I was a Solid Edge user, and our library of plastic pipe fittings had been constructed using family of parts.  On large assemblies it was very slow.  So as a new user I volunteered to slog through thousands of parts breaking the links and creating parts with just a solid body and no geometry.  The parent part was kept so new parts could be created, but we always then broke the links.  The difference in performance was very dramatic, well worth the 3 weeks or so that I hammered away at the keyboard as fast as I could go. If we got a purchased part that doesn't change from an outside source we would do an insert into a empty part to get the same result.

Everyone suggests just using a standard library of parts.  In plastic every manufacturer has a different dimension.  On what I build a 1/4" overall difference is a often a problem. We use Spears plastic fittings, they actually offer almost their whole line as IGES files.  Talk about HEAVY, lots of fillets, threads, and their logo as a 3D projection on every part! 

So I am building a new library in Solidworks.  So how do I go about doing something similar? I have tried Defeature, Insert Part etc. and the downside is that they all fail to pass the data in the file properties to the new part.  That means doing htis will be a huge amount of extra work.  So what is the right way to do this?  I ultimately will have thousands of parts to create, and I need to get moving.

Thanks,

Gary H. Lucas