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Hi folks,
I am in the IT group of a firm that uses this product on a regular basis.
Since we have been using it there have always been complaints of slowness when opening drawings.
Sometimes it would take up to 8 - 9 hours to complex drawing. So one of our first thoughts was that
this was a hardware limitation of the machines they were using. So we upgraded them.
But still we are facing extreme slowness when opening a drawing that one of our suppliers can open with ease.
They are using 1/10th of the computer hardware we are.
Our current hardware configuration for this is as follows:
4 - hexcore xeons
128 GB DDR3
2 quadro 5500
and 2 500 GB SSD's
I am not sure if this is a creo setting issue or a windows setting issue.
But it sure doesn't look like a hardware issue.
Any help you may be able to provide would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
I am not an IT guru, but I have had it mentioned to me that sometimes the slowness is due to the retrieval across the intranet within the company. Have you evaluated the pipeline from the servers to the computer. Have you put the files on the computer and opened them directly from the computer?
Hi itgroup,
Dale makes a valid point and this is especially true if the files you are accessing are traveling via even high speed Internet. Dales suggestion of saving the files on the local hardware will prove that it is not the problem of that hardware. You can do this by using the File>Backup command into a separate subdirectory made for this purpose. I bet once you do this you will find the drawing opens far more quickly from there.
Even if they are local and your backbone is good I suspect that the drawing(s) in question may be calling in a large assembly with family table parts. An example would be opening a full rack system with myriad electronic parts. If these are stored in an ECAD system and regenerated from a 2D footprint and height then this means all those parts have to be regenerated in the assembly and therefore for the drawing. I can say from experience of working remotely that this process can take hours but even locally it can take plenty of time. Creo 2.0 works more quickly with assemblies if that is an option to you.
And on the really bad news front; the hardware you list looks to be extremely powerful BUT the extra CPUs and cores are of no use to ProE (even Creo). ProE only uses one core for the intensive task of regeneration and this is all sequential. It can use other cores for some of the assembly work but as you can see you are using a small portion of what is available. This has been a complaint to PTC for years but to be fair I am not aware of any other large MCAD supplier that does not have the same issue. [not true for image processing programs or FEA analysis but that is not what you are looking at here].
Regards, Brent
I am certainly no expert on this subject but I will offer a view observations form recent discoveries.
1: What is the file size of the saved files? I learned recently, at least with Creo, that files saved with very high graphics quality settings are -HUGE- compared to similarly saved files with a different config setting. Seems the files are saving the highly refined JT data within the part and assembly files.
2: Sounds like you have some kind of setting that recursively checks the same thing over and over. This would be a good one to run past PTC support. Are you running WindChill and is this issue still present when the files are all local?
3: Back to something like 1... have you tried to reduce all the graphics quality setting to very low, including turning off texture display?
Ok here is what we learned:
1) Saving the files locally does not help. It may save a minute or 2 but across a 30 minute time span it seems insignificant.
2) File size: 487 MB This is a pretty big file but like I said our supplier can open it with no issue. Their setup is a mobile workstation with a single dual core proc, a single quadro 4000, and 16gb of ram.
3 After looking at the resource monitor we are using about 8% of the cpu, (on avg), and 9% of the RAM.
Also the wait chain on xtop.exe is showing "One or more processes are waiting for network io". It does this even when running the file locally.
As far as I know, we do not have Windchill.
Thanks for the responses so far,
Unfortunately, due to confidentiality agreements, I can't share the file...
In general drawings are the slowest things in pro/e, especially large assy drawings
Things to try:
1. Update the graphics drivers to latest. Graphics cause more issues than anything else.
2. Remove all your pro/e settings, like config.pro, config.sup, config.win, menu.def and try to open the drawing. You might have setting that is causing it
3. ask your supplier to send their config files and compare them and or try them.
4. If the parts and assy's open reasonably, it's obviously just a drawing problem. check the drawing for additional models that aren't used.
1. drivers were on the latest and then i switched to the PTC certified version.
2. I would like to try #3 first as we have a very basic config setup now.
3. in the process of getting them from our supplier.
4. small simple parts open quickly. anything complex takes more time than our suppliers say it takes them.
Have you tried disabling antivirus software?
Not yet, If modifying the settings does not help this will be the next step.