Building a parts library, STEP vs F3D file type performance

[mah6786]

Hi,

  I've designed a bunch of gears for use in my assembly.  My assembly has quite a lot of components and I'm starting to run into performances issues.  I'm wondering, if it's better to save my gears as a STEP file, or a F3D file.  F3D saves the sketches and steps to build the part, which makes it convenient to for editing, but I'm wondering if this incurs a performance cost?

Thanks,

Mike

[MoshiurRashid]

Hi

Thanks for posting. Actually step files are used mostly when you transfer your file to another software which does't allow the previous format. But, using it for a project just to optimize the data is not a good practice. Well, it won't help you in increase of performance. Also, you'll lost all the history that might be helpful for future changes. So, I think you should keep it f3d. And use it.

You can optimize your graphics performance if that might help you.

Help> Support and Diagnostics> Graphics Diagnostics

[laughingcreek · Accepted solution]

obviously you'll want to save the .f3d file that has the history so you can make changes.  And as you've found having all that history in assemblies can weigh things down.  You can copy/paste just the body into your assemblies, which will place the body in your model as a dumb DM model, with out any of the history.  You can also save the body in a separate file so it can be inserted like a component, but i invariably just resort to just copy/paste.  For components already in your assembly, you can convert just that component to a DM feature in many cases, which will dump the history of just that component.

short answer, A step file won't have any performance advantage over a fusion DM model that doesn't have history.  And avoids possible translation errors converting the step model back to  fusion model.  every time a model goes through a conversion process, there is a possibility for some loss of information.  in your proposed case, it gets converted twice (fusion to step, and then again step back to fusion).  I would avoid that.

[jeff_strater]

this is a good question, @mah6786 - I was going to respond last night, but forgot.  Completely agree with @laughingcreek that conversion to STEP is not a great idea, since it can be lossy.  However, I do think there is advantages in not having all the parametric history in parts that you know are never going to change.  So, I would recommend, for those parts, just removing history, and saving them as F3D, and inserting them where needed.

[mah6786]

Thanks Jeff.  By advantages, do you mean performance advantages (e.g. it uses less memory or takes less time when you rebuild the model) or organizational advantages (e.g. it declutters the timeline)?