Large Model Size and 3D Printer Capability vs SolidWorks

thomas_50

I used SolidWorks to create a 3D printer file for a bio-filter startup. The SolidWorks part file was over 450 MB, and the STL file was over 250 MB. Any command, even just zooming in and out, was extremely tedious and took several minutes. Basically, the model was well past SolidWorks' practical size limit. In speaking with the VAR, the problem is do to SolidWorks being only single threaded, unable to use the other 7 CPUs on my computer. Will using Onshape eliminate this problem? Also, it took severla hours to generate the STL file. Will generating the file be quicker, and can the 3D printer vendor easily access the file? 

john_mcclary

Sorry for being vague, but the only good way to check is to test for yourself.
As far as i know onshape still needs to go through each line item on the feature tree in order to render a part studio. And from what i can tell (from observations trying to see what it takes to crash onshape by overstressing it). It appears each part studio may be working on a single thread on the cloud comuputer. So it can take some time to render a large part studio (even if your browser thinks it is crashing, let it ride, work is still being done). But once everything has loaded into your browser, everything seems to be blazing fast. I've been testing this by redrawing my solidworks assemblies that are 15minute open-save-close lag monsters. After re-drawing them in onshape using mulipart design to streamline and use fewer features per part. the same assembly is loading in and rotates/pan/zoom/edits very quickly, some only take a couple minutes to load in, then i save day's worth of wasted time not worrying about saving every five-ten minutes. It's as if it needs to render the features once, and then doesn't muck about with all that re-bulid unless you make a change. While solidworks will need to fully re-build every part in the assembly one-by-one every time you edit something (especially in drawings). BUT when i try to import a solidworks assembly, or parasolid of the solidworks assembly. It is very slow, the best thing is to re-draw everything when you make the leap.

Also i've notice performance differences between firefox and chrome. firefox seems to do better with the gigantic part studios.

Hope this helps.

john_mcclary

Sorry for being vague, but the only good way to check is to test for yourself.
As far as i know onshape still needs to go through each line item on the feature tree in order to render a part studio. And from what i can tell (from observations trying to see what it takes to crash onshape by overstressing it). It appears each part studio may be working on a single thread on the cloud comuputer. So it can take some time to render a large part studio (even if your browser thinks it is crashing, let it ride, work is still being done). But once everything has loaded into your browser, everything seems to be blazing fast. I've been testing this by redrawing my solidworks assemblies that are 15minute open-save-close lag monsters. After re-drawing them in onshape using mulipart design to streamline and use fewer features per part. the same assembly is loading in and rotates/pan/zoom/edits very quickly, some only take a couple minutes to load in, then i save day's worth of wasted time not worrying about saving every five-ten minutes. It's as if it needs to render the features once, and then doesn't muck about with all that re-bulid unless you make a change. While solidworks will need to fully re-build every part in the assembly one-by-one every time you edit something (especially in drawings). BUT when i try to import a solidworks assembly, or parasolid of the solidworks assembly. It is very slow, the best thing is to re-draw everything when you make the leap.

Also i've notice performance differences between firefox and chrome. firefox seems to do better with the gigantic part studios.

Hope this helps.

henry_feldman

I'll add that I have a part studio I am working on with 554 parts in one "thing" (I don't want to use the word assembly since it isn't an OnShape assembly) using heavy circular and linear patterns on a very complex spline surface (the part sort of looks like a porcupine if you will). It takes about 10 seconds to open the part studio, but flies after that (on my 2011 MacBook pro in safari or on a latest model 5K 27" iMac). To generate an STL takes a good 30+ seconds before it starts downloading. Surprisingly it actually generates a pretty small STL file (although this model is not polygon heavy as many of the parts are slab sided) but it did generate highly non-manifold geometry in the STL with almost 6000 intersecting triangles, which I reported as a bug and they are working on (easily repaired in Emendo or Netfabb).