Solidworks premium

[HorridHenry]

Considering the price its a poor graphical interface.

[CNC Lurker]

What specifically do you dislike about it?

[HorridHenry]

Maybe its just me but I just cannot get to grips with the layout,its so 90's and window98 program running,plus its dead slow at times.

[CNC Lurker]

I"ll have to disagree with you considering the looks, but I'm comparing it to Mechanical Desktop (a decades old MCAD program).

As for speed, do you have a computer system that surpassing the SW minimum requirements and a certified graphics card? What version of Soidworks do you have? What version of Windows do you have?

Finally, how large and complex are your parts? Do your assemblies have 500, 1000 parts or more?

These are some important questions because oftentimes the major culprits for SW issues are an under-powered computer and/or non-certified graphics card.

[HorridHenry]

Pent 4/3Gig processor,1 Gig Nvidea graphics,1 Gig of Mem and 160 Gig HD.

I think thats a passable PC for any Cad/Cam program I mean My latest Lightwave 3d program leaves SW2012 standing at the start line wondering whether the green light has come on.

I got a feeling its just a bloated program.

[HorridHenry]

I just booted the program,it took 28 seconds to initialize the program and a further 7 seconds before the program became usable.

[ger21]

Pent 4/3Gig processor,1 Gig Nvidea graphics,1 Gig of Mem and 160 Gig HD.

I think thats a passable PC for any Cad/Cam program .

I'd consider that PC to be borderline obsolete, when talking about high end CAD systems. My 5 year old Athlon X2 is probably faster than your PC, and I consider it near the end of it's life.

If you think SW is slow, try running AutoCAD. With comparable models loaded, SW is a lot faster than AutoCAD, and one of the fastest 3D CAD programs I've seen.

I've been a LW user for over 10 years, and it's a totally different animal compared to SW.
Try loading a 1million polygon model into LW and see what happens.

[keebler303]

Solidworks states a MINIMUM of 2 GB RAM and a certified Video card. I think you have neither.

That computer sounds OLD. SW2012 is meant to run on serious hardware. 8GB RAM and 2GB graphics card will get you cruising along nicely.

I have an XP machine here with Pentium D and 2 GB RAM, onboard video card (shiddy) and solidworks still boots up in the sub-10 second range.

I don't know what lightwave is but I'd guess it's not an apples to apples comparison. Bottom line is you are using sub-minimal hardware and expecting excellent results!!

Matt

[HorridHenry]

I consider it near the end of it's life.

I see,so its a case of software developers governing the pockets of joe bloggs and his pay cheque.

Well its off the computer as I originally said I find the layout a lot to be desired for a 2012 program.

I'll go back to Mastercam,thats not too bad a screen layout and is a lot faster then SW.

[ger21]

I see,so its a case of software developers governing the pockets of joe bloggs and his pay cheque.

It's always been this way, but is more obvious now.

As PC's get faster, software is written to take advantage of the faster hardware, by adding new features that wouldn't run on slower, older hardware.

If you plan on always using current generation CAD/CAM software, you should also plan on replacing your PC every 2-3 years.


I took a look at Ebay, and can buy about 100 different 3Ghz Pentium 4 PC's for under $100. And there are ton of 1GB Nvidia video cards for $50 that will probably outperform yours by a factor of 5-10, if yours is as old as the Pentium 4.

So your basically trying to run $5000 software on a $150 PC.
I would consider $1500-$2000 to be the bare minimum for a decent CAD/CAM PC. A really good one can cost a lot more.

[HorridHenry]

Todays and yesterdays archaeologists are digging up roman and egyptian artifacts and what have you....in 50 years time alls they will be excavating is computer landfill sites. tsk what a society we live in.

[JerryFlyGuy]

Henry you have to realize that Lightwave and Solidworks are two TOTALLY different modeling systems. Light speed is a surface based modeler while Soliworks is a solid modeler.. this means that solidworks resolves all surfaces AND interal geometry to 8 decimal places.. [yes eight... Billionths of an inch resolution].. Not only this but it calculates volume, weight and center of mass for every body in the model.. there is MUCH MUCH more going on in Solidworks than most other CAD systems out there..

Most models are interrelated [top down modeling] such that changes to one part effect others, connections and mates are continually being resolved.. error checking on all of it.... etc etc

It's true, it does require some serious hardward to run it [my machine at work is 36GB ram and 2 GB vid card on a new i7 hex core cpu.. no complaints on program performance] I run lots of models w/ thousands of parts in each model and it operates very well. Basically as fast as I can click it executes the command. Bottom line is if you can afford the $6-15k software package... you should be able to afford the $5k PC box to run it on.

fwiw