PWx - rendering a lightweight assembly

In SWx 2006 we can render a lightweight assembly, which sounds like a
great way to open up some memory on assemblies where renderings crash
SWx (due to running out of memeory). You know - load lightweight, then
render without all the overhead of resolving components = more memory
for PWx.

I was wondering if any of you have actually tested this out?

Thanks-
Ed

Background: An old customer called today to get a new view of large
assembly I rendered a while back, so I opened the file, converted to
2006 (probably from 2004), saved and closed Swx, then reopened the asm
lightweight in 2006. So far, so good - the assembly used about a third
less memory than it used to. This is excellent, because every one of
the FINAL renderings I did previously ahd scraped the upper edge of
memory usage (around 2.3 GB before a crash)

Then I go to render (just a small test render, one I used to be able to
handle pretty well with the resolved version of this asm in the old
version). Sure enough, memory usage started low as it was chinking
through accessing the materials, but then it got to a section of the
rendering I don't remember from before: "translating geometry and
property'. As this message was up, the memory usage shot up and
eventaully crashed SWx somewhere north of 1.98 GB of memory usage (with
3GB switch enabled, of course) My theory, of course, is that this is
where SWx started resolving the lightweight components, (so we are not,
in fact, rendering lightweight - we jsut aren't being told about it)
but I have no way of knowing that right now. Hence the question

BTW - same exact machine as the old rendering was executed on - we kept
it as a spare, and I wanted to do the test on it so I didn't tie up my
main system. What I find curious is that loading the asm resolved is
taking forever (about an hour and counting just to access the rendering
toolbar). In 2004 it was slow, but more like 5-10 minutes slow.

 

Just got access to the asm as loaded resolved and ran my test
rendering. Memory usage at the end of the rendering was 1.35 GB with
hard shadows (I was chicken - Heck, I just wnated to see if the
materials were still applied correctly) and 1.35 with the original soft
shadows that I used for the lightweight test render (... interesting).

I watched more closely and did not see any message about 'translating
geometry and property, which was the process where the 'lightweight'
rendering hung.

So, in this test, rendering a lightweight assembly uses significantly
MORE memory than rendering a fully resolved assembly (at least 50%
more, but I can't tell for sure because I wasn't babystitting the
system when it crashed to desktop on the leightweight render, and well
it crashed so it is unkowable HOW much more it would have used).

Anyone else have a different experience, or see a flaw in what I did?

Ed

 

Hi Ed,

I've never had very good luck rendering lightweight assemblies. In fact the
few times I tried it I received a CTD. I gave up after that and haven't
tired it since in SW 2006 or SW 2007 since.

 

Thanks for the response! I hope others can share their experiences so
we can root this out.

I happen to have the 'what's new guide for 2006 'just to the left of
me (I wanted to see if I missed something).
Regarding lightweight rendering, it says ' A lightweight assembly can
be rendered without resolving any components. Rendering large
assemblies is faster and requires fewer system resources' (pg 42)

I wonder if our friends in Concord might not be aware that there is an
issue? In general they don't publish something that is flat-out wrong.

BTW - your CTD is illuminating. Usually (at least pre-2006) when PWx
fails due to memory, you get a dialog saying that PWx couldn't obtain
the required memory (or something like that). This was the first CTD I
ever remember when doing a rendering.

I will follow up with SWx tomorrow.

Ed

 

"BTW - your CTD is illuminating. Usually (at least pre-2006) when PWx

This typically happens with me also. The only other PW functionality that I
can think which some times gives me a CTD without displaying a memory error
is interactive rendering. I've sent this into SW and they know about it.
It's normally pretty stable using interactive rendering but some files just
don't cooperate.

 

Yeah- thats why I tend to render parasolids of large assys- nothing to
resolve