A common issue I see when working with customers is long rebuild times on their parts.  Commonly due to the large number of features in their feature history or the complexity of their design, the time it takes for a rebuild can become an exercise in patience.  These designs can range from small plastic molded parts, to large scale machined and casted parts, but what they all share is the wait time for features to rebuild.

So what can be done about this?  Well, in SolidWorks 2012, they have implemented functionality users have been asking for: Feature Freeze.  This feature allows for you to set a point in your feature history where SolidWorks 2012 will not rebuild any previous features.  If you decide later you need to change them, you can simply go back and remove the Feature Freeze.

Feature Freeze has been disabled by default in 2012, and is enabled through the System Options.

The Feature Freeze Bar will appear at the top of the Feature Manager.

The behavior of the Feature Freeze Bar works much like the Rollback Bar, but you roll down instead of up.  Once dragged to the desired position, your features will be updated to show they are no longer being rebuilt.

Now any rebuilds that occur will only affect the features that come below the Feature Freeze Bar, significantly reducing the rebuild times of your models as you continue your design.

I would highly recommend any users who have been struggling with long rebuild times to give this feature a try and see how much time you will save yourself, along with your sanity.