Help with Inventor 2018 Ram Allocation Issue

[Anonymous]

For some unknown reason Inventor 2018 will not use more than 2 GB ram on my personal machine. My personal machine has 16 GB, soon to be 32 GB. At my work it uses all 8 GB of available ram in that machine. I've tried everything to get it to use the full available system memory. Which it needs to render the large mesh model I'm working on (well over 4000 vector points). When I try to load the model Inventor freezes and will not respond and will never recover no matter how long it sits. Windows sees all 16 GB of ram and when rendering 11 GB is available but Inventor refuses to use more than 2 GB.  Smaller mesh models load fine, granted with a minor delay when loading were inventor become unresponsive.

Things I've done:

-Change prioritization to high within windows services.

-Disabled page files so that it can only allocate system memory and not virtual memory. 

-Uninstalled and re-installed Inventor, making sure the version is 64-bit. 

-Updated Graphics card drivers.

-Windows 10 is up to date. Version 1709

-Inventor 2018 is up to date. version 2018.2.3

-Disable all anti-virus/security software

-Let Inventor chew away at the model while "Not Responding" because it is a large mesh file.

My PC specs are as followed:

I7-4790k @ 4.7 ghz

16 GB Gskill  DDR3 1600 MHz ram (2x 8 GB sticks)

EVGA GTX 980 ti 6 GB

Windows 10 64-bit Home edition- 

Samsung SM951 512 gb M.2 ssd -Windows drive

Samsung 950 pro 512 gb  M.2 ssd - Storage drive

Very rarely do I post to forums because usually I can figure out most issues but this is getting ridiculous. 

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! The behavior sounds file specific. Does it happen to other files? How big is the file? Would you be able to share the file? Please feel free to send it to me directly (johnson.shiue@autodesk.com).

Many thanks!

[tawneyp99]

I would love to know a solution to this as well.  My machine will only use 8Gb of the 32 that i have.

[Mark.Lancaster]

@tawneyp99

Are you rendering a model too with a mesh in Inventor 2018 (2018.2.3)?  Or something else?

If this has nothing do with a rendering a mesh, I would suggest that you create your own posting and provide all the necessary details.  At this point we have no clue what you are struggling with in regards to ram.  We have no information about your model (or what you're struggling with).

[Anonymous]

The model is a mesh created from csv gpu render data that I compiled in
blender. It is across mutliple files so it is not likely file specific. I
wanted to convert a stl with possible mesh holes to a solid model but my
computer freezes when loading any of these files. Even on precompiled files
my system doesn't use more than 1.5 gb of ram. Which is way less than it
should be using. I have 32 gb now, a i7 cpu, 980 ti gpu and one of the
fastest ssds on the market. Only thing i can assume is windows 10 home
might be limiting the ram usage for any one program but this is unlikely as
my games load with 8 gb or more. I may upgrade to windows 10 pro as a test.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! Could you share your hardware profile with me? Start Inventor and open a file. Go to Tools -> Application Options -> Hardware -> Diagnosis and paste it to a text file. Send it to me directly (johnson.shiue@autodesk.com). Hardware information may contain some personal data like folders and machine name. You don't want to share it publicly.

Many thanks!

[dgorsman]

Programs take as much RAM as they need; these days there is no "make it use more" or "don't use more than ____" settings.  The game takes more because it requires more - in order to maintain high performance it loads a lot of data (models, textures, and so on) that it needs on a frequent basis.  Processing a mesh into an object (I'm assuming that's what is being done) can't do any of that, as there's nothing precompiled/pre-built to load, just the mesh.  As far as I know, processing a mesh into an object is a linear process that cannot be multi-threaded so is strictly linear.

Remember taking a pad of scrap paper into exams?  RAM is the same thing.  It doesn't matter if your pad has 100 sheets, or 1000, or 10000, you aren't going to finish the calculations any faster.  And it doesn't matter how many people are in the same room taking the same test, each step has to be done in sequence.

Meshes created in Blender and other visualization software don't always process well as they can be physically impossible (which is sometimes necessary to create a nice picture).  Technical design software on the other hand, being designed to create *actual* things, works hard to keep users solidly planted in the real world.  You might need to take a hybrid approach, only using the mesh data for the overall object while manually handling the fine details.

[Anonymous]

I used gaming merely as an example. I would be inclined to believe that the program simply doesn't need that much ram if it wasn't for my Work machine using all available memory on the same file and succeeding in rendering and fixing what i wanted. That machine has 8gb of ram and it uses 6.5-7 gb of ram and nearly 100% of the cpu when rendering. This machine is also very low spec compared to my home machine and does take about 20 minutes to load the file but it eventually does. The question is not whether the program needs the ram but why it isn't allocating the ram it SHOULD be using. I can use my work machine but this isn't work related and i'd rather not use a company machine for personal projects. What i intend to do is fix the mesh data to render my objects as a tangible thing. As a hobby I create artistic models and sometimes reconstruct models from gpu rendering data in blender. These models may have slight gaps or variations in the final render which need to be repaired. This is where inventor comes in. It has a tool that allows for mesh fixes. 

[Anonymous]

I just sent you the text file you asked for and a link to one of the models in question. 

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Ken,

I have taken a look at the hardware profile and I did not see anything wrong. It feels like there is a setting in Windows dedicating how much RAM can be used per application. I will work with the project team to understand the behavior better. But, I have to say this is the first time I heard about such case from a 64-bit system.

Many thanks!