I have an assembly that I am trying to make a drawing of.  The drawing will only have 4 shaded with edges views:

1. A side view
2. A section from that side view, which will be cropped
3. The same side view as #1, but exploded
4. The same cropped section as view #2, but from the exploded side view #3

View #3 will be hidden.  So basically, what will be shown is 1 side view with a section line, and 2 cropped section views (one collapsed and one exploded).

The assembly performs as expected, and only contains:

There is not a huge number of parts.  However, there is quite a bit of geometry to around 1/4 of these parts.

The assembly contains 2 configurations.  However, only one is being used by the drawing (the other is simply a reference config that I never even activate)

The assembly also contains 2 unlinked display states.  View #1 will use display state #1, showing only one part transparent.  While the other 3 views will use display state #2 showing all parts opaque.

There are in-context relations in the assembly.  However, not a large amount of them.

When I get my views setup, SolidWorks slows down to a crawl.  Just to do anything causes SolidWorks to simply freeze for anywhere from 3 to 5 minutes, even after all views have been fully updated.  For example, as soon as I go to zoom-in or pan, it freezes.  If I try to CTRL-TAB back to the assembly, it freezes.  If I try to right click to edit sheet, it freezes.  If I need to edit a crop on one of the views it freezes.  Save to PDF, forget it.  I killed the process after about 30 minutes.  Pretty much any and everything I try to do from that point will cause SolidWorks to freeze.  Even when I save, it will freeze for a few minutes and eventually ask me if I want to save the referenced document (the assembly), even though nothing has changed in the assembly.  Strangely, it will eventually come back to life, if I wait long enough.

From my many years of experience, this is not an overly complex scenario.  I've done similar drawings based on similar assemblies, many, many times in the past.

Things I have tried to fix this:

1. I have tried rebooting, and not opening any other programs except SolidWorks after the reboot.
2. I even tried doing some system maintenance (i.e. defrag, disk cleanup, windows update, clean temp folders, etc.)
3. I tried simplifying A LOT of the un-needed geometry (for my needs) on most of the more complex parts (i.e. eliminating many hole patterns, combining multi-bodies, filling unimportant shells and hollows, etc.)  All in all, I'm sure I've eliminated many thousand faces, tens of thousands of edges, and 20 or so bodies.
4. I have tried to completely recreate the drawing from scratch, thinking that something was simply wrong with the original drawing.

Everything I have tried ends up the same.  Does anyone know of anything else that could be causing this, or any methods on trying to diagnose what the problem may be?