RE: Creo 2.0 M050 Graphics Performance

nhanratty · ‎Aug 23, 2013

All

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

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dgschaefer · ‎Aug 23, 2013

Since you're seeing the issue across a variety of hardware I'm wondering if it's a config issue. Perhaps a legacy WF4 option that no longer applies to Creo2. Are you getting any std.out errors about obsolete options?

Have you tried launching Creo 'clean' - with no *.ui files and no config files? That would test if it's some config setting that's affecting performance. If performance improves, try adding config files back in the mix one at a time until you find the one that's causing trouble. Once you find that one, open it in a text editor and save half of it as a new file and try that one. Keep cutting it in half until you find the problematic option.

--

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Doug Schaefer | Experienced Mechanical Design Engineer
LinkedIn

DaveClark · ‎Aug 23, 2013

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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dgallup · ‎Aug 27, 2013

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)

[cid:image001.png@01CE9FDD.1887E0F0]

nhanratty · ‎Aug 29, 2013

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

magnus.salomons · ‎Sep 03, 2013

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.

dgallup · ‎Sep 03, 2013

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.

rreifsnyder · ‎Sep 03, 2013

I run with LODS value around 15 all the time, although some people don't like how it turns curved surfaces into flats while spinning.

Nvidia also has the new transparency also, I spoke with them at the PTCUsers conference and AMD apparently had a 12 month exclusivity but that is over. I don't know if new hardware is needed, or if that can be accessed by just updating the drivers.

Rob Reifsnyder
Mechanical Design Engineer/ Producibility Engineer / Components Engineer / Pro/E SME / Pro/E Librarian
[LM_Logo_Tag_RGB_NoR_r06]

RandyJones · ‎Sep 03, 2013

On 09/03/13 08:41, David Gallup wrote:
>
> 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.
>

Maybe TPI 120151 (describing config.pro option blended_transparency) will help you:

mlocascio · ‎Sep 03, 2013

Interesting statement about PTC upping....

dbailey-2 · ‎Sep 04, 2013

Hi Michael

I assume you have tried this but changing the graphics option to opengl in
config.pro significantly improved our spinning shaded models

Best Regards

David Bailey

Design & Development Director
dbailey@fortvale.com
Fort Vale Engineering Ltd
+44 (0)1282 687140
fax +44 (0)1282 687110

ocorten-2 · ‎Sep 04, 2013

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.

dgallup · ‎Sep 05, 2013

Thanks Olaf. Sounds like PTC has to write something into their code as well:

According to Brian Thompson, Vice President,PTCCreo Product Management at PTC … “PTC plans to supportOrder Independent Transparency (OIT)inPTCCreo 2.0 for NVIDIA GPUs — targeted for aPTCCreo 2.0 Maintenance release in the second half of calendar 2013.” - See more at: http://creo.ptc.com/2013/08/08/ptc-creo-2-0-order-independent-transparency-support-for-nvidia-gpus/#sthash.CnH4RPKC.dpuf

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.