Slow saving

[NXMold]

It takes a very long time to save my models, particularly when many components have changed. A mold design might take up 500-600Mb and require 2-4 minuets to save (local c drive).

I'm wondering what I might be able to do to speed this process up.

Dell 690 2x 3Ghz dual-core, 8gb ram, etc

NX 5.0.3.2 MoldWizard

 

[JohnRBaker]

Check the File -> Options -> Save Options... dialog. Any item toggled ON could potentially have a negative impact on the time it takes to save your models. Now some options may save you time later on during certain tasks, such as the 'Weight Data' or the 'Fast Rollback' option, so you will have to consider the trade offs.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Design
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[hudson888]

Other things that may affect your saving time might be saving across a network. Structuring you models with lots of wave links (which mold wizard seems to do), because changing one model always affects several others by very small amounts which nevertheless require each to be fully saved.

If you have recently changed from one version of NX to a new one then you're opening models for the first time in the later which would have you save them in the newer version. However if the majority are released then the system will spend time trying and failing to save them. To remedy this you can run a refile batch process and then write lock those files again.

Cheers

Hudson

 

[NXMold]

'Fast rollback' is the only option checked

All files are saved local, in a single directory

Any 'library' component is copied to the folder of each job, not referenced to the network

Sometimes I close or freeze components to cut down on update time while working in an isolated area, but often that is not apropriate so I end up with 60% of the model 'changing' with every modification.

ALSO, my system is pretty much locked up during the whole save process. I cannot open word documents, etc outside of NX. This seems absurd with the hardware I have, processors are not maxed out but it seems that the drives are. Even opening network documents requires the c drive to load the application. Does this seem normal? I'm wondering if I should be looking into this further, other hardware options, etc (lots of time to ponder this while watching the progress bar during saves).

NX 5.0.3.2 MoldWizard

 

[hudson888]

Well the last thing with the system being unresponsive during saving isn't all that unusual. I guess because failing to save or partially saving would be a really bad way to corrupt your data NX gives itself a really high priority during that task and it can take up a fair bit of memory.

Let me guess that you are using Teamcenter but not workflow from your reference to freezing stuff. See if you did you might regularly effectively have isolated areas that you don't own, whereas at the moment you're never quite sure of how many items that Teamcenter thinks may be slightly affected a teensy bit and wants to update all the links.

The thing with the library component goes well down the tree, but anything else with links possibly going up the tree will spread out and want to save references into other items.

My answer isn't necessarily true I can't analyse that from here but it sounds like the Teamcentre database may be taking a long time to update and trying, ( though often probably failing due to ownership issues), to save quite a lot of items and that could be what slows the whole thing down.

You should start by always opening assemblies from the PSE and making sure that the PSE structure and the NX assembly structure are synchronised. If you have different people working on either it won't work, and if they regularly get out of sync the system is going to want to correct that and spin its wheels when saving in the attempt. It will keep on happening until to address it. The simple way to do so is to open each assembly using the PSE from the bottom of the tree (i.e. sub assemblies before top assemblies), and then save it in NX and then when the PSE agrees with the content in NX you save the PSE structure and put a persistent freeze on it. Then you do the level above etc...

Using workflow also helps because owning the signoff is equivalent to freezing the item master and then as long as each user keep the PSE synchronised then you get less slowdowns.

Also using lots of cross linked wave geometry does weigh on Teamcenter assemblies even more so than in Native, but if you're creating those links with respect to stuff you don't own (have write access to), then you should get warnings. In Teamcentre the warnings need to be considered slightly more seriously sometimes, as it might also have a bearing on your problem.

Cheers

Hudson

 

[DavidTolsma]

What is the OS? Windows XP x86(32bit) or Windows XP x64(64bit)?

Are you using the save from the toolbar or from the menu? Try Saving work part only, see if that helps. Also try to turn off the JT creation, Weight, etc.

-Dave Tolsma
Tolsnet LLC

http://groups.google.com/group/NX_CAX/

http://groups.google.com/group/plm-exchange/

 

[hudson888]

In teamcentre we turn off the JT creation it is set to be maintained only when we baseline. That may save a lot of time.

Cheers

Hudson

 

[NXMold]

No teamcenter, I was refering to the moldwizard freeze option, though I don't use it much.

Windows XP64

The system being unresponsive is nagging at me, I have Plenty of free memory and processor time during the saves. Its the hard drive that is bottlenecked and preventing other apps from opening. If an application (like excel) is already open, I can open network docs without delay.

I looked through my process list in windows once, probably over a half dozen of them were hard drive related services.

NX 5.0.3.2 MoldWizard

 

[hudson888]

If you are working in native the you should be able to check how many parts are being saved when you save the assembly. It may be that for some reason more is being required to be saved than you anticipated. After testing some of those things go into save options and turn off everything, if your system administrator has some set to be always on then have it temporarily changed and re-test. I think you that if you need to know why it takes so long to save then you need to cut down the number of variables in the mix and see it it is just the CAD data or some of the other options we mentioned earlier.

Also does this happen all the time to all users with all assemblies, only using moldwizard or only on your machine? Check out the possibilities cut down the variables and try to isolate the cause.

As I said earlier during saving it is not unusual for NX to be demanding. You have either to get it to save in a reasonable time or wait it out.

Cheers

Hudson

 

[DavidTolsma]

The parts in the assembly may be loading fully, and are of different version of NX. If that is the case it will upgrade the part on load and mark it as modified. You'll also get a save error message, that many users just ignore.

-Dave Tolsma

http://Tolsnet.com/jobs

http://groups.google.com/group/NX_CAX/

http://groups.google.com/group/plm-exchange/

 

[hudson888]

After you have tried everything else I mentioned above take a look at what Dave mentioned in his post after mine. What it means is that if you have components in your design that you don't think should be saved all the time then you could try freezing them if you know there are no downstream consequences. One easy way to test this may be to simply check them as read only if you're working with windows O/S. If you have the advanced wave license you can freeze individual components in an assembly.

However if and when you do this pay attention to the warning messages because you would not want your design to get out of date in ways that cause some of your changes to be lost when you save. It is not uncommon to hear consternation from moldwizard users about the level of wave linking and weight of their assemblies what we're talking about here are ways to manage that for you.

One side effect of freezing or write locking certain components will be the warning messages you receive and those in themselves my provide a useful diagnostic. I wouldn't be surprised if you're saving a lot of data you didn't know about.

Going back to earlier posts you may also remember we mentioned about saving JT data. If you haven't turned it off already I would look into it first thing. I wonder if waving assemblies with JT data isn't less selective and therefore much more demanding than saving them in NX.

Cheers Again

Hudson

 

[NXMold]

"It is not uncommon to hear consternation from moldwizard users about the level of wave linking and weight of their assemblies"

Well, thats reasuring. As I have been learning NX I thought I was doing something wrong with how long updates took, and this is perhaps just an extension of that.

I'll expieriment with the suggestions you guys have given to try and optimize it best I can, thanks.

NX 5.0.3.2 MoldWizard

 

[hudson888]

Please let us know how you go. It is less common to hear solutions than questions on the forum

 

[NXMold]

Ok then, a brief update and question.
I am making some relatively minor changes to a complete mold design, and watched my last save.

61 files saved (out of 444 files total)
140 MB
first timestamp (checked via windows explorer) 10:28
last timestamp 10:32
Native, all files local, everything for the project is in a single folder (all components are unique)

About 1/3 of the files were expected to be saved, a further 1/3 I understand due to proximity during wave updates and could have been eliminated had I frozen/closed/read-only apropriate parts, though that is a method that I am still learning and a little hesitant to use. The final 1/3 of the files are a surprise, should not have been modified in any way at all, and indicate something that I should pursue to speed things up.

The only option turned on in the save options is "Save Data for Fast Rollback and Edit"

From the help:
"Improves the performance of the first feature edit of the part. The software achieves this ability by saving extra data with each part file when features are replayed and then subsequently saved. When you are ready to archive a part, you can reduce its size by removing this extra data. To do so, clear the Save data for Fast Rollback and Edit check box and then save the part."

Can anyone explain the practical meaning of this?

NX 5.0.3.2 MoldWizard

 

[JohnRBaker]

The "Save Data for Fast Rollback and Edit" option is of value when working on a project that is still going to require a lot of changes and edits, espcially if these changes and edits are being made whenever the files are opened.

What happens when you perform an edit to a feature-based model for the first time in a session, the software has to roll-back to the first updatable feature, even if that was NOT the one being edited, and start updating from there. However we save this 'roll-back' data in a temporary files so that when you perform the next edit, we only have to roll back to a point just before the feature that you're editing and we only have to perform the full update starting at that point. Now until we added this new 'Save Option', when you closed your session we threw these temporary roll-back files away, but now if this option is set, we save this data inside the part file so that the next time you open the part file and perform an edit, the system does NOT have to roll-back to the beginning of your model to perform the update since the complete roll-back file is already in place. Now it is true that this techically only saves time on the first edit, but if you're making changes every day during the intitial delveopment phase of a project, this could still add up.

As for telling you to unset this option when you're ready to archive your models, well saving this EXTRA data does make your part file size (on disk) LARGER and it also has a negative, albeit minor, impact on the File Save and File Open times. Note that the term 'archive' in this case refers to the idea that your project is finished and you are now just saving your files for long term storage and so disk space may be more of a concern.

Anyway, I hope that helps.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Design
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[hudson888]

Just so that you know using NX-5 out of the box "Save Drawing CGM Data" is ticked and "Save Data For fast Rollback and Edit" is also ticked. "Save Patten Data" is set No. we never bothered changing this as we have no problems thus far. We aren't using Moldwizard though.

By all means turn off everything and see if it makes a big difference. I can't see how turning off any of those options makes a permanent difference or would do any damage. To reinstate the former condition you would just turn the option back on and save again at a later date. In other words it is safe to turn them off for testing purposes.

You described a 6 minute save time from 10:32 to 10:38. I have to say that may not be as long a time as I would tend to be concerned about. You complained about half and hour or more earlier and it would help to note the difference between 6 and 30 minutes in terms of what you did before each of those saves.

Failing that you may just about have reached a point where the settings have played out in terms of their influence on the save times. Let us know how you go with this and we may have to move on to try some other suggestions.

Best regards

Hudson