Unknown Performance Issues with Inventor

[inventor_phild]

Originally Posted by 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.

If you are at the Championship in St Louis, drop by the Autodesk booth and we can have a longer discussion on this topic.

[Solidstate89]

Originally Posted by inventor_phild

If you are at the Championship in St Louis, drop by the Autodesk booth and we can have a longer discussion on this topic.

I'm sorry to say that I won't be able to make it to St. Louis with the rest of my team due to my job.

[pmax]

A couple thoughts come to mind:
- Try suppressing _all_ constraints (easy to do if you change to Model view at the top of the browser), to see if indeed conflicting constraints are the culprit. If you already have a mix of suppressed constraints and do not want that lost, then either close and do not save once you have investigated, or Undo.

- LODs should help, but if you are seeing such dramatic performance issues, I do not suspect the memory is a problem.

Also, LODs are designed to respect constraints, even if the component is suppressed, so if the issue is indeed constraints, the LODs will not help.

- Assembly Features can cause performance issues if used too liberally. Generally I recommend keeping them in subassemblies as best possible, instead of high up in top assemblies.

- Are you using a Space Mouse? We have seen driver issues in the past, causing just this kind of multi-minute delays.

Regards,
Pete
Autodesk

[JCharlton]

Originally Posted by pmax

- Are you using a Space Mouse? We have seen driver issues in the past, causing just this kind of multi-minute delays.

How common is this? I've been looking at getting one of these for Inventor. Thanks for any advice.

[Solidstate89]

I do commonly use a Space Mouse, yes. Started using at when I got hired at my place of employment about 6 months ago and haven't been able to do 3D Modeling without it since.

However I've set the driver on my desktop to only start when I activate it. It will not turn on automatically. And due to just how slow the assembly was, it wasn't worth even plugging in my space mouse and using it. With that being said, for all the sub assemblies I never ran into performance issues even when using the Space Mouse. I'm more and more believing it was all those faulty constraints. I plan to keep out a better eye for those next year.

And to you JCharlton, I would highly recommend one if you're constantly working wit 3D CAD or any other form or 3D Modeling program. It is an absolute god-send. It took me about a week, maybe a week and a half to get used to, and like I said in my previous paragraph - I just can't do 3D modeling work without it anymore. At the beginning of this season I even purchased a 3D Connexion Notebook Spacemouse so I could use it with my laptop when I would head to the high school after I got out of work.