Performance Diagnostic Tool

[slapha]

Creo Parametric could use a Performance Diagnostic Tool to support large assembly management and general system performance. This could be a localized version of the Performance System Monitor for Windchill but at a much lower level.

For example I have several drawings that people have created that take 30-60+ minutes to open. They load up my memory to it's limit. These aren't our biggest or most complicated models yet they take longer to open sometimes.

It would be nice to figure out why. Is the model that big. Is there 2 assembly models attached to the drawing, different simplified reps...

A sort of hierarchal breakdown on what areas are leading to the problem would be ideal. This would be helpful for Drawings and assemblies, or those parts that just seem to cause problems.

Just a rough concept but I'd expect it to have more info:

Drawing            (Memory: 500MB)    *Using Multiple Simplified Reps of the same model

     |_Model 1    (Memory: 5GB)     *Highly Detailed Graphics

     |     -   Model 1A  (Memory: 500MB)     *Graphics Error

     |_Model 2    (Memory: 1GB)     *Failed Features

     |_Model 3    (Memory: 8GB)     *Model Not Shown

     |_Mdoel 1(No Fastener Rep)     (Memory 2GB)

[TomU]

Almost sounds like a real-time resource monitor for Creo...

[slapha]

Yes, Real-Time would be great too, but even if it were a run on demand thing.

There are some similar functionalitys out there. Modelcheck can check for some things. XMA I think it's called that can scan your models for some known issues.

Every year I see large assembly management classes and issues, but the biggest problem isn't how to tweak things to make them better it's trying to figure out why it's a problem in the first place.

[StephenW]

This is an excellent idea. I have a guy right now who is having problems with a large assembly drawing that is significantly smaller than some of our other large assemblies. It almost seems arbitrary but I'm sure there is likely a simple explanation but with no diagnostics other than lockups, it seems almost impossible to find.

[Chris3]

I would like to see regen times included. If there was a complex assembly that had external references or the like that was causing large regen times it could be used as a guide to tell the user to replace that with a simplified interchange or equivalent.

It might be able to tell you what kinds of features to stay away from (like assembly cuts)

Obviously this would only be useful if it didn't slow Creo down because of the data logging.

[slapha]

Agreed, we just found one with 300 or so old references from replaced components by using the cnvt_unused_subst_comps_on_retr config setting.

Now the assembly is a lot faster to work with. We also found a model that was looking for a missing image reference each time it was loaded, which probably caused other performance issues.

The XMA tool goes more into flagging bad practices, but it's far from a distinct diagnostic tool, more of a health of general practices for now.

Really I imagine it like a more robust ModelCheck. You run it, it analyzes the model, and spits out some form of information, either things to fix, or where the slowness is coming from. Sometimes the features that cause performance hits are there on purpose, but then there are those models you stare at and can't figure out why they are being slow.