Huge memory consumption during CAM simulation

[Anonymous]

Hi,
 
CAM Simulating my design causes ADF360 to consume huge amounts of memory, and not let go of it all again.
 
I guess there is a memory leak somewhere in ADF360 while simulating CAM operations at certain conditions.
 
I can reproduce the problem with my design, but I need to get on with it, so I have saved a copy of it.
 
The CAM is setup so that I first do 3D adaptive clearing and following that I do rest machining, and its on the rest machining thins go really wrong.
 
When I start ADF360 it consumes about 3XXMb memory. After loading the design, It adds 50Mb or so.

Simulating a CAM which do not exhibit the problem, I see ADF360 consume up to 550Mb. When I stop simulation It releases some of it.

When simulating the problematic set of operations, it starts drawing a red line underneath the simulation timeline, and every time this red line id drawn, memory jumps excessively. When closing simulation only half of the memory is released, resulting in a memory consumption of 1Gb.
 
My screencast is in poor shape as the simulation also consumes all CPU. ScreenCast recording is unfortunately suffering from this.
 
Regards Henrik.

[paul.clauss]

Hi @Anonymous

Thanks for posting! It looks like you are having some issues with memory consumption while simulating CAM toolpaths in Fusion 360.

I noticed you mentioned the red line - red tick marks are shown in that area to mark collisions between the tool and the fixtures defined in your CAM setups. Hovering over the red line will show a message describing the collision if this is what you are experiencing, as shown in the screenshot below. Calculating these collisions is computationally intensive, I have experienced very high memory usage when Fusion is required to do so. Is it possible that there is some sort of issue with the toolpath resulting in nearly constant interference? I'd like to have a look at the design as it seems screencast is not working for you, would you mind sharing it with me using any of the techniques at this link?

I have also reached out to some members of our CAM development team who may have additional insight as to why the high jump in memory usage is occurring when simulating toolpaths - I will keep this thread updated with any new information I have to share.

Hopefully this helps! If it does not, please send over a design that is exhibiting this behavior and I am happy to have a look. Feel free to let me know if you have any questions. 

[Anonymous]

Hi,

The red line I was referring to was a horizontal line, not vertical. It would grow from one side to the other, as a progress bar in between simulation cycles.

I found that fiddling with graphics settings, speed and details, I could find a reasonable configuration that would work for me.

This confirms that my graphics card is not built for live drawing while everything is also calculated on the fly.

/Henrik

[paul.clauss]

Hi @Anonymous

Thanks for the response! Sometimes if a toolpath has many collisions the red lines will blend together and appear to grow across the timeline, but it does not sound like that is quite the behavior you experienced.

Out of curiosity, does limiting graphics effects within Fusion 360 for performance also help resolve this issue? Also, what graphics card/drivers are you using? Are the drivers up-to-date?

I'm glad you were able to find some settings that will work for you! Please let me know if you experience any other difficulties - I am happy to help.

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I'm quite baffled that you dont recognize my description of the red progress bar at the bottom of the simulation window. It occurs just below the CAM timeline. Maybe it is not occurring on a really fast PC, so you have never seen it yourself 😉

My PC did show it pretty frequently when simulating before, and while it was showing, simulation would freeze until progress reached the right side of the display.

Anyway, my graphics card is Intel HD, and I'm right now updating my drivers from 4444 to 4624. Why it haven't updated itself I dont understand as I have set everything possible to auto update, also Intel updater.

I've changed preferences under Graphics, the property "Transparency Effect" from "Better Performance" to "Better Display". Weird, that my performance gets better when changing away from that value. It could be that I misinterpret "better performance". Maybe it really means that the machine can exhibit better performance, and you should choose that value if so

with the new settings, i dont see it anymore.

Also the further I zoom out, the worse performance. Maybe when details gets smaller in the view, they require more exact calculations and draws more CPU ??

At highest speed simulation I can sometimes provoke the red line to appear on my Intel i5-4200, 1.6-2.3 Ghz, Intel HD 4400 graphics, 8Gb Thinkpad Yoga laptop.

A new version of the line now appeared, it was blue and did behave exactly as the red line. This is funny 🙂

/Henrik

[paul.clauss · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous

Thanks for the response! I have seen the red and blue bars that you are seeing - think of them as a "buffering" indicator for simulating toolpaths. I wanted to bring up the collisions to ensure that the high memory usage was not due to that calculation, as no screenshot of the bar you described was attached.

How complex a toolpath are you simulating? CAM simulation is computationally intensive, and performance can be low for me as well with very large toolpaths. If you'd like to share a design in which this issue is occurring with me I am happy to have a look on my end! I 

Hopefully updating the drivers and using the configuration mentioned in your previous post helps you properly simulate CAM in Fusion. I am unsure of the root cause as to why performance would be lower when zoomed far away, but I would imagine that you are correct in that a more complex calculation could be required. 

Please let me know if you have any questions!