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My request for a detailed article would include using common terms used in the industry and an in-depth technical article that takes a deep look under the hood.
The very basic conclusion Ben is requesting are already pretty firmly established.
The math and algorithms for the creation of geometry are part of the geometric modeling kernel. Many of those do not lend themselves to parallelization.
Unfortunately, math isn't as simple as that!
However, "moving sketches" sounds like a completely wrong workflow to me!
Maybe share your model and let's see what can be done to improve the situation. 400 patterned objects should definitely not take 10 minutes to update!
@wcndave wrote:
... Usually when there were many tens of thousands of faces from an imported mesh converted to model, before cleanup...
A triangulated mesh does not require much data and is very simple. A mesh has a finite resolution.
However, in CAD software geometry is represented as either analytic geometry (simple prismatic shapes) or NURBS surfaces, or in the case of solid modelers such as Fusion 360 BRep containing both analytic geometry and NURBS data.
Those are mathematically precise descriptions of geometry and are free of resolution. That requires more data and is computationally much more involved.
When you convert a mesh directly to a BRep, each facet of that mesh is converted into such a trimmed NURBS surface, with predictable penalties in performance!
Converting high polygon count meshes into Brep is generally not a good idea in any CAD software..
Hi,
the screencast shows in real time how 400 polygons are combined to a honeycomb plate and then cut for a frame.
With the file you have the possibility to follow the creation in the timeline and to reproduce the processes with your system.
günther
@wcndave wrote:
Right, I read that, however it's the only way to get STLs in for modification. I try to clean them up as quickly as I can.
Just did the TESREG test, and had 5th fastest rendering time, with that engine, at 1:29, so it seems that's performing as it should, however noticed the render used all 24 cores 😉
Also 3rd fastest FPS, and fastest opening, so I guess all is well - I will just try to avoid too many complex elements being modified at once.
Thanks all!
That's all pretty irrelevant!
The algorithms for physically based render engines are not part of any geometric modeling kernel.
Render engines work exclusively with tessellated geometry. Triangulated meshes in essence!
The question is whether you actually need a CAD software to modify .stl files. Many things can be done in Blender and Meshmixer.
Sorry, I didn't mean slow to print, I meant slowing fusion down.
Sorry, do you mean you're wondering what I am talking about? and that I didn't provide a file etc. Or that you wonder what the whole performance on one core vs multi-core is, and that no one has provided documentation on it?
Assuming you mean the latter, I can explain it in a bit more detail.
As someone who does 3d printing, I'd been using sketchup, as I was very familiar with it for woodworking. However it has limitations and a lot of people recommended F360, and after an initial learning curve, I discovered some of the power of it, and am keen to learn more.
When I have an STL file, eg a router baseplate someone made, that needs modification, I may start from scratch, or, if it's a complex model, want to modify the existing model.
So I found online how to do this, turn of history, convert to BRep, then clean up.
And I get the warning about number of facets, and performance. In this case 39,252 facets.
But if I want to use this model, I have to do this, and I was initially thinking it shouldn't be a problem, because I have a very fast computer... fast for everything I have done so far, 12/24 cores, 64GB RAM, NVMe Drive. (I do video editing, photoshop, coding, virtual machines, programming, sketchup, 100 things open at once etc).
So I continue with the conversion. It took a few seconds, but then when orbiting furiously around the object, I can see it's using all my CPU cores, and quite a lot of GPU too. (nothing else is really running)
But doing things that involve changing the model, could be quite slow.
So I reduced the number of faces, by just deleting one in the middle, seems to "auto clean", and also remembered to delete the original mesh, and things got faster again.
Then putting a honeycomb pattern sketch ready to cut extrude and moving it made everything hang for 10 minutes.
I saw only one CPU core was working.
I read this and other threads / posts, and have come to realise that some of the 3d modelling operations do not easily lend themselves to multi-core processing.
I did that RESREG thing as it was listed, and I guess the purpose is to check if what you experience, when using the same model as others, is as expected. My numbers were very good, so both Fusion, and my PC are operating together "as expected".
I have a high CPU count, so rendering which is multi-core is super fast, whereas my CPU speed is only 4.2GHz, so some operations will be only "ok".
The video by Günther looks very interesting, and have watched it once, will need to watch again to understand exactly how that works.
In my case I wanted to create a honeycomb in an existing solid, to use less filament for printing. However turns out it takes more due to walls vs infill.
I can't create cut-outs, as I need a contiguous flat/smooth surface.
It's been very useful to understand some of the performance factors/limitations involved, which will help me going forward. Still not 100% sure why my sketch took so long to move, however if it happens again, I will record/repeat the steps.
Many thanks to everyone for input!
That is probably the issue. But, for this quantity of lines on a sketch to overwhelm any adequate computer is an unacceptable performance for a CAD system. Below is a screenshot of the sketch I was merely trying to move. When all of these items are selected the system locks up - even before the move. The 'browser' menu will also go black when I execute the selection. I will also need to mirror these in the next step, so there will be 2X the elements.
I did try to insert a reference file with a smaller set of this pattern, but that took forever to generate and also crashed the system.
I have 25 years of experience working with AutoCAD, and executing these sort of operations on weaker computers was trivial. This application feels like 3 steps backwards. It's like a high school science project - not read for commercialization. (Geez, even the 'preview' function for posting to this website doesn't work.)
@joeEVLJ4 wrote:
I have 25 years of experience working with AutoCAD, and executing these sort of operations on weaker computers was trivial.
Fusion 360 or any other modern parametric CAD system isn't AutoCAD. It's time to update your skills to work with the sketch engines of modern parametric CAD systems. I've worked with CAD since college so for over 30 years and ditched AutoCAD for Solid Works in 1998. Patterning in a sketch has been considered a bad practice since I started working with 3D CAD systems,
While some CAD systems do this better than FUiosn 360, it still isn't a recommended practice.
You either learn this quickly or stick with AutoCAD, because otherwise, you'll just get more frustrated.
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