For most advanced Creo develop team and users, trend to make design or process easier and smarter, by adopting a lot parameters and relations in Creo templates and UDFs. This does improve work efficiency and enhance quality control, particularly for small or medium complexity of design or process job. But if overusing relations in UDFs and templates in big complexity of Creo design job, Creo performance becomes bottleneck while any editing action causes regeneration.
I use a medium complexity of Creo MFG model, to demonstrate the comparison of Creo regeneration performance between fully relations loaded and no relations loaded.
- Why relations used in MFG model?
- Relations used in MFG template. If a MFG model involves multiple operations (or setups), MFG assembly need multiple assembly states to reflect the position relation of work piece, fixture and reference model. To make it easier, Cero relations is a good choice to link all assembly states together. The benefit is once you change the assembly position in first operation, and all other following operations will update their assembly accordingly. Most commonly used method is built coordinate system for assembly in first operation to locate the part, and simply build coordinate system by referring the previous one (offset / rotate) in following operations. This can force the assembly in following operation to rotate or flip or offset or even all those combinations. For example,
/* PLATE_MID_REF, HALF THICKNESS
D2546=DISTANCE:FID_THICKNESS/2
/* PROB LOCATION OP1
D2570=WRK_WIDTH:162/2
D2566=WRK_LENGTH:162/2
/* PROB LOCATION OP2
D2583=WRK_LENGTH:162/2
D2584=WRK_WIDTH:162/2
- Relations in NC sequences are mostly from UDF. To completely define a NC sequences, needs too many steps, also involves too many parameters. That is why MUDF (manufacturing UDF) is widely adopted. To make NC sequence to apply different cutting parameter based on different material, or change tool ID based on holes diameter, feature level relations seems the only choice. For example,
FC = 1
SC = 1
IF MATERIAL=="H13_S"
FEED = FC*FEED_H13_S
SPEED = SC*SPEED_H13_S
ENDIF
IF MATERIAL=="H13_H"
FEED = FC*FEED_H13_H
SPEED = SC*SPEED_H13_H
ENDIF
… …
- Experiment
- Testing environment:
- Hardware: HP EliteBook 8560w (Processor, Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2640M CPU @ 2.80GHz, 2801 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)); Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB; Adapter Type Quadro 1000M, NVIDIA compatible
- Creo Version 4.0 M060
- Creo performance on MFG model editing.
- Any editing on features’ definition will cause Creo regenerate.
- Reordering sequences is common operation to ensure final cutting meet process requirement. Each reordering cause Creo regenerate. I found if overuse relations in sequences, Creo will become extremely slow while regenerating.
- Test drive by ToolKit Application for feature Reordering.
- Testing task
Using a medium complexity of MFG model, move all non-NC features to the location exactly before the feature of Operation. This task should be completed for both scenarios of relations fully loaded and no relations loaded for the same MFG model.
I wrote a ToolKit application to run this task inside Creo, it will do this automatically and log the processing information and time consumption.
- Testing result (from ToolKit Log)
- With relation fully loaded.
Moving the Reference features to top of Operation OP010......
Start Time: 2018-12-08 13:46:56......
Features: 16308;16309;16664;16665;16666;16667;16669;16671;16673;16675;16676; are moved to top.
Features: 16726;16727;16728;16729;16731;16733;16735;16737;16738; are moved to top.
Features: 16797; are moved to top.
Features: 16806; are moved to top.
Features: 16910;16896;16897;16899;16900; are moved to top.
Features: 17287;17290;17293;17294;17298;17301;17302; are moved to top.
Features: 24642;24645;24648; are moved to top.
Features: 24839;24840;24842;24844;24848;24849;24853;24854;24858;24861;24862;24864;24865;24866; are moved to top.
Features: 38443; are moved to top.
Features: 38464;49629;49632;49633;49637;49638;49640;49641; are moved to top.
Features: 49743;49744;49745;49747;49749; are moved to top.
Moving NON-NC features is done!
Moving Reference Features End At: 2018-12-08 13:58:46
Total Time For Operation is: 0 days, 00 hours,11 minutes,50 seconds.
- ToolKit App deletes relations from all NC sequences, and run the task again.
Removed Relations for All NC Sequences in Operation OP010 ...
Removed Relations for All NC Sequences in Operation OP020 ...
Removed Relations for All NC Sequences in Operation OP030_SIDE_WORK ...
Moving the Reference features to top of Operation OP010......
Start Time: 2018-12-08 14:21:41......
Features: 16308;16309;16664;16665;16666;16667;16669;16671;16673;16675;16676; are moved to top.
Features: 16726;16727;16728;16729;16731;16733;16735;16737;16738; are moved to top.
Features: 16797; are moved to top.
Features: 16806; are moved to top.
Features: 16910;16896;16897;16899;16900; are moved to top.
Features: 17287;17290;17293;17294;17298;17301;17302; are moved to top.
Features: 24642;24645;24648; are moved to top.
Features: 24839;24840;24842;24844;24848;24849;24853;24854;24858;24861;24862;24864;24865;24866; are moved to top.
Features: 38443; are moved to top.
Features: 38464;49629;49632;49633;49637;49638;49640;49641; are moved to top.
Features: 49743;49744;49745;49747;49749; are moved to top.
Moving NON-NC features is done!
Moving Reference Features End At: 2018-12-08 14:22:28
Total Time For Operation is: 0 days, 00 hours,00 minutes,47 seconds.
- Conclusion
Apparently, heavily using relations in Creo model, dramatically slow down Creo regeneration performance. From my testing result, it caused almost 10 times slower. This number may changes depending complexity of Creo model and density of relations used.
- Solution
Since relations is critical for existing UDFs in most case, and relations contains a lot prebuilt MFG processing knowledge, it does save great deal of human efforts on daily work.
So the conclusion is to improve Creo regeneration performance, remove all relations from all features, and bring them back after all editing tasks( including redefining, reordering). This will save you huge amount of time.
- I hope my solution can help the ones who are facing same issues.
