Unknown Performance Issues with Inventor

[Solidstate89]

Thanks for the post. From what it sounds like, the Level of Detail acts just like Reference Sets in Unigraphics - which although we weren't using them we were suppressing unused sub assemblies and the like, so I don't think that will help matters.

I'll look through the other 30 pages or so though and see if there's anything else in there that can help me out. Thanks for the help.

[,4lex S.]

So, try the Level of Detail, but I think you have a much bigger issue here. First of all, are you running the most up to date sevice pack of inventor (at work this seemed to fix most issues)?

Bear in mind that inventor 2011 is written for gaming cards instead of CAD graphics cards, so your hardware should be WAY more than enough.

[Solidstate89]

Yes, I downloaded all of the latest updates for Inventor during the installation process.

And yes, I agree. There is something is seriously wrong here, I'm just at a loss as to what it could possibly be (obvious with this forum post here). I'll look back into the Level of Detail, but from what I understand it's no different than just manually suppressing parts in an assembly. However there does seem to be a few tricks in there as well to reduce strain on the system.

I just don't know WHY it's producing SO much strain on such high-end hardware.

[kinghashbrown]

might be a bit of a silly question, but are you using sub assemblies?

[Solidstate89]

Yes.

Why, is there an issue with Inventor and Sub Assemblies?

[Chickenonastick]

That is very interesting. Try running Inventor with only one GTX470 and see what happens. Is your i7/GTX470 overclocked?

I'm running Inventor on a 9600GT and it runs fine...

[Solidstate89]

You know, as embarrassing as that is, I haven't though of running only one 470. I should go disable SLI and see what happens. That still doesn't explain why it worked fine for the first 5 hours on Monday, then began lagging.

I also haven't overclocked my i7, and I brought my 470's back to stock clock levels because I know the clock frequencies don't really give that much of a boost to 3D Modeling Programs.

And before you ask, I have tried running Inventor with Hyper Threading enabled and without. I haven't noticed a positive or negative difference with either setting.

[548swimmer]

I agree your hardware should be more than enough to run Inventor, but is it possible you're overdrawing still? What color is the RAM bar in the bottom right hand corner? The less full it is the better.

In order to figure out if this is a hardware or software issue, I'd check your performance monitor equivalent. If the CPU load is low, and the RAM is under 50% usage, the problem is with Inventor.

Hope this helps.

[Solidstate89]

The highest I've ever seen my memory usage spike is about 2.5GB. Which seeing as I have 6GB should still be more than enough.

I'll have to get back to you about my CPU usage though.

[JD Mather]

The most common problem I see in a situation like this is a conflicting assembly constraint. Impossible to diagnose without sitting in front of the machine - but I would make a substantial wager that is the problem. You might be able to isolate it by removing parts or subs one-by-one. When I sit down to find a problem like this I can usually find the suspect part or assembly fairly quickly.

I would rate almost everything I see done in Inventor as garbage. Garbage in - garbage out. There is a real problem with professional level training.

If you can pack and go the assembly and send it to me I'll take a look. (be sure to preserve file/folder structure) jmather_at_pct_dot_edu

[Solidstate89]

There are several constraints I've seen with errors on them. And as you said, they don't seem to be uncommon. I never realized that conflicting constraints could cause such severe performance issues.

I can take a look at them myself over the weekend since I finally have some time and I'll report back my findings. I'm used to having to deal with broken and conflicting constraints with the Unigraphics models I work with at my job.

Thank you for that insight though. I really had no idea that conflicting constraints could do anything to the performance of Inventor except just make it error prone in terms of getting proper movement and proper association.

[kinghashbrown]

Originally Posted by Solidstate89

Yes.

Why, is there an issue with Inventor and Sub Assemblies?

no, I was thinking that if you did not use sub assemblies, that inventor might be trying to update to many constraints which will kill performance.

That's a bit strange.

I run Inventor on my Dell Dimension E520 (Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 3GB DDR2 RAM, running at 2.13GHz on Windows XP Media Center) and I can have several parts and assemblies running at once as well as a few tabs open in Firefox at the same time with no lag, but when I play Garry's Mod, if I spawn too many props (>25) it lags like crazy.

I think it's probably the computer's reaction to continued use, possibly heat?

[J93Wagner]

I'll admit it, I also want a solution to how to get around it, and although when I encountered it, it wasn't so painfully slow (only about 5-10 second delay time), it was indeed very annoying and frustrating. So, it's for that reason, or a similar one anyway why I would rate Inventor 2010 better than 2011 (although I would say it is pretty close, 2011 improved on 2010 a lot in getting around to what needed to get done).

/rant

But anyway, you mentioned that you constrain every bolt and washer you can. Part of the problem might be because Inventor tries to render every single part before moving. While I doubt it is the major factor as to the slowing of your computer, it might help a little bit and get things done more efficiently.

Otherwise, try to do everything you possibly can in sub-assemblies to make the chunks you have to work with as small as possible, thus the least amount of rendering that has to be done.

[Solidstate89]

I am starting to come to the realization that we perhaps somehow used too few sub assemblies. We've done exactly what we've done in years past, however I guess with the increased complexity of Inventor 2011, we had to re-adjust how we put our assemblies together. Adjusting the Level of Detail did nothing, and previous years assemblies open just fine.

It must be some combination of incorrect/conflicting constraints and the sheer number of them. I just didn't think that even with that it could bring hardware like mine to its knees.

I'll have to keep a closer eye on this kind of issue next year, so hopefully we can catch it before it ever even becomes an issue.

Thank you to everyone who assisted me.