Freezes and lag in when switching to Annotate Tab, and performing actions within.

[ptc-3924019]

I have been having an issue within Creo Elements/Pro 5 when in a large assembly drawing. The drawing probably has close to 200 annotations over two sheets. When switching from any tab to the annotate tab, Pro becomes unresponsive for 3+ minutes before allowing me to do anything within the drawing. Once in the tab and have functionality again, whenever performing any operation, whether flipping arrows, editing attachments, adding\deleting any annotation, etc., once I middle mouse or click okay Pro becomes unresponsive again for 3+ minutes. I cannot share the drawing or any files due to proprietary content. What I can tell you is that I am on a Dell T5500, 12Gb Ram, 500Gb HD, nVidia Quadro FX3800, Win 7 x64, Xeon Quad @3.2 ghz, running Creo Elements/Pro 5.0 M110 date code. The drawings were created in WildFire 3 M240, vaulted in, I believe Windchill 9.1. Any help or advice would be great. Our CAD admins have been working on it through PTC, but wondered if anyone else has had this problem and got it fixed.

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[BrianMartin]

We haven't seen this at our company... but I have a few suggestions that might help pinpoint the problem.

(1) Does this only happen on the Annotate tab? If you try to move dimensions or other annotations using the ALT shortcut, do you still experience the same lag? The shortcut is that you do not HAVE to be on the Annotate tab to work on annotations. Hold the ALT key and you can select and move them from any tab.

(2) Does this happen if you work OFFLINE? Perhaps there's some Windchill issue. Try making your workspace available offline and working. Do you still experience the same lag? If so, Windchill is involved and you could be experiencing any number of issues. If not, it's probably something in Pro/E itself.

(3) Do you have ANY availability of Creo 1.0 or another build of Creo Elements Pro/WF5? Perhaps try M090 or M100 to see if the problem recurs there, too.

(4) Check the status of auto_regen_views in your config.pro. Most designers working on large assemblies prefer to keep this set to NO. This means they have to manually use View>Update>Sheets (or Drawing View) to process visual updates to the drawing but this prevents the system from automatically taking on this time consuming process whenever you switch into a drawing.

(5) Are you using any "advanced" features in your assembly for example:

• Flexible features/components - too many can slow down performance
• Multiple skeletons
• Layer "Rules"
• Automatic Intersection Features (like an extruded cut at the assembly level). When left to the default "automatic" selection of intersection components, this can totally dog your performance and cause tremendous lag.
• Inheritance/Shrinkwraps - especially LARGE or very high quality ones?
• Imported geometry - some imported STEP files can crush performance. The component need not appear large to have a large step file. My company once imported a harmless little connector model that slowed regen times for our assemblies by over 5 minutes.
• Anything "weird" that's not common for your normal work?

This is all I can think of... but checking some of these items (or eliminating them as a root cause) can help narrow your search for the true source of your problem. Let us know if any of these provide clues....

Thanks!

-Brian

(5) Are there

[ptc-3924019]

Brian,

Thanks for the reply. To answer:

1. Only happens when in Annotate tab. I can move things fine. The issue lies when editing an attachment, inserting a jog, GD&T, or any other command within the Annotation tab. Unfortunately, you cannot do these things from outside the tab, or at least I have not been able to do it.

2. I did take the drawing offline. It did not make a difference.

3. We just upgraded from WF3 M240, had a mass install of CE/P 5 M100 last week Dec. 7. It was way worse then. My times were at almost 10 minutes. There is no plan to go to or use Creo 1.0 until sometime next year or later.

4. I already had auto_regen_views set to no.

5. The model is part of a family table, which does use a couple of skeletons. To my knowledge there are no flexible components. No step files or shrink wraps. There is however a a very large pattern of extruded holes(depending on instance 1000+), but these are at the pice part level. I know thats a lot of holes, but these drawings never posed an issue in WF3.

Other than that, I have no idea. Its just a real pain to go from one platform that worked well and would allow me to do what I needed in about an hour to something that makes the same change take all day.

[BrianMartin]

I totally feel your pain... we switched from WF3 M250 to Creo Elements Pro M090 and we took a hit, too.

This sounds completely like a bug to me... I'm sure it will turn out that Pro/E is pinging a server somewhere (Windchill or license server) or getting stuck in some kind of loop. I wish I had something better to offer.

When we switched to CE/P5, drawings which used to open in 3 minutes suddenly took 15. Hardware items that used to work properly suddenly opened and marked themselves as modified - for no reason. Just these two problems alone were responsible for significant downtime and performance loss. Like most large companies, we never go with the very latest software because it's just too buggy. We thought we waited long enough for CE/P5 to work out the kinks but we're still struggling.

Personally I'll never understand how software companies can sleep at night sending out purportedly "Released" software only to have their paying customers essentially beta test it on real projects. Everyone knows this is how it works... yet when you call customer support with a problem such as the ones we had (or the one you're reporting), the first thing they suggest is moving to the very latest software. They tell you to upgrade to Creo 1.0... and when you resist, they surprisingly (and sometimes indignantly) ask "Why not?!"

But I'll get down from my Soapbox... I do have one suggestion that MIGHT help in some small measure. For the extruded hole pattern of 1000+ holes, try changing the pattern to "IDENTICAL" instead of "GENERAL" (under the Options for the pattern). Identical patterns regenerate like lightening compared to General patterns. The trade-off is that if ANY of the holes in your pattern "fall off the edge" of your part, an identical pattern will fail whereas a general pattern will simply place holes out in space. If the identical option fails, you might also try variable patterns. There's a good description of the differences between the 3 types in the help pages. If you can get the identical pattern to work, you might save enough time on regens to eliminate or offset the lag you're experiencing.

Thanks and have a great holiday!

-Brian

[ptc-3924019 · Accepted solution]

Issue is fixed with date code M120