speedpak requires selection of every single surface that you want to be selectable. It's just not very useful.
You can always get the faces used in mates selected automatic.
Our assemblies are quite complex and we need to be able to check things like voltage clearances, cable bend radii, connector alignment, clearance for installation, so we need more than just mating surfaces.
So you will most likely like the new functionality that might be introduced in SW2019, based on what was shown in the teaser videos at SWW2018.
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Glenn Schroeder @ Dan Pihlaja on Mar 14, 2018 4:19 PM
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Dan Pihlaja wrote:

I have never used SpeedPak. Not because I don't think it is stable or anything.....the reason I don't use it is because I simply haven't had the time to flesh it out and introduce it here. I don't want to try something out on a production run.

Pretty much the same here. It's unusual for one of my files to take longer than 10 - 15 seconds to open or save, and most less than 5, so I've never seen a need for it.
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Adrian Velazquez @ Alin Vargatu on Mar 14, 2018 9:27 PM
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Yes, a lot of times the simplification was just suppressing components and generating a configuration. Also on my experience lot's of occasions you don't need to keep links to the items that worth of simplification i.e. Legacy assemblies of machinery/equipment
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Robin Boudreault Sep 20, 2019 12:38 PM
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I am designing enclosures with 1-6 pcbs (circuitworks) containing each 200-5000 components. I am using speedpack as far as I can! My problem with it is many case where the fasteners becomes blues in speedpak mode and I had a case where the parent configuration didn't find the components and I lost the assembly (technical difficulties, please contact technical support). Othe than that is works with case you don't need it (i.e. simple case with less that 2000 components). I still persist in using it since 12000 components is hard on a laptop (even a monster one).
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Sean Johnson Aug 11, 2020 8:14 AM
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I"ll add my $.02 to this, a bit late. I've used Speedpak on two occasions, to simplify sub assemblies being put into large assemblies. In both occasions the graphic performance was significantly worse than just using the sub assemblies complete (the fan on the graphics card ran all the time). Typically, it dragged things down to the point that you couldn't move or zoom, and SW eventually crashed. Also, we also use pdf drawings, and the results with hidden lines showing up and the entire assy looking like it was drawn by a child, made me stop using speedpaks.

I'm also from the Creo/ProE world in my previous job, and shrinkwraps there actually work. I'd love to see this feature work as well, but it simply doesn't in it's current iteration (I'm running 2019 sp2).
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Jerry Walechka Oct 20, 2020 4:22 PM
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SPEEDPAK is great if you never want to present anything in drawing, or pdf form or you want to detail view. SPEEDPAK cost my company many thousands of dollars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Ian McLean @ Sean Johnson on Oct 20, 2020 4:43 PM
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Yeah, like others I have used Pro-e shrinkwrap. I have never used Inventor but apparently it has same functionality also. Tried using Speedpak but it's a poor substitute, it did not give the functionality I needed and was very slow to get anywhere near. Having to manually select geometry available to be referenced is painful.
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Matt Juric @ Alin Vargatu on Oct 20, 2020 5:16 PM
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Alin Vargatu wrote:

There is so much to say about SpeedPaks, I wish I would have enough time for that now. Will provide you with my take before the end of the month, if that is acceptable.

I'm looking forward to this. I've "Played" with speedpaks a couple times and every time I did I instantly found an issue with using them.

Last time I did a speedpack of a conglomeration of three different main assemblies from our customer. I thought this would be a perfect use for a speedpak. Their models where huge, three step files all near 100MB each. I did not need any of the details or need to interact much with their models other than a few interface points.

Why I gave up.

1) I almost lost my mind when every time my cursor went over the speed pack it showed a big white circle going across the screen. Maybe this is a setting, don't know, but it's massively annoying.

2) You could not interact with the speed pak AT ALL. No measurements, no points nothing. It was essentially like dropping a picture into your CAD model.

I ended up simplifying the massive models as much as I could and just suffered thru the swirling circle of wasted time every time I clicked on something.

What would be nice, would be a "Speed pack" that was essentially some sort of wrapping/Envelope thingy. It obliterates all the internal models and data and essentially converts it to a solid shell of the assembly. You can still interact with anything on that shell.

In drawings it would just show exterior images.

That was my impression of what Speed paks were supposed to be but either thru my own ignorance or lack of functionality I can not get anywhere near close to that.

This would be a HUGE time saver for us. We could speed pak all of our major sub assemblies and put those speed pack in the top levels. I can only imagine this would turn a 30 minute session for moving a part from here to there into a normal 10 sec operation if implemented properly.
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Alin Vargatu @ Matt Juric on Oct 20, 2020 5:49 PM
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Matt Juric wrote:

1) I almost lost my mind when every time my cursor went over the speed pack it showed a big white circle going across the screen. Maybe this is a setting, don't know, but it's massively annoying.
Alt-S toggles on and off the ghost circle.
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