From: John Ricketts Feb/28/02

I have had to deal with large assemblies since the early days of MDT but now manage OK.

There are several things that you need to be aware of when running large models;-

1) The size of model that you can successfully run will depend upon your hardware. You don't say how large your models are, or what hardware you are trying to run it on. My system is a modest P111-550 with 384Mb ram and 32Mb ATI Rage video but I manage 200 part assemblies of complex machines without too much trouble now.

2) You need to make sure that ALL the parts that you xref in are fully audited (AmAudit lists externally referenced drawing files that need updating. After xref'd files have been saved, use AmRefresh in master file -AJ). If there are errors at the component level, then they will probably bite you a couple of assembly stages higher up.

3) Break down your drawing views onto separate layouts

4) Optimise rendering, circle smoothness etc for speed

5) Set up a spreadsheet to suppress low level parts that you don't need to see when you are working at top level

6) Defrag hard drive(s) and use a disk optimiser

7) ABOVE ALL ELSE, BE RIGOUROUS ABOUT CHECKING THE INTEGRITY OF PARTS BEFORE YOU ASSEMBLE THEM. If in doubt, run AmRecover on them.

Rgds, Dr John Ricketts, Synectix Limited UK

o0o