Slow redraw with assembly in SWX 2006

[twinsemi]

I have just upgraded from 2004 to 2006 and find that my largest assembly model rotates very slowly now. Hardware is Athlon 3000+, 1 GB RAM, Quadro 4 700 XGL and software is XP SP2.0, SWX 2006 SP2.0, latest Nvidia 7184 driver from SWX site. I suspect that the model is too large for the 64 MB card that I am using. When rotating the model with Task Manager open, CPU usage goes to 100% and page file varies by 30-50 MB. (jumps around randomly between 530-580 MB) This only happens with one assembly model, the others all rotate smoothly and page file usage stays pretty much flat. The sldasm file size is 16 MB and there are about 80 parts in it. I haven't added up all the parts, but they probably total over 64 MB. Does anyone have any experience with this card or situation? Does the total model need to be in the video card to work smoothly? Did my model just get enough larger by going to 2006 to go over the limit? Same model worked fine in 2004.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks

 

[SBaugh]

Did you upgrade or do a new install?

"Quadro 4 700 XGL" - Have you checked your drivers? They have upgraded since SW04.

When rotating the model with Task Manager open, CPU usage goes to 100%

As it should.

Does anyone have any experience with this card or situation?

have you ran a search yet or looked through the FAQ's? If not you need to that before postings

Does the total model need to be in the video card to work smoothly?

Huh? What do you mean... are you asking if the file size exceeds the amount of memory on the card will cause this... if that is what you are asking then the answer is no. If not, please explain.

Did my model just get enough larger by going to 2006 to go over the limit?

What limit... there's a limit? There is no limit to files sizes in SW.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376

 

[Mindnumb]

As your other models rotate smoothly, there might be soething peculiar in your assembly.
At our company we have experienced slowdowns when " show reference dimensions" is checked in the annotation folder in the feature tree. mostly this has affected performance in 3d-scetch mode, so this might not apply to you. You might try and fool around a little bit with the individual sub-assemblies and parts, to see if there is any particular that might be the culprit.

Best of luck, Bernt Ødegård, Oslo, Norway.

 

[twinsemi]

Scott,
The 2006 is a new install. 2004 is still on the system in a different directory, however.

As I indicated, the drivers are current. (as of last Friday, anyway)

The unusual situation upon rotation is that memory usage (page file size) jumps around while rotating. This would seem to indicate a large amount of data transfering between the card and main memory. Or not.

I have spent a couple hours so far looking through EngTips for things like this and haven't seen anything that is comparable.

"Limit" in this case is used in the relative sense, assuming that the problem is caused by aggregate file size, whereby above some "limit", performance changes due to the card not being able to hold the model entirely in its own memory. Hypothetical, yes. Do I know that this is happening? No, it's totally speculation. That's why this is a question. Is my old 700 XGL just obsolete for larger models? Is a 128/256 MB card in my future?

Bernt,
I have another assembly with slightly fewer parts in it that moves smoothly and normally. I looked for the "show reference dimensions", but could not find it. ????

When rotating, several of the parts become a single prism for the duration. This is the same prism that is diplayed when you pass the mouse over the item in the feature manager.

I have changed as many performance related options as I can find, to no avail. The most peculiar thing in the model is a 400KB jpeg pasted into a sketch in one of the parts, but it is used in my other model that works fine.

 

[SBaugh]

As I indicated, the drivers are current. (as of last Friday, anyway)

What is current? Current to the Mfg Drivers or the ones SW recommends?

Limits - There are no limits to my knowledge, but newer cards with different chipsets and or drivers will make a difference on the speed of rotation. My Quadro 500 FX runs great for assemblies of 100 parts or less. My 1100 FX runs models of a greater size assemblies (I have run over 3,000 part assembies with this card) and I have to say it ran those assemblies very well. I have been running both cards since they cam out some time during the release of SW04.. and they still perform fine SW06. That is why knowing the exact driver is important or at least make sure its the one SW recommends and not the latest from the MFG site.

The way I understand it:

Video card memory controls the rebuilding of what you see on the screen. RAM is where the calculations are loaded and the CPU is what processes that data into a working model. So the RAM on your video card is only trying to rebuild what you see when you either rotate it or move it. If the card is bad, not supported, the recommended drivers are not used or were installed incorrectly, then that will cause slow downs.

It could als be file specific... if its only happening to one asssembly, then you need to make a SW RX and send that into your VAR so they can see if the issue is reproducible and then they can send it into SW.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376

 

[twinsemi]

A few more added observations.

The problem (parts being replaced by prism blocks and slow rotation) goes away if I select Shaded Mode display rather than Shaded Mode With Edges. Wireframe display produces the blocks, and HLR shows a few blocks rather than the part. Perspective does not seem to matter, nor does shadow.

I can make another assembly model get this problem by adding my largest part to the model. (15 MB) Deleting the extra parts or suppressing them brings things back to normal.

 

[twinsemi]

Like I said in the original post, the latest nVidia driver from SWX (7184) as of last Friday.

 

[SBaugh]

the latest nVidia driver from SWX (7184) as of last Friday.

Sorry I missed that in our original post!

I hate to bother you this again, but did you uninstall, reboot, install the latest drivers, reboot, test?

If not it's worth a try, because I am finding that these drivers when just installed normally causes conflicts between the drivers, supported or not.

You bring up an important point here in your last post.

The problem (parts being replaced by prism blocks and slow rotation) goes away if I select Shaded Mode display rather than Shaded Mode With Edges. Wireframe display produces the blocks, and HLR shows a few blocks rather than the part. Perspective does not seem to matter, nor does shadow.

Are you loading fully resolved?
Have you tried opening the file lightweight?

Under the System options\Assemblies there are a few options you can set to help with visiblity and speed. I have everything checked except "Suspend Rebuild".

Do you have your IMage quality turned up high? If so turn it down some. The higher you make the slower it will be and honestly it will make the file size grow.


SW04 or SW05 made it so that when you opened and assembly you had control over the performance or display of the assenblies, but I can't find it presently in the options of SW. I will look more later, if someone finds these options please post them... Thanks.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376

 

[smcadman]

I was having similar problems and was trying to figure it out also; see thread559-140141. I had a 33Mb. assembly file that when rotating it or modifying the mates, everything would slow down tremendously. The task manager was showing mem usage ballooning higher than 300Mb.

I have had larger files in size that were similar in construction run faster in SW05 SP4.0. Go to Tools > Statistics, and you can find out about the # of parts, unique parts, top-level mates, etc. I ended up moving some of the parts into sub-assemblies, thus reducing the top-level mates and that seemed to speed things up.

Flores
SW06 SP2.0

 

[Mindnumb]

The "show reference dimension" option is located in the feature tree. Towardsthe top of the tree, yo have the "annotation" folder, right click it,and uncheck show reference dimensions, if it is checked.


Hope you figure out the problem !

 

[twinsemi]

I haven't had time to get to the of the re-installing of the driver yet. Maybe today, but if not everybody have a happy Thanksgiving.

Mindnumb,
Thanks. I usually did it that way, but my my brain got distracted by the new stuff in the Feature Manager and started expanding the tree there instead of right clicking. Anyway, Ref Dims were already off.

At this point I am hoping that a driver cleanup and install will help. Absent that, Quadro FX1000 cards seem to be going for about $100 on eBay.

Thanks for the help.

Tom Winsemius