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Ok I appreciate that there are a lot of variables when it comes to graphics performance in Creo...drivers etc.
But we have just recently switched from Wildfire 4 to Creo 2 (m050) and have a range of what I believe are top end PCs (Lenovo D20's, D30's, Dell T3500's), each with at least 8GB of RAM and all have high end nVidia Quadro graphics cards (5000's, 4800's, K4000's etc.)
We have seen a noticable drop in spin/pan/zoom performance when working in our larger assemblies 2000+ parts in comparison to Wildfire 4. Turning off options such as 'spin_with _part_entities' and 'spin_with_silhouettes' has helped a bit with spinning but pan and zoom are still very sluggish.
Our engineers are having to use the Temporary shade to be able to work at a reasonable pace.
We 'rolled back' a graphics driver on one PC to a supported version based on PTCs website but it made no difference.
Also the new measure tool takes a few seconds to activate when working in a large assembly.
So I'm just wondering if anybody else out there has noticed similar drops in graphics performance and if you were able to do anything to improve it?
Thanks for any and all replies...I'll post back whatever I get.
Regards,
Neal
Sounded like a great idea but I don't see any difference.
In Reply to Dave Clark:
This is going to sound like a very odd solution, but it's worked for me. Now in Creo, you can create your own selection filters in Modeling and Assembly (why they are different is beyond me). You can create a filter set in File/Options/Selection. I've got mine set to edges and surfaces, and it shows up as "My Filter" in the filtering menu (where the not-so-smart smart filter lives) at the lower right of the screen. Once I had this set, all of a sudden my dynamic panning, zooming and rotating was back to normal. I was beginning to wonder if the "Smart" filter was constantly trying to highlight large things as I attempted to move the assemblies dynamically. I've attached an image so you can see the Selection form.
It's worth a shot. It fixed me up.
I hope this helps.
Dave Clark
Sr. CAD Application Engineer
Dukane Corporation
Intelligent Assembly Solutions Division
2900 Dukane Drive
St. Charles, IL 60174
630-797-4922 (Phone)
630-797-4949 (Fax)
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Thanks to Doug Schaefer, David Haigh and Dave Clark for their suggestions...
Doug's - run Creo with empty config.pro to determine if an option or options is having an impact.
This I will do...I see m070 is actually now avavilable so will give that a bash.
Dave's - configure the selection filter to include only a few items.
Thanks again to everybody that responded.
Neal
Here's a tip from a Lenovo reference doc for Creo.
Video Driver Quick TipSet your NVIDIA card to Creo or Pro-ENGINEER with vertical sync disabled.Disabling vertical sync gives you better performance because it streamlines the way data is sent to the video card.
We also use the config optionslods_enabled yes and lods_value 75 which reduces shading quality during spin, zoom and pan.
Tried all 3 of those individually and together, I don't see any improvement.
To be clear, where I see a huge performance loss is spinning in shaded mode. Spinning wireframe with or without hidden lines is good. My test model is a packed shipping carton. Inside the carton are a number of trays. Each vacuum formed tray has 40 somewhat comples drafted pockets. Each pocket has one of our products in it. When the assembly is shadded the only thing visible are the 6 plannar surfaces of the shipping carton. Should spin really easily, right?
Well, I just found something that made a huge difference. The packing trays in the assembly had a transparent appearance applied to them (not in the part itself). Turning off transparency from the file/options/model display dialog improved shaded rotation response by at least a factor of 100. I also cleared the assembly appearance and turned transparency back on from the menu and got the same result. I can make the box transparent & performance is still good. Seems to not like having lots of complex transparent surfaces. Maybe I should have gotten one of those new AMD Firepro video cards with their new transparency feature.
In Reply to Magnus Salomonsson:
Here's a tip from a Lenovo reference doc for Creo.
Video Driver Quick TipSet your NVIDIA card to Creo or Pro-ENGINEER with vertical sync disabled.Disabling vertical sync gives you better performance because it streamlines the way data is sent to the video card.
We also use the config optionslods_enabled yes and lods_value 75 which reduces shading quality during spin, zoom and pan.
PTC quality philosophy: We've upped our quality standards. Up yours.
Thanks Olaf. Sounds like PTC has to write something into their code as well:
http://creo.ptc.com/2013/08/08/ptc-creo-2-0-order-independent-transparency-support-for-nvidia-gpus/
Anybody know which build this will be?
In Reply to Olaf Corten:
Hi David, and others,
The Order Independent Transparency (OIT) was an exclusive option for AMD. But only for one year.
I was told by an NVIDIA guy during the conference in Anaheim that this option should soon be available with NVIDIA cards and Creo 2.0 if you have the latest drivers.
But up till now I still haven't seen it (Creo 2.0 M070 + latest NVIDIA driver for Quadro FX 2800M). Still only Stippled or Blended.
The performance issue you describe is also shown with the OCUS Benchmark comparison chart:: comparison of Wildfire 4.0, Creo Elements/Pro 5.0, Creo Parametric 1.0 and Creo Parametric 2.0 with an editted v6 benchmark.
(Click on one of the graphs to go to the excel file.)
Below a screenshot of the 64bit WF4 vs Creo 2.0 comparison sheet.
You can see that, although overall graphics performance is better (-32%), the very advanced shaded spin is much slower (+81%).
In the very advanced shaded spin test the transparency is set to blended.