What setting can you change to speed up response? 1

[wadec]

I have a new work station Dell t3400 with quadro fx3700. I'm working with a part that is memory intensive. It's fine until I add a few blends and then just takes for ever to move/rotate. Are there some settings that I can play with to speed up the response time?

thanks.

 

[JohnRBaker]

What version of NX are you running and what version of Windows is being used?

Also, have your tried running the Graphics test routine found at...

Preferences -> Visualization Performance -> General Graphics -> Session Settings

...selecting the 'Evaluate Graphics Performance' button?

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.

 

[wadec]

I'm running nx6 with windows xp with the 3gb option set. and yes I have ran the graphics performance test.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Make sure that you have the latest certified display driver installed and that it has been set to the Unigraphics/NX application profile.

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.

 

[wadec]

Ok..it seems that the work station I have now is still way to slow to do what I want. What would be the next big step up now days...is there such thing anymore as a unix box that's a lot more powerful than a windows based PC?

I'm working on casting model right now..shrinking it. Part of the process is off setting all the faces say around .055" for chem mill stock. The part has around 6 thousand faces. It just took approx 20 minutes to just try and offset the faces.

 

[potrero]

wadec,
you've got a pretty expensive video card; maybe you could just upgrade your processor and get some more ram rather than buying a completely new computer AND shifting to UNIX?

 

[JohnRBaker]

Yes, never skimp on memory. Upgrading your hard-drives to 10,000rpm 'Raptor' units can also help.

However, with respect to on-screen performance during modeling operations, make sure that you've not set your display tolerance to tight (found under Preferences -> Visualization -> Faceting -> Part Settings, which means that this setting is saved in the part file and changing the global settings in Customer Defaults has no effect on existing models). Another thing, if the performance hits are coming during the actual workflow when creating new features, you may wish to try turning OFF the 'Preview' option. Also during editing you might consider avoiding Edit with Rollback on particularly large models. Or another thing that I have done when making several minor edits to a large and complex model is to go to the Part Navigator and select a feature a couple of places past where the features are that you will be editing and set it to 'Make Current Feature'. Then make your several changes until you're satisfied, and then go and set the last feature once again to be the 'Current Feature'. Granted, you may not see the full effect of your edits immediately, but this can save a lot of update time particularly when the changes may be iterative in nature, such as adjusting same blend sizes or the angles of same drafts or even the details of a sketch used in an extrusion or revolve.

Anyway, there are many things that can be done in terms of 'best practices' which will allow you to work with large and complex models while still having sufficient performance so as not make the tasks tedious.

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]

wadec,

There are a range of exhaustive tips about workstation performance that we have given several times on this forum reasonably recently. You can search the forum and find those to add to what John already mentioned above.

However before you do we can probably get a better idea if you'd just give us a little more info about how old the machine is and a little more detail on the spec. The reason for asking is that most reasonably up to date machines ought perform acceptably most of the time for the majority of the work that we're likely to perform. Also how large is the model; saved filesize?

It might just be the case that the expenditure isn't going to be overly rewarded in terms of performance increases that are available between what you have now and other regular newer configurations. I would like to see you spend a lot of money on a new machine only to find that at the end of the day something you're expecting of the geometry is at the heart of the problem.

Best Regards

Hudson

www.jamb.com.au

Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum

 

[wadec]

I have a new Dell precision T3400 Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3GHz with 3.25 GB Ram and a Quadro FX 3700 graphics card.

Saved file size is approx 90MB

 

[JohnRBaker]

Is your workstation connected to a server where the NX software is installed rather than locally? Are you serving your license locally or is it also being done from a server? Are you saving and retrieving your models from a local volume or again are you using a common server?

If you are using network connected servers, make sure that you're not being hurt by poor network performance. While people often have no control over how or where their license server is set up (at least if you work for a large company with an IT department), if possible you should make sure that the NX software is installed locally on your workstation.

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.

 

[wadec]

Yes, the software is installed locally and the license servers is on the network. I'm also saving the file in question to my local drive.

 

[hudson888]

wadec,

We have a couple of similar machines if anything slightly older, but with similar O/S and memory configuration. We regularly open really large assemblies of about 1Gb without problems. I also found a couple of designs that we're over 100Mb to check the performance against the larger BIW and Engine files from Automotive projects tend to drag the graphics performance down marginally but to to an unacceptable degree.

The only difference that I can see is that we're still running NX-5, but new versions are supposed to be better aren't they?

Maybe change the shading tolerance under the Faceting tab that John mentions above. Setting it to standard is usually the default and it is 99% of the time okay with that. Otherwise I find it difficult to credit why you should be having a noticeable performance deficit with that configuration.

Best Regards

Hudson

www.jamb.com.au

Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum

 

[JohnVincent]

You can check a setting under Preferences-> Visulation Performance -> Large Model tab. Uncheck Fixed frame rate.

Not sure this is your problem, just another thing to check.

 

[hudson888]

wadec

The settings that JohnVincent mentioned above are most often turned off by experienced users as soon as NX is installed. What the image shows as down the bottom as "view frustrum culling" is now called "display boxes until loaded", we always have it turned off since at some point the annoyance of trying to cope with poor graphics performance is more than equivalent to the lack of performance itself. In MX-5 I've the same settings and am not seeing similar problems.

I wonder do you have another machine that works any differently with the same model for comparison purposes? It is really hard to judge whether it is your model or the machine since from the specs you quoted it really ought not be the machine.

If it is going to be just graphics or just NX-6 then it would be great if you could output a Parasolid for and earlier version of NX to compare and also to compare opening just the parasolid without any parameters in NX-6 and let us know what it tells you.

I know you have run the evaluate graphics performance as have I. In my case on NX-5 it was not overly revealing all it reported worth noting was the one comment below:

Line antialiasing can reduce wireframe rendering performance up to 50 percent.

I have nevertheless never been moved to turn of antialiasing either and have suffered no real graphics performance deficits even under the high loads I mentioned earlier.

Perhaps this also serves as means of comparison. The only other option that I would seek to verify before you rush out to upgrade your hardware, to who knows what that will make a significant difference, I would get the local support people to demo one of their machines for comparison. Chances are that you'll either find out what you need to know or diagnose a hardware fault on your current machine.

Best Regards

Hudson

www.jamb.com.au

Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum