Not sure if this is more for the drawing, or the assembly section but here is my issue:

I have major slow downs when creating a drawings of assemblies.  The assemblies are fairly large.  A parts only count on the largest one we've done to day is 6700 parts (actual instance count of all part files in the model).

Now, the assembly works pretty well, and I don't have too much lag while working in the assembly, but once I start creating the drawing, this is when things get hairy.

I have all items contrained, with all degrees of freedom locked down.  There is hardware models in the assembly, but they are not extremely detalied, mainly overall profile size, no threads modeled.  As much as possible is contained in sub assemblies so there are not too many small items at the top level assembly.

The first six or seven pages were no issue and worked well, but once I started getting into page 8 and beyond, the load times became extreme, and that is not hyperbole.  If I go to the model and make an update, and then switch back to the drawing, it has taken up to 1.5 hours to complete load and update the drawing to where I can start interacting with SolidWorks again.

I thought maybe adding hardware into the model may have been causing the issue on the last system drawing I did, so instead of putting a screw in every hole etc., I tried doing one piece of hardware per mounting hole groups for graphical representation only thinkinig that less hardwaer would help outm but that is not the case at all.

As you can imagine, sitting here for an hour staring at a white screen is rather frustrating, and also is not a good feeling when your boss walks by three or four times, and you are just sitting there staring blankly.  I refuse to believe that companies that have large assemblies like this don't add hardware into their models, but hey, maybe that is the case.

Here is a quick break down of what I do so you can have an idea and maybe suggest a different work flow:

While in the assembly, I create a configuration for each step of the build up to create exploded views and their respective break out lines (trust me, I have gone the display state only route, and it does not create what I want, so that option is out.)  In each configuration, I of course hide the components not necessary for that view.  I have tried going to suppression route instead of hiding, and it had no effect in regards to speeding up anything, and of course concurrently suppresses constraints that I may not want suppressed, so I have taken the suppression option out of the equation.  I do link the view states to the configuration, not sure if that has any effect or not.  Once I h ave all of the views set up in the model, I start creating the drawing, and of course, that's when all goes awry.

Any help or suggestions anyone can offer will be greatly appreciated, as I am no losing foothold on the way drawings are being done as they are taking too long, and if this keeps up, I will pretty much be forced to leave hardware out of the models all together, and just create view states and place views.  And before you tell me not to worry about adding hardware, my installers are often in remote locations where trips to the hardware store are either not an option, or need to be complete and correct the first time, so having the correct hardware called out is imperative.

Thanks in advance,

Jason Lackey