Assembly load time 1

[amsmarle]

Hello, using Inventor 8 Pro, I have produced an assembly 270 mb in size, and it is now taking approx 6 minutes to load, is this normal loading times?, my PC spec is P4 1.8 MHz (pre-Northwood) CPU, 1 gb of ram pc2100 266 ddr, ATI Radeon (Sapphire) graphics, winxp pro sp2 the assembly is set to load main assemblies (through design view), I wonder if anyone could advise as to any method of speeding up the load time, my cpu and M-board are a few years old now?, also it takes 2.5 mins to load Inventor from startup?

Regards, and thanks in advance for any advise

Amsmarle

 

[DesignerMike]

The assembly size of "270 mb" doesn't really indicate the size of the assembly. More important is the number and complexity of the parts. 20 large coils will bog a machine down a lot more than 2000 cubes.

You could use more Ram, and the graphics card isn't a great CAD card.

How long since you had a clean OS install, how many processes in the background, other programs running at the same time? Within Inventor; Do you use adaptivity much, have redundant constraints, any "sick" files, missing projected geometry?

I think it probably takes R10 90 seconds to load on my M60 laptop, and I have a drawing that takes 25 minutes to open on that machine. (office machine is much faster).

 

[amsmarle]

Thanks for the response Designer Mike,
1) Apart from the size of model in terms of MB, how would I determine the number of parts in any assembly (in BOM it tells me item quantities)
2) I'm going to add some more ram as you suggest
3) I have installed my work on a clients PC which had an Autodesk spec Graphics card and the difference was approx 7 secs faster in loading the assembly,
(so it was still 5 mins +)
4) I don't use adaptivity a lot, perhaps I should use it more frequently, when it's suitable for the purpose, my model is of a complete Incinerator Plant

5) I have enabled the constraint redundancy analysis and delete redundant constraints as I go along, but sick files I'm not sure how to answer that one.
6) If I had a Missing projected geometry problem would it not be obvious?
7) I think from your answer it seems normal for Inventor to take a couple of minutes to open and 6 minutes would not seem out of the ordinary for an assembly of 200 plus MB to load
8)I do a clean install at least 1 or twice a year or generally when I start having recurring problems, Jan 06 was last clean install, but the process in the back ground may be a problem, sometimes it shows up as many as 50 in the task manager, I don't run any programmes while running Inventor with the internet being the exception, because of the slow running of Inventor

Thanks again for your helpful reply, I would appreciate any further advise as to how to get my system more quickly responding within Inventor

Amsmarle

 

[DesignerMike]

Charles has a stand-alone program called BOM extractor that is very useful in collecting the BOM information and exporting it to excel for use elsewhere.

http://www.cbliss.com/inventor/iCode/index.htm

It will give you some interesting info like; total # of parts, unique parts, # of sub assemblies, # of assembly levels etc.

It sounds like a pretty serious assembly, and it will take a while to load.
There are quite a few things that you can do to improve performance. Here is a link to some suggestions.

http://www.mcadforums.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3643

Adaptivity will slow things down and can be flaky. I use it sparingly, and turn it off after edits when I can to avoid surprises later.
Sick files will just show a red "+" on menu bar (usually lost projected geometry or other minor error which doesn't cause the part to self destruct, but confuses Inventor)

Sounds like you have a clean install...50 processes isn't too bad. Look at your page file size too, but it didn't make much difference for me when I changed it.

R11 is SUPPOSED to be greatly improved with large assembly performance, but I'm in the middle of a couple projects, and don't need any software migration issues.

I also try to structure the assembly with quite a few sub assemblies. This way I can work in a much smaller assembly and I don't need to open the main assembly all the time.

 

[amsmarle]

Once again thanks for the very useful information DesignerMike,
Particularly the Mcadforum link, I have had a look at the icode index link, and have it loaded into Inventor, but not yet sure how to use it. I have learnt (of late) by experience to build the model using sub assemblies, to be able to work with quicker response from Inventor

Regards

amsmarle

 

[Ratso]

Hi,
As far as I understand from our AE's if you reduce the number of files and subfolders in a project and try and stay below 200 your opening times will reduce. Something to do with the Microsoft Explorer side of things.

And yes doing more sub assy's should reduce your loading time. Try to make derived parts from assy's to use in other assy's - it will reduce the total file size somewhat.

Hope it helps

 

[amsmarle]

Thanks Ratso, for your welcome advice, I'm waiting for some extra memory to install and see how that helps, but I can't be doing with sitting around waiting 6, 7 or 8 minutes for a model to appear, and then spend another couple of minutes turning off the work planes. I don't really wish to pay out hard earned cash on pc2100 or pc2700 memory when basically my machine is getting old.

Alan amsmarle