How to turn off drawing detail mode data

If you are experiencing extremely long file save times for particular drawings, you may want to consider turning off the option to save Drawing Detail Mode Data in the drawing file. This data is only used when the drawing is opened in Detailing mode, so if you do not use this mode then you can safely disable the option. 

Disabling the saving of Drawing Detail Mode Data can significantly improve drawing save times for drawings of large assemblies in particular, but may also apply to parts or smaller assemblies with a high level of graphical detail. For example, if you have patterns with hundreds of instances in a part, the amount of graphical data that must be stored can be very high. 

Starting in SOLIDWORKS 2021 we have an option to disable the saving of some of the detail data for drawings as a System Option (which enables it for all drawings). Still, in SOLIDWORKS 2022 this setting was moved to Document Properties, which makes it document-specific. For most customers, this is ideal because the majority of drawings are able to save normally with the detail mode data included.