Improving Performance When Opening and Saving Files from a Previous Version

You can improve save performance by clearing the Force referenced documents to save to current version system option in the External References tab.

When you clear the option, only documents that are modified in the current session are saved to the current version of SOLIDWORKS. This reduces save times significantly on the first save of large assemblies and drawings.

To clear the system option:

  1. Click Tools > Options and in System Options, click External References.
  2. Clear Force referenced documents to save to current version.
  3. In SOLIDWORKS 2020, open a SOLIDWORKS 2019 assembly with SOLIDWORKS 2019 parts.
  4. Add a mate in the top-level assembly.
  5. Click File > Save.

SOLIDWORKS saves the top-level assembly because you modified it by adding a mate. However, because you did not enable the system option, the parts that are saved with SOLIDWORKS 2019 are not converted to SOLIDWORKS 2020.