F360 Graphic Performance could be improved further?

[O.Tan]

Hi,
Let me start of with I love F360 and what the team is doing with it, however there's just still many features that need to be added, bugs need to be fixed and performance optimization that needs to be done before I can use it as my day to day CAD software.

Here is one of them, and this is related to graphical performance. I'm comparing this to SolidEdge ST5 which was released in 2012 but surprisingly it beats F360 in the framerates. I honestly thought F360 being a new software will be better but sadly it doesn't.

The model I'm showing below is 100% drawn using F360 and some of the electronic parts is downloaded from the respective manufacturer part. I exported the file afterwards into my daily CAD software. 

https://screencast.autodesk.com/main/details/01240083-5864-4564-9f1c-9f7df65a0ca7

This is how it looks like in SolidEdge after I import it via STEP, notice how much smoother the model is.

https://screencast.autodesk.com/main/details/056bd069-c1ec-4971-ac37-6e55b0fda19f

I decided to test the file again except this time, I imported the same STEP file into F360 thinking perhaps the paramaters or design information in the model is slowing things down, doesn't seem so. F360 is just slower.

https://screencast.autodesk.com/main/details/d4166007-e182-4640-b5e3-ca877eb48663

Now if you wonder how is my usual working environment in F360, I attached another short video to show how F360 generally runs with a "small" assembly.

https://screencast.autodesk.com/main/details/8cb9aa6b-dcdb-447c-b0a9-51ff42df8cde

I've tried turning off all of the effects and it turns out, only the imported STEP file framerates is improved whereas on the original file, no framerate improvements can be seen. 

[O.Tan]

 (the image shown is during render which shows to me that F360 Render is CPU based)

It got me thinking, and I posted this in another thread but probably should post it here as well. 

We know that F360 viewport uses GPU, but I wonder if the effects is calculated by the CPU? And if it is, could OpenCL help improve the calculation speed?

Cause my AMD system monitor seem to say so, as when I rotate the model, my GPU only uses 30% whereas my CPU is showing a 90% usage on all cores. 

I've used softwares like FinalCutProX and CaptureOnePro 8 which makes use of OpenCL and the speed improvements is really noticeable. 

[TrippyLighting]

Looks like the January update to 2.0.1403 greatly improved 3D viewport performance. This is particularly noticeable when zooming with highlighted geometry!

[prabakarm]

I am glad you are seeing the improvements.  We will continue working on it for the upcoming updates as well.

Prabakar.

[cekuhnen]

I noticed the same as well.
But there were still cases in my iPhone 6 model (just body now buttons) where lag was still present. Restarting the app fixed it.

iMac 2008 all 3D settings set to low

[O.Tan]

Hmm, quite an old thread but since it's related

https://www.khronos.org/news/press/khronos-reveals-vulkan-api-for-high-efficiency-graphics-and-compu...

Other related news:

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/General-Tech/GDC-15-What-Vulkan-glNext-SPIR-V-and-OpenCL-21

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=khronos-vulcan-spirv&num=1

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/khronos-unveils-vulcan-api-for-wearable...

So could F360 leverage of such tech in the future? 

Right now, even a 78 unique components causes F360 performance to crawl and functions like Motion Studies suffers greatly. 

[chengyun.yang]

Hi O.Tan,

Thanks for the links. 

When you say "Right now, even a 78 unique components causes F360 performance to crawl and functions like Motion Studies suffers greatly", can you tell us how many instances of these unique components there are in your design? If possible, can you send us your file (email: chengyun.yang@autodesk.com) so we can take a look on our side? 

Thanks

Chengyun

[O.Tan]

Hmm, in terms of number of instances I guess some of them goes up to 6? So total components is probably around 250 components? (created a new component and guessed the number is incremental) Does Fusion has any command/script that I can use to let it know the total number of components?

Sorry can't, company asset 😞

[chengyun.yang]

Understood.

Did you observe the same performance problem on both Windows and on Mac? Generally speaking, the rendering performance on Mac will be slower than on Windows for a large assembly model. The reason is our Windows GPU renderer is taking advantage of the DX11 MT to accelerate the rendering. However, on Mac, DX11 API is not available and we haven't been able to achieve the same acceleration using OpenGL on Mac. This is a key improvement we need to make to get a better performance experience on Mac for large assembly model.

On the other hand, one question I have for you is "are there a lot of transparent objects(e.g., objects with the transparent materials or a significant number of visible sketches) in your design"? The transparent objects takes more time to render than the normal opaque objects.

[O.Tan]

Aah, well hope the upcoming OpenGL enhancements will improve the performance for Mac and on your question, nope; all sketches are turned off and I don't use any transparent materials. 

Hmm, some odd thing is going on, I accidently saved as the file (File Copy A) and opening the new one is much more smoother then the original file; File A (the original file is actually a converted STEP file and then I did some modifications in it with F360), however doing it again (save as and create a new copy; File Copy B) with the original file; File A didn't result similar performance as File Copy A.

We probably need to create a huge model (with motion links and joints) that is able to be shared among F360 user, so that way we can have a common gauge on how different hardware performs with the same file. I'm up for some modelling job, any suggestions?

[O.Tan]

Okay, so I just tested the files in Windows and yes, there's a noticeable difference in performance (better) in Windows compared to OSX in regards to animate model (joints) and motion study. I also noticed (and this happens in OSX as well though I'm not sure how to trigger it) is that if the file is open long enough and the view doesn't change, somehow rotating the view will not turn off the visible edge lines and I know it's not suppose to work this way but it feels much more nicer not seeing the lines disappear everytime the view is rotated or twitched a little, though rotating the view with visible lines on does result in a choppy viewport. 

[O.Tan]

Hi,

I've tested this awhile and this is what I noticed.

1. Turning off Shaded with Visible Edges only to Shaded will improve the performance tremendously.

2. In some circumstances, F360 will ignore to turn off visible edges (not sure why it does this) when I rotate my model and it seemed to perform much better then it usually is (supposedly turning off edges cause not enough memory). But when it doesn't do that on and off thing, I get better framerates with my model.

So based on this observation, I wonder if there's any way to disable the turning on and off. Cause it seems that my computer has enough memory to support the size of the assembly I'm currently working with. 

[chengyun.yang]

Hi O.Tan,

Yes. In shaded visual style, all the body lines will not be rendered and that could help improve the performance. And I would also suggest that you turn off all the effects when you feel the performance is not good. 

Fusion will automatically detect the rendering frame rate(FPS). If the frame rate is low(below minimum FPS in Graphics preference), Fusion will try to suppress some visual effects to improve the performance if you are just doing the view navigation(e.g., rotate, zoom, pan). If the frame rate is still low with effects off, it will switch to the shaded visual style. That is why you see the lines on and off. By default this mechanism is triggered when the frame rate is below 35. But you can change it in Preference Dialog -> Graphics ->Minimum FPS.

Thanks

Chengyun