Drawing soo Slow

[Joblack]

We have a model of a 25' yacht, model file size is 105mb from the model and in generative drafing we have taken off 2 drawing sheets and each sheet has 3 viewports, the file size for this catdwg is 90mb.
The performance (ie sketching, modeling, panning etc)is perfectly workable; but when working in generative drafting doing dress-up, drawing, moving and sizing viewport and panning, zooming etc is painfully slow and basically unworkable.
What is affecting performance like this?; because if this was a normal 2D drawing the file size would most probably be +/- 1mb. Are there any tips/settings that we need to know about to sort this size/performance issue out. Is the "View Generation" options the only settings availble to play with and which one of these (ie Exact, CGR or Approximate) would be the most eficient for us to use, as we do not design to any tolerances on these particular drawings, if anything we would be quiet happy to work to 2 to 5mm accuaracy as anything less is not of any use.
Workstation memory is 1.5gb, is more memory actually required for a scenario such as this, and if so what is the optimum ram/dwg size ratio.

 

[Hora]

I have the same problems. My assembly has 650 parts and is growing. In assembly mode I haven't problems, but when I load the drawing, another story. I got a memry peak of 3.4GBytes. I cannot use cache mode due to sections updates. No mention I wait 3-4 minutes fo a single view to update...

I have a IBM 64bit system, 2GB RAM, WIN XPx64, CATIA V5R15 64 bit edition.

I think this program has a lot of problems with the memory management. The only issuee they solved with the R16 is the fanmous message "Click OK to terminate".

Even if I close all the windows, WIN TASK Manager show me CATIA uses 1.8GBytes (or more). Is this a joke, Dassault Systems?

RAND told me the only way to improove the speed is more RAM. But R16 cannot address more then 4 GBytes. Another joke, no?

-Hora

 

[DBezaire]

Guys - Ram, Ram and even more Ram and a 64bit platform. This will fix your problem. I pull up 1GB assembly files on my Dell. It takes a mere 3 minutes to generate a tool drawing. Mind you it uses 7GB of the 16GB of ram to do it. Since when does R16 on 64bit peak at 4GB?

Regards,
Derek

 

[DBezaire]

Hora - not to defend Dassault on this, they are a touch bit sloppy with mem management - you can thank the multiple operating systems the are required to port to for this. You have 650 parts, I would have to assume some associativity between them + a linked drawing. Running Enovia as well? Pull up the same situation in UG or PRO/e and see the results.

 

[Joblack]

Yes, it sounds like more ram could be the answer, but how much for a specific size of model and catdwg. And then what are the reccomended "View Generation Options" settings and or any others on the system that will help us in the memory tight setup that we have?. We design and model yachts from 20' to 75' and I am assuming that there are settings in Catia that control accuracy and links that could also contribute to this. One of the reason we got Catia was its ability to handle large asssemblies efficeiently and also the fact that it does have an "Interactive Drafting" module as we still have to do drafting at certain times and also to dress up more than normal in "Generative Drafting"; although we have been told/admonished by our dealer that Catia is not a 2D program - obviously not, but why do they market it as such. We once tried doing a 2D sketch/proposal in "Interactive Drafting" and stopped working on it after the first day as the drawing got so large and any command that was executed took 15 to 60 secs to process and get action from; would this also be a memory problem or is it because every entity in the drawing is associative. Is there a way to turn this associative/link switch off and draw as per normal 2D cad?.

 

[DBezaire]

Joblack - a workstation style graphics card makes a huge difference. Settings, Turn on Cache mode, set 3d accuracy and your 2d accuracy to something resonable, you did mention a lighter tolerance. Note this is only visual.

Regards,
Derek

 

[Hora]

Derek, this is what I found:

Knowing that there is a set amount of memory in a workstation that can be addressed by an application (like CATIA V5), there are threshold limitations that need to be understood and managed.

When working with CATIA V5 data files, there are typically no memory allocation problems working on a single CATPart, but when they get grouped together into an assembly (CATProduct), the size and complexity can skyrocket, causing some limitations to be reached.

Once reached, the assembly may be so large that you can no longer load the assembly in design mode, you can not create drafting views, or you can not save the assembly.

The assembly size is made up of several components, such as the amount of data referenced by the assembly, the number of levels of assemblies, the number of constraints used in the assembly, and the amount of addressable memory needed to visualize or perform a save operation. The largest contributor to an assembly’s size is the number of levels within the assembly and/or the number of constraints.

As a general rule of thumb, assemblies over 80MB will require Windows XP rather than Windows 2000. Assemblies over 100MB will require the tuning of Windows XP to allocate
3GB of addressable memory (discussed in the section “How to Increase the CATIA Memory Utilization on Windows XP”), and assemblies over 200MB will require the creation of simplified assemblies (discussed in the section called “Design Methodologies for Obtaining Additional Performance Benefits”).


I don't know exacly where I read the 4GB limits in R16.
64 bit platform is NOT spectacular. Faster, but NOT spectacular.

ProE works much much better with the memory. Besides you can allways clear the memory, option you will not have in CATIA.

I think the key is more RAM.

And Derek, I'm glad you will not defend Dassault. Have a nice day

-Hora

 

[PeterGuy]

A 4gb limit in 64bit. I think you are confusing 32bit catia on 64bit where the you are limmited to 4gb as this is 2^32. Rather than 64bit catia on 64bit where the memory space is significantly larger.

Theoretical 2^64 = 16tb
Current os limits 128gb (depends on os)
Most hardware 4gb some 8-16gb mainly servers and the like

 

[catiajim]

You say you cannot use cgrs. Does this mean you are loading everything into Design Mode? Or you are just not using CGR Views? What about Approximate Views? At R16 they added more functionality to Approximate and CGR views, but I think you have to wait until R17 before you can get Section Views with these.

As for the memory, yes 64 bit CATIA will use more than 4GB of RAM. I have seen HUGE Performance gains in CATIA with 64 bit, but only when the part/assembly/drawing is causing CATIA to get close to the 2/3GB limit that 32 bit imposes - I think CATIA does a lot of crunching trying to save itself when it starts to get close to the limit. I have seen drawings that will take 45-60 minutes to update in 32 bit CATIA (and probably crash right around that time) that will update in 5 minutes in 64 bit (with lots of RAM).

 

[Joblack]

Dbezaire, we have been fiddling with these settings all day and they have helped in certain instances, but I think the main problem seems to be Catia or Windows memory management, as we went into Windows "Taskmanager" and then "Processes" and right clicked on Catia and then "Set Priority" to "Realtime" instead of "Normal" (this has to be done each time you run Catia), this change made a massive difference to performance, where before the view took 5 to 10 seconds to drag to a new location it can now be done in realtime.