{"id":140,"date":"2008-12-09T05:02:46","date_gmt":"2008-12-09T13:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fcsuper.com\/swblog\/?p=140"},"modified":"2011-01-11T12:38:42","modified_gmt":"2011-01-11T20:38:42","slug":"assembly-mates-and-rebuild-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fcsuper.com\/swblog\/?p=140","title":{"rendered":"Assembly mates and rebuild times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent discussion I had with Chris MacCormack\u00a0was about how\u00a0mates\u00a0within an assembly affect rebuilt times.\u00a0 He posed\u00a0a question to me.\u00a0 Do I fully contrain screws after I insert them?\u00a0 My answer was basically “yes, as time allows.”\u00a0 He then stated that he actually promotes the notion of not fully contraining screws.\u00a0 He went so far as to suggest it would be better to suppress the mates altogether and fixing all components.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His reason\u00a0for this policy is that a higher\u00a0number of mates will slow down rebuild times because SolidWorks has to caculate each mate on every rebuild.\u00a0 My primary thought is\u00a0that I prefer my model assemblies to be stable and predictable, which full mate constraint methodology delivers.\u00a0 Secondarily, on instinct, I was working under the idea that having everything fully constrained helps SolidWorks work out all the details so it doesn’t have to spend so much time figuring everything during a rebuild.\u00a0 (I was aware that particular kinds of mates do slow down rebuild times.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, I decided to put this to a test.\u00a0 I created the model assembly shown here.\u00a0 Though these are not real world parts, they are created and assemblied using real world techniques, with details I would normally use, even to the degree of adding material to each component.<\/p>\n

\"Test<\/p>\n

I created a series of configurations of this assembly in various states of mating, both with patterned components and with all instances of hardware individually inserted.\u00a0 I then used handleman’s<\/a> latest macro, Rebuildtimes.swp<\/a> (which he recently provided on eng-tipsc.om <\/a>as a response to a request <\/a>by another user).\u00a0 This macro was used several times on each configuration.\u00a0 Here are the best times for each.<\/p>\n

Condition:\u00a0 First rebuild time\u00a0(s)<\/strong>
\nPatterned Fully Constrained:\u00a0 0.3438
\nPatterned Partially Constrained:\u00a0\u00a00.3125
\nPatterned Not Constrained:\u00a0 0.2812
\nPatterned Fixed:\u00a0\u00a00.2656
\nAll Instances Inserted Fully Constrained:\u00a0\u00a01.125
\nAll Instances Inserted Partially Constrained:\u00a0\u00a00.5938
\nAll Instances Inserted Not Constrained:\u00a0\u00a00.2656
\nAll Instances Inserted Fixed:\u00a0\u00a00.2656<\/p>\n

The test results show a clear pattern.\u00a0 Chris’ assessment is correct.\u00a0 With each additional mate, SolidWorks takes more time to rebuilt the assembly.\u00a0 Even in this small example, there is a significant difference between fully constrained hardware and hardware that was just inserted via smart mates (partially constrained); 1.12 seconds verses .59.\u00a0 The rebuild time was literally\u00a0doubled just by adding parallel mates to fully constrain the smart mated hardware.<\/p>\n

Even in light of this realization, I do not advocate suppressing all mates and fixing components.\u00a0 In my experience, this isn’t practical for the real world.\u00a0\u00a0However, this is going to make me reconsider just how I will be handling mating schemes.\u00a0 There needs to be a balance between the speed of the software and the functionality of the model assembly.\u00a0 Where is that balancing point?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent discussion I had with Chris MacCormack\u00a0was about how\u00a0mates\u00a0within an assembly affect rebuilt times.\u00a0 He posed\u00a0a question to me.\u00a0 Do I fully contrain screws after I insert them?\u00a0 My answer was basically “yes, as time allows.”\u00a0 He then stated that he actually promotes the notion of not fully contraining screws.\u00a0 He went so far … Continue reading “Assembly mates and rebuild times”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,17],"tags":[1218,311,371,369,373,372,370],"series":[],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-methodology","category-model-assembly","tag-1218","tag-mate","tag-mates","tag-rebuilt","tag-rebuilt-time","tag-time","tag-times"],"yoast_head":"\nAssembly mates and rebuild times - SolidWorks Legion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.fcsuper.com\/swblog\/?p=140\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Assembly mates and rebuild times - SolidWorks Legion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A recent discussion I had with Chris MacCormack\u00a0was about how\u00a0mates\u00a0within an assembly affect rebuilt times.\u00a0 He posed\u00a0a question to me.\u00a0 Do I fully contrain screws after I insert them?\u00a0 My answer was basically “yes, as time allows.”\u00a0 He then stated that he actually promotes the notion of not fully contraining screws.\u00a0 He went so far … Continue reading "Assembly mates and rebuild times"\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/www.fcsuper.com\/swblog\/?p=140\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"SolidWorks Legion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-12-09T13:02:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-01-11T20:38:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/fcsuper.com\/images\/Test-Perf2.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"fcsuper\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@swsuper\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@swsuper\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"fcsuper\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.fcsuper.com\/swblog\/?p=140#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.fcsuper.com\/swblog\/?p=140\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"fcsuper\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.fcsuper.com\/swblog\/#\/schema\/person\/859d9f25668554f7193852892dbad92b\"},\"headline\":\"Assembly mates and rebuild times\",\"datePublished\":\"2008-12-09T13:02:46+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2011-01-11T20:38:42+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.fcsuper.com\/swblog\/?p=140\"},\"wordCount\":462,\"commentCount\":20,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.fcsuper.com\/swblog\/#\/schema\/person\/859d9f25668554f7193852892dbad92b\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.fcsuper.com\/swblog\/?p=140#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"http:\/\/fcsuper.com\/images\/Test-Perf2.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"=\",\"mate\",\"mates\",\"rebuilt\",\"rebuilt time\",\"time\",\"times\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Methodology\",\"Model Assembly\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/www.fcsuper.com\/swblog\/?p=140#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.fcsuper.com\/swblog\/?p=140\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.fcsuper.com\/swblog\/?p=140\",\"name\":\"Assembly mates and rebuild times - 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