Inventor Professional 2013 - Lagging with Big Models

[cjjohnson2]

Hey Everyone,

Hope someone will be able to help me out here or at least point me in the right direction.

At work we have recently upgraded to Inventor 2013 Pro, Although Inventor isnt the most widely used program in the company so its hard to find time to do some set up and get it going smooth. My problem is that i am working on a large process plant all done in inventor and the file is quite large. It takes along time to load and is really laggy when inside the model. Now the model is based in my local office's server my question is if i was using Vault would it keep a local copy on my C:// rather than trying to refresh all parts from ther server. If it is a matter that when working with large files using Vault is the better option than i will need to take some advantages and hopefully get some backing to develop this in our company. Thanks for any help.

[mcgyvr]

working locally should help..

Of course you should have listed the hardware on your computer so we could offer suggestions there too.

operating system? processor speed? amount of ram?

and if you google ""autodesk inventor working with large assemblies" you will find a few documents that have TONS of information on that too..

Shrinkwrapping/suppressing features/parts,etc...

[swalton]

I work with assemblies with 3-15k members and 1-2k unique components.  Not sure if that is large by your requirements.

We work with vault to store IV files on the network and transfer the files to the local C: drive.

One way to test if your loading times are affected by your network is to make a Pack-n-go of your slowest file.  Write the pack-n-go to your local C:drive.  Use the new project file from the pack-n-go and time opening the slow file from your local disk. If load times improve, Vault may be a good fit.  If not, you will need to look at how you build your models.

One of my favorite tools with Vault is Copy-Design.  It is a great tool for reusing/altering existing designs and components.  I actually installed Vault as a single user to get this tool.

Other tricks that I use:

Component patterns

Constrain as much as possible to origin geometry

Push all my fasteners to sub-assemblies, not at the top level

Avoid adaptive parts or assemblies

Fix all red crosses

Use Level of Detail and Design views to isolate areas of interest in the model

Build the model in the order that you will use on the shop floor.  This helps avoid spaghetti logic with your constraints.

[cjjohnson2]

Yes sorry i did think about that,The file is about 800 mb which to me seems smallish but i work with larger files on different programs. In terms of running wise i am running windows 7, 12gb ram, Inter(r) Xeon (r) 3.20HGz processor. Which runs every software package fine so i didnt assume that would be the problem. Thank You for replying 

I have since pulled the model to my c:// and have worked locally and it works a treat! Although when i contacted our Cad manager he said there would be no possible way of setting up Vault, Apparently we dont have $$$ to buy licences or set it up on the netowrk. Which was a suprise to me as i thought it comes with Inventor itself as i Vault on my desktop just not set up. Thanks for the tips with larger models i have read a large amount of articles and i try to practise good model mangement all the time. Thanks