SW Performance

Been at work two hours. Been working on this drawing for 1 1/2 hours.
49 minutes of CPU time racked up. Wait on computer time more like 1:15.
Working lightweight, suppressed subassemblies that really hit
performance also. Should've brought a good book to read.

 

Now at work on drawing 2 1/2 hours. 1:22 CPU time and probably 1:40
waiting.

 

3 1/2 at work on drawing. 1:46 CPU time and probably 2 hours waiting.
1.25 GB used by SW. Can't wait to get out of fast mode and bring in all
the parts to complete the drawing.

 

Are you using simplified configuarations for models and assemblies.
This can cut time dramatically.

 

Going to lunch.

At work on drawing 3 hours. 1:52 CPU time and probably 2:12 waiting
time.

 

I know what you mean.
If it weren't for library and customer file compatibility, I would be
tempted to load up the last SP of sw2000
and work with that. Lightening fast (probably 8 to 1) compared to now, and
in my type of work, very few
features I would miss.

Bill

 

Back from lunch
4 1/2 hours on drawing. 2:19 CPU time. 2:40 waiting. Getting to the
point where I have to switch to slow mode and bring in the rest of the
detail.

 

You might try disabling windows virtual memory and see if that helps (
for the large memory projects ). In my instance the project was using 1.3
Gig of memory. I had 2 installed, so should have been no problem. Looking
at task manager revealed that, of that 1.3 gig of useage, windows had
decided that it was a good idea to run 400 meg of that in virtual memory.
Disabling virtual memory was at least a 70% increase in work throughput for
that project and I now run with virtual memory disabled all the time.

 

5 1/2 hours on drawing. 2:43 CPU time. 3 waiting. Notes and dimensions
are taking an unbelievable amount of time. In the last two hours placed
about 6 notes.

Note to Brian. It doesn't look like SW is putting anything on disk
although there is a lot of page faulting. The amount of physical memory
used is equal to the amount SW and other programs are using. Do you
run with the 3Gb switch?

 

6 hours on drawing. 3:01 CPU time. 3:20 waiting. Notes and dimensions
sped up since disabling virtual memory although disk thrashing seems to
have increased.

Also total memory usage is down to 580 Mb from 1.3Gb. It may be the
effect of closing down and reopening the drawing. I can't stay in this
mode because FEA requires all 4Gb sometimes.

 

Since SW invariably crashes before I ever use my 2 GB of RAM, I would like
to pursue the idea of disabling virtual memory. How does one go about it? XP
seems to want a minimum page size of 2 MB.

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"

 

Right click MyComputer
Click Properties
Click the Advanced Tab
Click settings for Performance
Click the Advanced Tab
Click Change
Check No Paging File
Click Set
Click OK, OK, OK, etc.
Restart

My thoughts on doing this are that Windows changes the way it handles memory
and perhaps reduces the memory available for caching and other things to
allow programs to have full access. I noticed more disk thrashing after
disabling paging. I suspect that everytime SW has to load a dll it has to
now go to disk in order to make sure the loaded software has somewhere to
live.

In the long run, I don't know if this is such a good idea unless you have
4Gb of RAM.

 

Yes and no.

We did find that textures can cause a hit and removed them.

Even working on the assemblies is slow.

Image Quality is set near fast which would give a Ship in the Bottle
benchmark of around 20 seconds on this hardware.

LightWeight and Large Assembly mode are enabled except when dimensioning to
temporary axes. Only the drawing is kept open to enable lightweight to be
constantly on. The views are setup and the drafting is done in draft mode.

Some parts and assemblies reside on the network. However, network traffic is
generally a small part of the time hit based on XP's network monitor in
task manager.

Very few parts have features which are considered complex, most are
prismatic extrusions. There are quite a number of helical sweeps, but they
cannot be eliminated since that is our product. One subassembly that causes
quite a bit of performance degradation does so with a single part that has
about 550 bodies in it. So we hide or suppress that part till the end.

The drawing has one top view, three section views and five detail views
spread across three sheets. The drawing is done in shaded mode until the
end.

The time it would take to go back through and create simplified
configurations for all the parts if they where amenable to that would be
weeks and would cause a lot of confusion since we have many parts which are
configurations of other parts.

 

Brooke,
what do you think of Wildfire so far?
I have had enough of SW for a number of reasons and am looking elsewhere
now.
thanks
neil

 

ok so what are the problems? ;o)

 

In my case a single part accounts for a lot of the slow down. It is a
SaveAs of an assembly and has about 500 bodies in it. That will slow
down SW.

However, to set up the drawing I suppress this part until the views are
all setup and I absolutely need it. It is a kludge, but it helps.

....

 

Paul,

Talk about a kludge, 500 bodies in a single part ? gimmie a break.

One of our ID guys tried pulling this crap, said it was faster. Yea, and we
had to re-do the whole thing. I whacked him real good for that. It's
horrible modeling practice. Just because the program will let you do
something doesn't mean it's a good idea,,,, Sheese!!!


Regards

Mark

 

Mark,

It isn't a model, it is an assembly saved as a part. And the part is
faster than the assembly. What kills SW is that there are gaps between
all the bodies because in the real world that is necessary for
weldments.

And, for example, StructureWorks, a SW addin does this kind of thing as
a matter of practice when modeling prestressed concrete.