CATIA V5: Performance Issues When Moving Parts in Large Assemblies

In certain cases, the screen will appear to have frozen, and any further movement of the mouse doesn’t seem to have any effect – after a short period, the screen will become active again and the part will have been moved to its new position. Obviously this can cause problems, because it can then take several attempts to locate the part in the correct position and orientation. The reason for the freezing, or delay, is usually due to the presence of an Inertia Measure within the assembly.

Depending on a certain setting within the main CATIA options, the Inertia Measure is recalculated every time the product is updated. This can mean that every time a part is moved within the product, the Inertia Measure (including the centre of gravity and inertia) is updated. In situations where a user is experiencing this issue, the following setting within the main CATIA options should be turned off:

It is advisable, however, to only turn this option off in the scenario described above.  It is good practice to generally update the measure automatically, especially in cases where a mass measurement is populated downstream into a drawing border, for example.