SolidWorks 98 Benchmark 1.1 (Alpha version)

The SolidWorks 98 Benchmark is a program that was written in Visual Basic and C that runs on the Windows NT and Windows 95 OS platforms. It was developed by SolidWorks and later enhanced by the APC. The SolidWorks 98 Benchmark provides an application benchmark for the mechanical design user (CAD/CAM). It represents the day in the life of a typical SolidWorks user.

The benchmark loads some standard models into SolidWorks. The models loaded are of small to large-medium size (top line assembly has about 276,000 polygons.) The benchmark then does I/O, CPU, and graphics timings on operations to these models. The scores reported are a geometric mean of the time in seconds to do all the tests, a geometric mean of the individual graphics timings, the I/O timings, and the CPU performance timings in seconds normalized to a  reference machine decided on by the APC.

The APC project group maintains a single source code version of the SolidWorks Benchmark code that is available to the public.
 

Menu

Installing

Download the SolidWorksBenchmark98-alpha.zip file from the SPEC ftp site.  Copy this file to your boot partition (ie: D:\).  Unzip this file.  The directory tree "BenchmarkSW" will be placed on your boot partition. NOTE THAT THE BENCHMARK HAS TO BE ON YOUR BOOT DRIVE (ie: D:\) (required space: ~31 MB): PLEASE DO NOT ALTER.

Copy the files COMCAT.DLL, OLEAUT32.DLL, VB5DB.DLL and msvbvm50.dll to the \WINNT\SYSTEM32 directory.

WARNING: MAKE SURE THAT YOU SAVE YOUR OLD SOLIDWORKS REGISTRY INFORMATION BY USING THE SOLIDWORKS REGISTRY WIZARD.  IF YOU DON'T, THE BENCHMARK WILL REARRANGE YOUR DISPLAY SETTINGS AND OVERWRITE ALL OF YOUR OPTION SETTINGS.
 

Machine Requirements

You must have an installed registered copy of SolidWorks 98 on your machine.

The benchmark must be installed on the boot drive under the directory \BenchmarkSW.

The test should be run on a machine that has just been rebooted.

There should be no other applications running on the machine during the test.

While the test is running, ensure the status window is not over the graphics area in the SolidWorks window.

You must have 160 Meg of RAM or more.

Make sure that SolidWorks is not already running.

Make sure that the Windows toolbar is not set to "always on top."

Set the screen resolution to 1024x768.

Running the benchmark

WARNING: MAKE SURE THAT YOU SAVE YOUR OLD SOLIDWORKS REGISTRY INFORMATION BY USING THE SOLIDWORKS REGISTRY WIZARD.  IF YOU DON'T, THE BENCHMARK WILL REARRANGE YOUR DISPLAY SETTINGS AND OVERWRITE ALL OF YOUR OPTION SETTINGS.

The executable to run is called SWBenchmark98-alpha.exe and is located in "\BenchmarkSW\Exe" There are two ways to run the program: one is in batch mode and the other is in GUI mode. BEFORE RUNNING PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT SOLIDWORKS IS NOT ALREADY RUNNING. In either case, when the program is run a dialog box will come up saying that it has modified the registry settings. Just hit OK and continue. On the first run after an install, a dialog box is going to come up querying the user about some information that it cannot get from the system. Please enter the appropriate values for the text boxes. This file will be saved to "\BenchmarkSW\info.txt". As long as this file exists, on the machine you are trying to run on, you will not be asked this information again. If for some reason the information you were queried about changes, delete the file info.txt and run the benchmark again.
 
Note: Results may vary between the first run and subsequent runs due to caching.  Please run the test multiple times to get the best results.
 

Batch Mode

Batch mode consists of giving the command-line parameter /B (i.e. from the run window in Windows type "\BenchmarkSW\Exe\SWBenchmark98-alpha.Exe /B"). This causes the benchmark to run in a batch mode where the only user input will be to say OK to the dialog box that comes up saying that it has modified the registry settings. Here are the command line options:

/B - Run in batch mode
/F name - Specifies an HTML file to save to. (If /F not specified, saves to results.htm)
/R n - Specifies number of times "n" to run the benchmark. (If /R not specified, runs once)
/A - Runs all the tests. (default)
/G - Runs only the graphics test.
/P - Runs only the CPU performance test.
/I - Runs only the I/O test.

Some valid command line would be:

SWbenchmark98-alpha.exe /B
This would run all the tests once saving to the file results.htm.

SWbenchmark98-alpha.exe /B /F graphics.htm /G
This would run the graphics test once saving to the file graphics.htm.

SWbenchmark98-alpha.exe /B /F IO.htm /I /R 2
This would run the I/O test twice saving the results to the file IO.htm.

GUI mode

GUI mode consists of asking the user through a user's interface what options she/he wants. A window will come up displaying 4 radio buttons. Select which test you want to run (Complete Test, Test Graphics, Test Processor, and Test I/O). Then click on the "Run" button. This will cause the program to run the test the user chose. At the end of the test, the results will be shown in the text boxes. At this point, the user can select to save the file by clicking on the "Save file" button and typing in a file name to save.

The Tests

Complete test

This test is a geometric mean of all the tests below.

CompleteTest = ((A'/A)*(B'/B)*(C'/C)*(D'/D)*(E'/E))^(1/5)
where
 A = Graphics test: rotating the bottom case
 B = Graphics test: rotating the assembly line without transparency
C = Graphics test: rotating the assembly line with transparency
D = I/O test's results
E = CPU test's results
 A' = Graphics test: rotating the bottom case on the reference machine
 B' = Graphics test: rotating the assembly line without transparency on the reference machine
C' = Graphics test: rotating the assembly line with transparency on the reference machine
D' = I/O test's results on the reference machine
E' = CPU test's results on the reference machine

Graphics test

This test will load two models: the BottomCase and the Assembly Line. Both models will be rotated and timed. The Assembly Line will also be rotated in transparent mode. Please note that alpha transparency is used rather than screen door transparency. The individual tests for the graphics will be reported in seconds.  The total of the individual graphics results will be computed as

TotalGraphics = (A'/A)^(1/3) *(B'/B)^(1/3) * (C'/C)^(1/3)
where
A = Rotate bottom case
B = Rotate Assembly Line without Transparency
C = Rotate Assembly line with Transparency
A' = Rotate bottom case on the reference machine
B' = Rotate Assembly Line without Transparency on the reference machine
C' = Rotate Assembly Line with Transparency on the reference machine

I/O Intensive Test

This test will load some files and save them, reporting a time in seconds normalized to the reference machine.

CPU IntensiveTest

This test will load some models and do CPU intensive operations. The time to do so will be recorded in seconds normalized to the reference machine.

Results

The reporting of the times will be written to an HTML file that contains the results and the configuration information for your machine. NOTE THAT IF YOU DECIDE TO SAVE TO AN EXISTING FILE THAT THE RESULTS WILL BE APPENDED TO THE END OF THE EXISTING FILE. If you want a completely new file, then save to a different file name or delete the old file. The scores will be reported for the Graphics, the I/O, and the CPU performance with the complete time being the geometric mean of these aforementioned timings. Also, for the Graphics test a sub-list describing the timings of each individual test will be reported. In addition to these timings, the system information will be displayed. Here is a typical output run for a complete test run once:
APC SolidWorks 98 Benchmark results
© Copyright 1998, Standard Performance Evaluation Corportation

Date: 07\06\1998
Time: 16:01
Results 
Geometric Mean Graphics CPU Intensive I/O Intensive 
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 
Bottom Case 1.00 
Assembly Line 1.00 
AssemblyLine w/ Xparency 1.00 
 
GRAPHICS HARDWARE CONFIGURATION  SYSTEM HARDWARE CONFIGURATION  SOFTWARE CONFIGURATION 
Graphics Accelerator PERMEDIA 2 reference board  Processor Type Pentium II 300 Mhz  OS Microsoft Windows NT 
Graphics Driver Version 2-11.0459  Number of CPUs OS Version Version 4.0 (Build 1381: Service Pack 3) 
Total graphics memory 8 MB  Floating Point Integral  OpenGL Vendor 3Dlabs 
Color Depth 32  Primary Cache (KB) 64K  OpenGL Version 1.1.23 
Overlay/Underlay Buffer Secondary Cache (KB) 512K  OpenGL Extensions GL_EXT_vertex_array GL_EXT_bgra GL_EXT_paletted_texture GL_EXT_texture_object GL_3DLabs_Driver_State GL_EXT_polygon_offset GL_WIN_swap_hint GL_EXT_shared_texture_palette GL_KTX_buffer_region 
DepthBuffer 16 bit  Tertiary Cache (KB) 0K  SolidWorks Version 1.00 
Accumulation Buffer Memory (MB) 224  SolidWorks DateCode 1998099 
Auxiliary Buffer Disk Size (MB) 1200  SolidWorks Benchmark Version 1.1.2
Other Buffer Disk Type IDE quantum fireball st4  Window Width 1024 
Display List Memory Page Size (KB) 4096  Window Height 768 
Texture Memory  AGP  Comments None 
Display Manufacturer / Model ViewSonic 
Display Resolution 1024 X 768 
Display Size/Type 17"/EA 
Display Refresh Rate 75Hz 
Swap on Vertical Retrace Yes 
 
List Price N/A
Test Date 07\06\1998 
Availability Now 
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