14-Alexandrite

Question

Increase Creo performance - long load times

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
February 25, 2013
8 replies
31452 views

We are using Creo 1.0 M030 and we have experienced this since WF5. The loading times for models and drawings becomes a huge factor in my efficiency because I spent so much time waiting. Even switching between drawing sheets can take quite a while. My computer has a SSD, i7 processor with 8gb RAM. Win7 x64 and a quadro 3000M. I am using a Dell M6600 laptop. Are there any settings to increase performance of drawings or something that I can do to help with this?

General

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TomD.inPDX

17-Peridot

I suspect it is the processor speed. At only 2.4Ghz, these machines are not exacly blazing. I have the same setup except the HD is a normal platter drive. I believe you can upgrade the CPU for a faster one but not by a while lot. Contact Dell to learn more.

If you go this route, please report back your findings. I am also interested in doing this for the same reason.

M

MartinHanak

24-Ruby III

Aaron,

open Task Manager and look at Performance tab (CPU Usage) during loading of your model/drawing. Make sum of CPU usage of all threads and you will get CPU load. If the sum is ~100% then the CPU is a bottleneck. If not then the problem is somewhere else.

Martin Hanak

A

Aaronm87

Author

14-Alexandrite

I have attached an imagine while using the drawing. I will have to wait about 2 minutes for the page to load if I switch pages (load times dependent on the page I switch to) or if I activate another window and then reactivate the drawing window. The CPU never reaches more than 18% and cores 4,6,7 never show any activity. My boss also has the same type of computer and experiences the exact same thing so it is not something about my computer. Would submiting a ticket solve anything?

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MartinHanak

24-Ruby III

Aaron,

13 % is an average CPU load.

8 * 13 = 104 % CPU usage. So it seems to me that CPU could be a bottleneck.

You can try the following:

>>> in Task Manager activate Processes tab

>>> select xtop.exe process, press right mouse button and click Set Affinity command

>>> now you can see the list of CPU cores assigned to xtop.exe

>>> check CPU 0 and uncheck all others

>>> load your model/drawing ... xtop.exe will use only first core and you will see the real load percentage for "1 CPU computer"

>>> you can use Set Affinity command again and test another combination of CPU cores

Martin Hanak

A

Aaronm87

Author

14-Alexandrite

Martin,

It appears that you are correct, if I use a single core it stays maxed at 100%. So the only way to increase the model load times is to upgrade to a faster CPU? Making the models smaller really isnt an option.

M

MartinHanak

24-Ruby III

Aaron,

it is difficult to give you a valuable advice ...

If you can >>> test PC with faster CPU, but I am not sure that an improvement will be worth of spent money. Maybe overclocked desktop PC will provide more power ...

It looks like the problem is related to drawings. My suggestions follow:

1.] do not use multisheet drawings

2.] when you are working on drawing - use selection filters (see bottom right corner of window)

3.] when you are working on drawing - use Erase command to "suppress" unimportant views temporarily

Good luck

Martin Hanak

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TomD.inPDX

17-Peridot

The available tech for laptops is quite limited. If you really need a faster computer for certain operations, it might be worth going back to the desktop brick with more power. Desktops have much higher CPU speed available than their laptop brothers. If you are using a license server, this may not be too big an issue.

A

Anonymous

More system ram helps, I see your free ram is down to the last 5mb. chuck some serious graphics performance at it, Quadro k4000 should help. The more cores you have on graphics the better for Creo 1.0.m040. On multi page drawings I was down to 1 mouse click selection per couple of minutes, until I got things powerful enough to run what I have to do. I have 16GB ram and the k4000 and am running family table assemblies, open size of around 20gb, now with not a lot of waiting around.

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ChristopherLewi

12-Amethyst

Loading of drawings is usually slow because it's re-rendering your drawing views. As stated above it's really irritating that HLR is so tedious and also really irritating that each view isn't rendered via a seperate core. However it is a reality even in Creo 2 and 3 i think.

Recently demoed to a user bitching about the same observation here, shaded with edges view 6seconds, HLR view 6 minutes. He started using drawing reps, forcing wireframe config, setting views to use environment very quickly and now just lets the view rendering be the last bit of his process.

Hope it helps, hope i understood the pain properly.

Of course performance is always relative and equally always sux. Some of our users insist on modelling threads and still complain that HLR takes forever.

D

dschenken

1-Visitor

It's not just performing HLR, it is creating records representing all the real and silhouette edges, both completely visible and partially occluded.

Identifying the edges could be done on separate cores, but each core is competing for access to the same in-memory database to keep the edge list current. It probably could be done, but writing parallel applications is easiest when there is little interaction, such as ray tracing where each pixel color is independently arrived at.

On the way to slowdom - I've had users import shrink wraps of the top assemblies into sub-assemblies to make installation drawings, with same sub-assemblies going into the assembly the shrink wrap came from. Query select an item and it turned out there were 2-4 copies of the top assembly surface geometry in the top level. If it's blanked it ceases to exist, right?

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Anonymous

A lot of time can be saved, and performance gained, by going through the message log and getting rid of the causes of the errors that pop up.

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ChristopherLewi

12-Amethyst

Francis comment is a good point. If you were to inspect the timestamps in the trail file on reteive, you'd be able to see how much of the wait is HLR related (and yes the other stuff that David pointed out) and how much is pure retreival. If you're seeing msgs relating to ambiguous sketches, regenerations of instances, circular references it can impact you quite a bit for sure. we've seen 15% improvements on retreival just by cleaning up models for sure. I'm thinking of writing a small script to parse the various text logs that get chucked out by creo to make a condensed list of complaints. Half way there, if anyone has a finished one they'd be willing to give me i'd appreciate it.

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Anonymous

Creo can be so messy with disgarded stuff that has failed behind the scenes, failed references to parts no longer there, suppressed features that are no longer there in the models and assemblies can be difficult to detect and delete. I have had family table vairifications take 8 hours to do. Since these have been got on top of bigger vairifications now take 30 to 40 minutes to complete.

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Devidas

1-Visitor

I have observed huge performance improvement after setting below properties for swtich from one drawing sheet to another sheet in multisheet drawing.

Intially it was taking 1 to 2 min time and now it taking less than 4 sec.

1. Set config.pro option ‘show_axes_by_view_scope’ to ‘top_model_only’
2. Open drawing

3. Set drawing detail option ‘user_command’ to ‘delete_erased_axes’

4. Update Sheets and save the drawing

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gkoch

1-Visitor

Yes, this is explained in the knowledge database article CS27735 : Switching to Annotate tab in drawing mode takes exceptionally longer time in Creo Parametric than in previous releases

http://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS27735

But this seemed a little off-topic, as the thread was originally about "long load times".

However, if this thread has mutated into general performance issues with Creo Parametric, then you may want to check this new hub article as well:

CS188291 : Slow performance in drawings with Creo Parametric in general or in comparison to older versions

http://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS188291

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BrianTaylor

8-Gravel

I am very surprised no one has mentioned to turn on Fast HLR. View tab in drawing second icon to the left. This is also a config.pro option. This option drastically speeds up HLR performance during initial retrieval and switching sheets. Also CREO 4 brings multi cores to bear for HLR removal FINALLY !