Improving display performance 1

[cubalibre000]

There is an option to disable the process of hidden edge during view manipulations and reduce the rendering of small volume ?

Thank you...

Using NX 8 and TC9.1

 

[JohnRBaker]

Are you talking in Drafting? In normal Modeling display, unless you use Hidden Line Display with a static wireframe view, there's no HLR processing taking place.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[cubalibre000]

John,
I've read this Siemens document on Solid Edge and I thought that the kernel is the same and so the same setting can be necessary or present in NX.

Improving display performance

Display performance in Solid Edge is improved if your computer is equipped with
a graphics board that supports OpenGL acceleration. The shaded display data in
Solid Edge is manipulated directly by OpenGL during dynamic view operations. The
amount of physical memory on the graphics board also affects display performance.
The hidden line display mode in Solid Edge supports multiple processors. If your
computer contains multiple processors, hidden line performance is improved.
The Process Hidden Edge During View Manipulations option in the View tab
in the Options dialog box affects interactive performance during dynamic view
manipulations, such as when dynamically rotating a view. Processing edges during
dynamic view manipulations can negatively impact interactive performance when
working with complex parts or large assemblies. When this option is set, the display
status of edges (whether they are visible, hidden, or silhouette) is continuously
calculated during dynamic view manipulations. When you clear this option, the
display status of edges is suspended during a dynamic view manipulation. When
the dynamic view manipulation is completed, the edges are processed. This can
significantly improve performance.

Thank you...

Using NX 8 and TC9.1

 

[looslib]

Just becasue Siemens owns Parasolid, NX and Solid Edge, never assume that functionality in one may be in the other. There are many options within the use of the Parasoid kernel that may or may not be enabled by one CAD package over another.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[JohnRBaker]

NX and Solid Edges uses different approaches when it comes to computing so-called 'dynamic' Hidden Edges. And while I'm not all that familiar with the details of Solid Edge, what you copied from the Solid Edge document does allude to that difference.

In NX there are 3 cases where Hidden Edges are displayed, two of them uses the Parasolid kernel and if you have a multi-core system and you've enabled SMP (set the proper environment variable), you will get the maximum benefit. The two cases where Parasolid is doing this work is, 1) in Drafting which you place a Hidden Line removed view on a Drawing, and 2) when you create a 'Static Wireframe' image and then using Visualization Preferences change the 'Edge Display' to be either 'Invisible', 'Gray Thin' or 'Dashed'. However, we no longer recommend that you use this 'Static Wireframe' approach except in special cases. The reason is because, by definition, it's STATIC. That is, if you rotate the display then you have to completely recompute the Hidden Edges.

Where NX appears to differ from Solid Edge is that rather then depending on this compute intensive, even with the help of Parasolid and it's multi-core processing, we use the graphics card to do all of the work for us when you're working in Modeling and you wish to see a Hidden Line display which will update dynamically as you rotate the display. This is that THIRD case I mentioned above. This happens whenever you're working in a shaded mode and you change the display, either by pressing MB3 and going to the list of 'Rendering Styles', or you go to the 'View' toolbar, and you select either the 'Wireframe with Hidden Edges' or the 'Wireframe with Dim Edges' options. In both of these cases the work is being done by the Graphics 'engine' alone and thus is as fast as it can possibly be. In fact, when you're working with the display set to 'Shaded with Edges' the same process is taking place just that the models faces are being rendered using their own colors but the edges that you see around that shaded faces are actually the result of the 'Hidden Edges' having been removed by the graphics engine. So when you switch from a Shaded display to one of the 'Wireframe with Hidden(Dim) Edges' what is basically happening is that the faces of the model are being rendered as if the 'color' of the faces were the SAME as the background which gives you the effect that they have NO color whatsover. So that's why it's JUST as fast to see and rotate a shaded image as it is to see and rotate a 'Wireframe with Hidden(Dim) Edges' display because the same effort is being expeneded. But you MUST NOT confuse this with the hidden line removal which is taking place when you're viewing a 'Static Wireframe' display. That's why, starting several releases back, we moved the 'Static' options to a much lower level of accessibility (you HAVE to now activate them from within 'Visualization Preferences' and not from a toolbar or the MB3 display pop-up) and replaced them with the 'shading-based' schemes, the 'Wireframe with Hidden(Dim) Edges' options.

Anyway, I hope that helps explain where NX and Solid Edge differs when it comes to Hidden Edge Display. In all honesty, I think NX's approach is much better and take maximum advantage of whatever hardware resources that you have, be it at the CPU (i.e. multi-core) level or at the graphics engine level.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[cubalibre000]

Hi John,
this is a very interesting article.


Thank you...

Using NX 8 and TC9.1