First of all, apologies if this question was asked before. Since Dassault broke the SW Formums but moving it to 3ds' horrible UI, I have no idea how to search the Routing group only so the search results are completely random and irrelevant. 

I would like to connect with users here that work on large piping projects in SW. I have been using Routing add-in for a long time but never really found a way how to make it more reliable. We have designer that uses Inventor and he does all the big projects. Inventor seems to handle their routing addin a lot better, also imported geometries (STEP) do not seem to slow down the model so much as in SW. He even works on his retail laptop that does not have any fancy GPU that we have in SW machines. It's incredible the level of complexity he can handle in Inventor on his basic machine. 

We have 2 new guys joining for a larger project and and we have to make a quick decision whether we cling on to SW or order for them adsk licences.

I do know people work on the large stuff in SW with routing but I still don't understand how they do it. Support we get is limited. 

Years ago I got an advice to keep valves and gaskets outside the route and just route pipes, flanges, branches, etc. Basically, separate route per spool. I think it was a post on old forms with video demonstrating this approach. This has been the workflow to date. It also helps with BOMs. Using routing this way solved some disatrerous crashes and loss of productivity, before we could use whole route for no reason just by editing it, changing dimension etc. However, models are still heavy. A lot more activities are required (mating/aligning etc.) which slow down the process (we learnt how to deal with it so it's not that bad). When editing, large model with multiple routes, crashes are frequent. Our VAR is calming that machines we use are more than enough to work on 'enormous' models.

I believe the fix is to better optimise the library or change the workflow. Happy to do it but need advice how. I'd like to push the SW for new guys but everybody knows the Inventor guy is the fastest and he laughs seeing the SW users struggles.

There was a guy @P in the old forums. He was very helpful and made me stick to SW but seems inactive now (3ds migration?? Switched to adsk perhaps...). Anybody working on large piping projects with routing please help. I'd like to learn more about your hardware, software configuration, workflows and tips on library optimisation. 

Using weldments for pipes is one solution, I know. We paid for premium to have routing...to work faster though. If it is more usable then the preference is to stick to it.