Stop Using Network Drives - Maximize SOLIDWORKS Performance with Cloud Services

Network drives are a common solution for engineering teams to collaborate. They can be a convenient solution for organizations attempting to centralize their data. Operating from a network drive, however, is about the worst way to access SOLIDWORKS data, and teams using network drives are leaving performance on the table.

What Makes Network Drives So Detrimental for SOLIDWORKS?

Any computer has a speed hierarchy of where data can be kept, and each step down the hierarchy takes exponentially longer to access. The fastest location to store data is in the CPU’s cache. This makes a certain amount of sense as the compute and storage is happening in the CPU.

If a piece of data is too large or simply has not yet been called, it has to be pulled from RAM. RAM is still quite speedy, but much slower than the CPU cache. If a piece of data has not been called to RAM, then the computer needs to go yet another step down the hierarchy to your storage.

For most PCs these days, primary storage is solid state, which is quite fast but multiple orders of magnitude slower than RAM. Solid state storage is, however, costly per-gigabyte, and most bulk storage is still done in hard drive disks, which are substantially slower still.

Slower still than local storage is networked storage which must be pulled, generally from a hard drive, served over the network and streamed to the client PC.

SOLIDWORKS Design is a RAM-resident application, which means that every single open file utilizes that extremely limited RAM resource. Even worse, if you close out a design stored on your network drive to preserve resources, you’ll have to re-stream it back to your workstation!

Especially with large assemblies or complex designed parts, the time to open or rebuild the assembly in SOLIDWORKS becomes highly dependent on network speed, latency, and concurrent users.

How Does SOLIDWORKS Cloud Services Address This?

SOLIDWORKS Cloud Services securely stores CAD files for entire engineering teams to access. Customer data is encrypted and secured with export control (ITAR/EAR) compliant implementations available. Dassault Systèmes’ SOC 2, OWASP, and ISO/IEC 27001 certifications ensure that data is secured to the highest standards.

SOLIDWORKS Cloud Services provides performance gains over network drives by locally caching files to your PC. This improves open and rebuild times by moving up the biggest step in our speed hierarchy from network to local storage and removing variables like local network traffic impacting performance.

Whenever you launch SOLIDWORKS Design, Cloud Services automatically checks your cached files against the database on its secure server. If a file has been updated, it will selectively update just that file for you instead of re-streaming an entire assembly to your PC.

SOLIDWORKS Cloud Services also enables you to work anywhere with your locally cached files. You can lock a design and work on it from anywhere, then push the updates to the rest of the team when you’re back online. Cloud Services even manages file references, versions, and removes the hazard of corrupted files from multiple people editing simultaneously.

Conclusion

If your team is still using network drives to centralize data and collaborate, you’re leaving SOLIDWORKS performance on the table; stop wasting time waiting for your network drive to serve your files, improve collaboration, and reclaim lost time looking for broken references.

SOLIDWORKS Cloud Services enables you to design and collaborate securely anywhere online or offline. Getting the most out of your software isn’t always easy, but SOLIDWORKS Cloud Services can bring your team one giant leap closer.