Large(?) Assembly Opening Time

[colinm]

Hi. I would like to find out if there are any tips or tricks to working with large assemblies. I don't know if this size of assembly is large by absolute standards, but by the time it takes Alibre to open it I'm guessing it must be pretty large for Alibre!

Here are the attributes of the assembly I'm working with:
- Parts: 22,126
- Faces: 663,069
- Edges: 1,704,446
- Vertices: 1,116,160
- Unique parts: 1,199

I'm using Alibre Expert V26, build 26040.

My desktop machine has the following specs:
- Windows 11 Pro (64 bit)
- i9-13900KF @ 3.00 GHz
- 64 GB DDR5 RAM
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti

When opening this assembly, Alibre took 08:20 just to display the assembly, then it pauses a while, updates all the meshes and then the topology. By the time that is all done, 09:30 have passed! Is there any way to speed this up? Are there hardware or software settings that I can take a look at?

Thanks!

 

[DavidJ]

Well that's certainly a lot of parts!

Are files held on SSD or conventional hard drive? With so many files, the speed of retrieval may be a significant factor. Are files held locally or on network storage? Dedicated data drive or drive shared with OS?

Are all files native Alibre ? Imports can sometimes have additional issues for quite complex reasons.

You can adjust some settings which may help with certain phases - though not with others.

Articles

help.alibre.com

Make sure that hardware accelerated graphics scheduling is turned on

Articles

help.alibre.com

May not apply to your model - but if some of the assembly was originally imported check for cases where you can replace multiple part instances with assembly patterns of a single file. As an example - if you import a STEP file of a ball bearing - the resulting assembly will use a separate file for each ball (even though the content is identical). Deleting all except one ball an substituting a pattern will improve performance.

Consider do you even need the small level detail. The above example of a ball bearing, having the internals looks nice, but does it actually help? Would a simple cylindrical bush as a placeholder be sufficient - many less parts, simpler. After all the bearing will be a purchased standard part.

Don't use helical features in models unless really needed - I see many imported bolts or screws which have helical threads in the model. These are a huge resource burden and don't add usefully to the model.

Use of sub-assemblies can improve performance too as it typically reduces the number of active assembly constraints that need to be calculated, compared to having everything in single level.



Others may chip in with additional tips...

 

[nenad]

Maybe also to use subassemblies with simple configuration (e.g. suppressing bolts, washers, toothed parts...)