Started Off Fine And Then Things Are Working In Slow Motion Now!

[ptc-5475588]

Hello Community,

I'm trying to learn a CAD program so I can design an electric tractor.

I recently downloaded Creo Element/Direct Modeling Express 4.0 and started with the tutorials to get familiar with the commands and how to do this stuff. Things started off fine and I was able to manipulate my drawings in real time without any lag. After a couple of sessions I started having problems moving my parts around. When I tried to drag or view my part in a different angle everything went into slow motion mode with terrible lag. It makes it so I can't use this program...it's too frustrating!

So, It DID work and now it doesn't and I changed nothing on my computer.

Any hints to what may be the issue or has anybody else had the same problem?

I'm on a PC running Windows Vista Home Premium ( yeah I know, a friend gave me this computer so I can't complain ) SP2, with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4000+ 2.10GHz, 2 GB RAM on a 32-bit operationg system.

Any help would be appreciated. I'm unemployed and I'm trying to put my time to good use by learning this stuff.

Cheers,

John

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[dschenken]

Most often when software suddenly goes from speedy to slow the reason is the memory requirements have moved from all in-memory to being large enough to page to disk. You may just have outgrown the memory you have available. Do smaller models still seem fast?

Another large contributor to speed is a graphics card. If your setup is using software emulation, that would be a drag on memory usage as well and could also put you over the edge. PTC typically uses either OpenGL (graphics card) or emulation.

Other than that, take a look at what processes are running and how much cpu and disk activity there is that might be taking attention away from what you want.

[ptc-5475588]

Hi David,

Thanks for takng the time to reply to my question.

I'm still in the tutorials and I can't manipulate the simple little lego block that they ask you to draw! I would imagine that that is a small model?

I just downloaded a benchmark tester and I don't think I got a very good graphics mark on it. I don't have anything to compare it to but it was the lowest scoring part of the test.

What gets me is that it worked fine when I first started using the program...

I'm not a computer whiz, just a user, so this stuff is a little beyond me.

Thanks again,

John

[dschenken]

Years ago I got some free program from PTC. Even though I had a mid-range OpenGL graphics card and a supported OS, it wouldn't work at all. A year later there was an update, which did run, but the invisible PTC cursor on the screen was a few inches to the left of the mouse pointer making menus and item selection difficult at best. Perhaps this is just a newer version, much improved.

If you have time and interest, give Blender a shot. It's not parametric and there's no drawings to be made (Draftsight is a free AutoCAD knock-off from an Autodesk competitor, if you want to make some drawings) but Blender is a most amazing piece of work and amazing results have come from it.

[ptc-5475588]

Ha, it's funny that you mention both of those programs Blender and Draftsight. I recently downloaded them because a guy from another EV site recommended Draftsight for drawings and I just came across Blender by searching. I haven't tried either yet because I wanted to go straight into 3D design. Blender looks like it's made for animating and I presently don't really have a need for that...it looks really cool though.

It's also funny that you mentioned and older PTC proram. I used a program called PRO Desktop Express from PTC quite a few years ago on an older computer and it ran fine. In fact, I liked the layout of the workspace way better than Creo. They had a free version back then...too bad it's not free anymore...

I checked the requirements to run Creo and my computer is all over it. I'm not going any further with it until I can resolve this problem. I'm sure it will come back...somehow!?

Cheerio,

John

[StephenW]

Pro Desktop was like the little brother of PRO/Engineer (now rebranded to Creo Parametric). You mentioned you downloaded Creo Element/Direct Modeling Express 4.0 which I believe was formerly CoCreate. CoCreate is a direct modeling package. Pro/E (Creo) is a feature history based package. Very much different animals.

I really can't help much with the computer problem but I would say that 2gig of ram and "onboard" graphics driver is likely your limiting factor.

[ptc-5475588]

Hey Everybody,

Things seem to be working fine now. I think part of my problem was with the "Enhanced Realism" button. When I turn that off I can maniputlate my drawings the in real time. Poor graphics in my computer are to blame I would say.

Now I can't even finish the tutorials because of the 60 part limit to the free Creo program. I looked in the PTC files to find the parts that are in the tutorials so I can delete them to reset my part count but I can't seem to find the parts to delete them.

I guess I'm just not computer savvy enough for this stuff.

This program is going to crap out on me anyhow as I want to design an electric tractor and it's going to have more than 60 parts anyhow...can't afford the full program right now...I'm unemployed.

Is there a way to reset the parts counter?

Thanks for all the help so far

Cheerio,

John

[James62]

Hi John,

Have a look at SpaceClaim, it's pretty powerfull, but still pretty simple.

[ptc-5475588]

Hiya Jakub,

I just looked at Space Claim and it looks pretty cool but you have to purchase it to use it don't you?

Thanks,

John

[huggre]

SketchUp from Google is also a fun and easy tool for creating 3D models.

However, if you plan to create manufacturing drawings you should look elsewhere

[ptc-5475588]

Hi Hugo,

Thanks for the suggestion. I did play with SketchUp a while ago. It was pretty cool, I guess, but at that time I didn't have a project to do in it so I haven't used it since. I also don't like all the bullshit that you have to go through to sign up with anything related to Google...not really a big fan of the "Google Empire".

Cheerio,

John

[DavorGranic]

Hi John,

You can try FreeCAD but its interface makes Creo`s look awesome...