SOLIDWORKS hardware performance is something we are asked about frequently. Giving general recommendations can be helpful, but you may need something targeted to understand where your machine is falling short of the mark. Many clients struggle with managing the performance of large assemblies and drawings within SOLIDWORKS and don’t know where to start troubleshooting. While sometimes the root cause may be software settings and modeling best practices, other times it may just be that you’re due for a hardware upgrade. You can verify this by using the SOLIDWORKS Hardware Performance Benchmark Test built directly into the software.
What is the SOLIDWORKS Hardware Performance Benchmark?
The SOLIDWORKS Hardware Performance Benchmark is a built-in tool that performs a series of common usage operations within the software to determine how well your CPU, graphics card, and I/O handle those tasks. From the testing, the tool provides a score for how well your machine executed the tasks that you can compare with other users to see where your machine stacks up.
Where is the SOLIDWORKS Hardware Performance Benchmark?
This benchmark can be accessed from two places. The most notable and accessible method is to start the benchmark from the task pane within SOLIDWORKS. This also conveniently has the “Compare Your Score” option below it, which can be used to evaluate your results with standard PC’s and real-world hardware configurations. Additionally, it can be activated from within SOLIDWORKS Rx, by opening Rx and navigating to the far-right tab.
To learn more about the other SOLIDWORKS Rx tools, review our article on the topic here.
SOLIDWORKS Performance Benchmark in Task Pane
How Does the SOLIDWORKS Hardware Performance Benchmark Work?
It is recommended to run your benchmark after your computer has been freshly restarted and no other applications are running. It will take some time to run through the benchmark after you start it; running through five iterations of the test and then optionally running simulation and visualization segments too.
You’ll get results in the following categories:
- Processor results measure how well your PC performs during CPU-bound processes. The benchmark looks at rebuilding features and creating drawing views. It is critical to understand that if your score isn’t satisfactory, upgrading to a CPU with more cores won’t necessarily help you. Most operations in SOLIDWORKS are single-core bound, so you are better off targeting higher clock speeds.
- Graphics results measure the smoothness of manipulating the graphics pane for operations such as zooming, panning, and rotating. Faster times mean you’ll experience less latency and visible lag when performing these critical operations in an assembly. This process is split between the CPU and the GPU.
- I/O results measure open and save times of files and are ultimately the read and write speeds of your hard drive. Because this runs locally, it is not a good indicator of the performance of a data management environment (3DEXPERIENCE or PDM) or saving to a network location. Local data saving can be improved by incorporating SSDs instead of HDDs with quicker data transfer rates.
I Ran the Benchmark! What Now?
Now that you have your scores be sure to compare them to other users on the Share your score page. This page can help you understand how your machine stacks up to other users as well as how an upgraded machine may perform. At that point, you should reflect on whether or not this is a hardware issue, a settings issue, or a training issue. The good news is that TriMech is your engineering resource that can help across aspects of performance.
If you are interested in upgrading your workstation, take a look at our line of Dell Workstations here.
