GPU Memory Usage - Model States

[gerrardhickson]

Hi All,

I'm working on a reasonably large model - ~35000 occurrences ~2000-3000 parts. Since we've been working on this project, I've noticed more and more strange crashes. I think I've finally traced that back to GPU memory. I'm running an Nvidia RTX 2080 (8GB) and for the past 3+ years, it's been a monster card nothing has come close to challenging it, but this project is killing it. The screenshot below says a lot I think.

Now that I'm confident I've found the cause of the problems I can either upgrade my graphics card, or learn to manage the file more efficiently.

I tried using model states to isolate parts of the model in the hope that that would also reduce the load on the GPU, but it had no appreciable effect. In the screenshot above, I changed Model states isolating the model from ~35000 occurrences down to about 3-5000 occurrences, but the GPU load is unchanged. I had to close the model completely before the GPU memory usage changed at all.

I've tried to change a bunch of settings, from visual styles, to hardware settings in the Application Options and quality settings in the NVidia Control Panel, but nothing has helped.

I have a few questions from this:

1. Is this memory usage behaviour normal? i.e. changing model states having no effect on GPU memory
2. If model states and changing options don't help, what other strategies can you suggest? 

Regards

EDIT: I later noticed, that closing the model wasn't enough to release the memory. I closed the model and walked away, then came back 30 or so minutes later. The inventor session was open, and all documents closed with 0|0 showing in the bottom right corner (indicating no files in memory), but the GPU memory usage was still at 7+GB out of 8GB. I closed the Inventor application, and the GPU memory was released immediately.
This is beginning to feel like a bug...

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! It is hard to tell without profiling the workflow. The unreleased memory does not mean it is reserved and not used. The application may reuse the memory dynamically. So, it is very hard to see what exactly happens behind the scene just by looking at Task Manager.

One thing you may consider is to turn off Express mode (Tools -> App Options -> Assembly -> uncheck "Enable Express mode"). This option is good for viewing a large assembly when it is done. If you are actively editing or changing the assembly, the cached graphics might need to be saved from time to time. The iam file size could be bigger than without the cached graphics (Express mode off).

Many thanks!