#12 Gauge Perf Crashing SolidWorks 1

[HarmonyProducts]

Good Morning,

Some backstory so you understand what I'm trying to do.

Our company manufactures window guards and I'll be using SolidWorks's PhotoWorks to design pictures of the installation process out in the field however I've run into a snag in my process.

I'm using SolidWorks 2007 currently and I have a part that's causing me some grief. I've created a piece of #12 gauge perforated sheet metal which is currently 5x5. It's a very simple 2 step design and by simply changing the base size the Feature Pattern follows and gives me what I want. I wanted the installation pictures to look as close to reality as possible so I made the pattern follow the true dimensions of #12 gauge perf. The overall size of the perf needs to be 35x55 which therein lies the problem.

I reduced all the image quality settings to their lowest and when I change the base size to the size I need (35x55) SolidWorks crashes/freezes (no surprise.)

I was hoping that somebody out there could enlighten me on how to resolve my issue. I would be most appreciative.

Sincerely,
Rob

 

[kellnerp]

Are you running out of memory? Perforations will cause memory depletion quickly.

TOP
CSWP, BSSE

http://www.engtran.com

http://www.niswug.org

"Node news is good news."

 

[HarmonyProducts]

I changed the size and left it go for the day and came back the next morning to find an error message stating that it ran out of memory and to free up more and hit retry or hit cancel to terminate the program.

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

List your computer specs for review?

Have you tried applying the Appearances > Miscellaneous > Real View Only Appearnces > Cosmetic Hole Pattern appearance, combined with transparency?

 

[Updraft]

Rob,

On large items with many small details the load on a processor is huge. I have had some success with a similar scenario to yours by making a small section with only the detail you need, saving it as a parasolid, open that up as a new dumb part, putting that into an assembly and patterning it to make the full size part, and then save THAT as a parasolid. The parasolid route saves the computation time of generating the features, unfortunately, there will still be a load to generate the image of the features.

One important tip since you are crashing is to make the part flat on the back side where the detail will not be seen. This will speed things up by not having to generate things that won't be seen. This seems obvious, but I know many that refuse to do this because "That's not how the part IS!" - Irrelevant if you can't get the job done, I say!

You can also try running on 64-bit VISTA since it will take all the RAM you stuff in the box and it will even use USB memory sticks as RAM.

Obviously, you need to try to limit the detail to what you absolutely need, both in the size/area of the part and the accuracy and level of detail that really shows up.

- - -Updraft

 

[kellnerp]

CBL, are you sure 2007 supported that?

TOP
CSWP, BSSE

http://www.engtran.com

http://www.niswug.org

"Node news is good news."

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

Ooops! I missed that 2007 was being used. No, it probably didn't, but I don't have access to that version to check.

 

[RawheadRex]

Just FYI, Cosmetic Hole Patterns came in with 2008.



Chris Gervais
Application Engineer
CSWP, CSWST