Large Assemblies on New Computers

So you’ve gotten really proficient at SolidWorks and have created some fairly large assemblies. But your machine is kind of old and although all of your assemblies open the big ones seem to run a bit slow. Now you have upgraded the computer to a newer, better model and the large assemblies don’t open at all. What could cause this?

The problem could be due to the graphics card in the new computer. Say the old computer had 2GB of RAM and a certified graphics card with 256MB of on board memory. With the new computer you took the opportunity to get more memory, say 512MB, on the graphics to help speed up the assemblies but stayed with 2GB of RAM. In this case SolidWorks actually has less memory available to load your assembly.

The graphics memory takes up part of the 2GB of total memory addresses that 32 bit Windows can offer. Take the 256MB from 2GB and SolidWorks will crash when memory usage hits about 1.7GB. With the new 512MB graphics card the crash occurs at about 1.5GB! So with all things equal the bigger graphics card allows less memory for SolidWorks.

If large assemblies are a concern for you and you are upgrading your computer, make sure to get as much RAM as possible first. If you stick with the 32 bit version of Windows you may need to turn on the 3GB switch. The bigger graphics card is nice if you can get it, just don’t let it limit the amount of memory you can address.