What are large assemblies?

Inventor assemblies can be as large as 100,000 occurrences and 10,000 unique parts or more. An occurrence is a reference to a part or subassembly from the main assembly. A more typical large assembly probably contains 3,000 - 5,000 occurrences with 1,000 to 2,000 parts. There is no exact number that defines a "large" assembly.

A large assembly is any assembly file that adversely affects performance. Common reasons for performance impact include:

Model based

• Number of component occurrences
• Number of unique files
• Complexity of geometry
• Heavy data from supply chain sources and business partners
• Hardware configuration affecting

Drawing based

• Drawings referencing multiple model states

Hardware based

• RAM
• Hard disk speed or capacity
• Processor speed or cores
• Video Cards
• Multiple hard disk Raid setup.

For details see: System Hardware and Large Assemblies

Large assembly terms and considerations

Occurrence A reference to a part or subassembly from the main assembly. An occurrence is a reference to a part or subassembly from the main assembly. Thus, if you pattern a bolt eight times, you would have eight occurrences and one unique part. In the model browser, component names are followed by a colon and occurrence number, as shown in this example:

Performance The speed at which a task completes. The amount of time it takes to open a file, create a drawing view, or render an image is performance related.

Capacity The amount of memory required to perform an operation. Capacity affects the number of components you can effectively use in an assembly, or show in a drawing view.

Express mode Express mode is a method of working with very large assemblies and dramatically reducing the file open time. Express mode optimizes performance by loading only model display and relevant top-level data.