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Hey all –
I have a few models that are a real nightmare to work on because of really, really long regeneration time. It’s not a large assembly. It is just a single part, but its complex. I have dumbed the model down as much a possible but I can’t simplify the features anymore. I’m at the minimum. There is no file corruption or anything like that going on. I’ve modeled this several time in many different ways with the same results. When I get to the later stages of the design that’s when things go bad. When that happens - as soon as I make a change & and begin regeneration the CPU usage ramps to 50% and just holds there for several minutes and the application in task manages says “not responding” after several minutes it comes around.
I’m running WF 4.0 M100 on a certified system: It’s a Dell 690 with 4GB RAM and a Quadro FX 4600 graphics adapter. I’ve set my graphics card to best performance rather than best quality but things are still dragging. Can the 3GB switch help me? Can it eben be set on my individual machine to speed up Pro/E or is that something that can only be set on a server and not on my user account or on my local machine?Please help – is there anything i can do?
Thanks Everyone – Hope everyone has a Happy and SAFE New Year’s Eve.
Cheers
tw
Tracy
The 3 gig switch is something you set on your local machine. I would not change it without letting the proper people in your It department know that you are making the change, not that it can harm anything but the IT department generally likes to know when things like this are being changed.
Additionally I would say that I don't think making a change to the 3 gig switch is going to improve the regeneration time of a model.
You might want to further investigate the way the model was constructed , feature order and types of features greatly change the regeneration time of models. you might consider supressing large patterns during the design phase of the model and then resuming features when the design is complete. That way the model may regenerate more quickly and when the design is complete resume the features.
In Reply to Tracy Willis:
Hey all –
I have a few models that are a real nightmare to work on because of really, really long regeneration time. It’s not a large assembly. It is just a single part, but its complex. I have dumbed the model down as much a possible but I can’t simplify the features anymore. I’m at the minimum. There is no file corruption or anything like that going on. I’ve modeled this several time in many different ways with the same results. When I get to the later stages of the design that’s when things go bad. When that happens - as soon as I make a change & and begin regeneration the CPU usage ramps to 50% and just holds there for several minutes and the application in task manages says “not responding” after several minutes it comes around.
I’m running WF 4.0 M100 on a certified system: It’s a Dell 690 with 4GB RAM and a Quadro FX 4600 graphics adapter. I’ve set my graphics card to best performance rather than best quality but things are still dragging. Can the 3GB switch help me? Can it eben be set on my individual machine to speed up Pro/E or is that something that can only be set on a server and not on my user account or on my local machine?Please help – is there anything i can do?
Thanks Everyone – Hope everyone has a Happy and SAFE New Year’s Eve.
Cheers
tw
So - We set up a 64 bit machine Dell T5400 - Windows 7 - NVIDIA Quadro FX3700 loaded - WF4.0 m100 – and had the 8GB of ram installed. That should have been a great machine, but the machine ran worse than my 32 bit machine did. The only thing out of the ordinary was that Windows 7 isn’t in PTC’s platform support matrix for the Dell T5400. Once they set me up I noticed immediately that is was slower even on simple tasks. Spin, Pan & zoom were lagging, minor drawing updates were slower, it was terrible compared to my 32 bit machine. Then we installedan Nvidia Quadro "performance driver" which was better suited for CAD,that was a big improvement and it now seems to be running at least as well as my old 32bit. It seems pretty stable so far, but I can't say that it's any faster than it was. I'll be testing that out in the coming weeks.
Thank you for you help
T. Willis
(replies)
Several ideas come to mind.
1. Obviously, do consider updating to i7. Its represents a significant boost in terms of processing power.
2. Updating to win 64. But this only help if you have very large assemblies and take more than 4gb of memory. If you find that your hardisk activities is always high, then win64 will help. Once you have upgrded to win 64, add memory until about 6-8gb will be great.
3. You can set your accuracy to lower (i typically use 0.01mm abs), but scale up your model 10x or more. eg 1mm becomes 100mm. etc Using mm instead of inch also helps. ie instead of 1 inch (proe only sees it as 1
unit) use 25.4mm instead (proe sees 25.4 units now)
4. Other strategies are : try subdividing the model into several parts, where the complex parts are in 1 part, and the features where you need to change always in another part, then merging them in assembly.
What about Geom Checks? Are there any of those? (Look under the Info Menu..)
If there are Geom Checks, I’d suggest working those issue out before looking into hardware changes.
Adding more memory can help in some cases, but I suspect accuracy / Geom Check issues first, in this case.
For similar situations I've just gone with a datum curve representation.
It looks the same and plots the same. To make it even faster, export it as an iges and then re-import it as a datum curve from file - voila, no regen time.
It worked well enough to represent a diamond pierced expanded metal part- plots great, looks great. Simulates a few hundred openings and opens too fast to notice the time it takes.
It may also help to change from a circular section to square or octagonal. Try making a short segment and patterning it. Or make a small segment and assemble them to get the full part.
Best of Luck and Happy New Year!
In Reply to Tracy Willis:
Hey all –
I have a few models that are a real nightmare to work on because of really, really long regeneration time. It’s not a large assembly. It is just a single part, but its complex. I have dumbed the model down as much a possible but I can’t simplify the features anymore. I’m at the minimum. There is no file corruption or anything like that going on. I’ve modeled this several time in many different ways with the same results. When I get to the later stages of the design that’s when things go bad. When that happens - as soon as I make a change & and begin regeneration the CPU usage ramps to 50% and just holds there for several minutes and the application in task manages says “not responding” after several minutes it comes around.
I’m running WF 4.0 M100 on a certified system: It’s a Dell 690 with 4GB RAM and a Quadro FX 4600 graphics adapter. I’ve set my graphics card to best performance rather than best quality but things are still dragging. Can the 3GB switch help me? Can it eben be set on my individual machine to speed up Pro/E or is that something that can only be set on a server and not on my user account or on my local machine?Please help – is there anything i can do?
Thanks Everyone – Hope everyone has a Happy and SAFE New Year’s Eve.
Cheers
tw
"The only thing out of the ordinary was that Windows 7 isn’t in PTC’s platform support matrix for the Dell T5400. Once they set me up I noticed immediately that is was slower even on simple tasks. Spin, Pan & zoom were lagging, minor drawing updates were slower, it was terrible compared to my 32 bit machine. Then we installedan Nvidia Quadro "performance driver" which was better suited for CAD,that was a big improvement and it now seems to be running at least as well as my old 32bit. It seems pretty stable so far, but I can't say that it's any faster than it was. I'll be testing that out in the coming weeks."
Almost sounds like Windows 7 is Running Pro/Engineer in compatibility mode, it was only introduced in Build M120, almost sounds like a build or install issue.
I did not see this in your post, you are running it in compatibility mode:
"Windows 7 - NVIDIA Quadro FX3700 loaded - WF4.0 m100" Try a newer build of WF 4.0