Inventor performance translating native to STP files

[Daan_M]

Hi,

I am currently working on a configurator for electric motors.

I notice that assembling the motor within Inventor is pretty fast (<2 sec). When it is fully assembled i translate it in iLogic to a 3D .stp file using;

Dim oStepName As String = SavePath & Naam & ".stp"
ThisDoc.Document.SaveAs(oStepName, True)

The .stp file size is about 20-50mb and takes about 15 seconds.

I find this quite alot of time and prefer it to be as little as possible.
Inventor is installed on an onpremise server (not my rig and i don't know a whole lot about the optimal specifications for CAD computers), when i look at the preformance it displays;

The red drawn periods is where the iLogic code executes the assembling and translating/saving.

It seems it's not using alot of processing power, so what is the bottleneck here?

Is there any way to up the preformance and translate files to 3D .stp faster?

Thanks in advance.

[pball]

Inventor for most operations uses a single thread. So having a server grade CPU with many cores/threads with a lower max frequency is the main bottle neck. With the given hardware I'm not aware of any way to improve performance. If you have a computer with a high end desktop CPU with a high frequency you could try running this code on that PC and see how it compares.

[Daan_M]

Thank you for the reply, clears things up.

Instead of upgrading the hardware I could maybe downgrade the task.

I mean that as in simplifying the parts or translation quality, I'll create a new post in the iLogic forum board about this and see if anyone knows more about this.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! If I recall correctly, most import/export workflows are multi-threaded. Assuming multi-threaded operations would be faster may not always be true. It can depend on how the threads start, how operations are distributed, and how data are reassembled. In some cases, it could be slower. It is jut that multi-threaded/multi-core leverage more CPU powers to get things down. Whether or not it is faster is a different issue.

Did you compare the STEP export of the same model manually with iLogic? Is it much faster? Another option to consider is to use Task Scheduler to export the assemblies in a batch. You may run the task when you are not using Inventor. Then you will get the STEP files when you need them.

Many thanks!

[Daan_M]

@johnsonshiue Thank you for the reply. The model will be live linked to an online configurator so unfortunatly task schedular won't be a fitting solution. Exporting the assembly to STP is equally fast through iLogic or manual export (-+15 sec)

I'm not too much into computer specs and I don't understand why it is taking 15 seconds using about 5% capacity.

Simply said i want it to take <1 second and use 100% capacity. I understand this might not be possible, but then i would like to know what i can do to atleast up the preformance, wether that would be hard- or software changes.

There is a bottleneck somewhere in this proces and I want to understand what is causing it.

[Frederick_Law]

Do you need all the detail in STEP?

Does the STEP need to be assembly with 100s of parts? 

Would a single combined part works?

Does it need internal details?

As a designer/engineer, I only need mounting detail, overall size.

I don't want to download a 50mb STEP will all the internal wires and 1000 plates that make the rotor.

So simplify the model before export to STEP.

Unless your end user need those details.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Daan,

I am not a developer so I cannot comment on whether or not maximizing CPU usage would help here. Based on my limited understanding, the process of exporting involves getting the Inventor data from the memory, process each component individually, write it to the STEP file. This is just a very simplified description of what happened behind the scene. Each stage may require certain checking. The most compute-intensive operation is probably the actual translation. As I mentioned, it is already multi-thread, meaning multiple cores are leveraged to make things fast. However, the reading and writing portions cannot be multi-threaded.

Think about it as driving an internal combustion engine car. Even if it is a Ferrari, you will need to start the car and warm it a bit. Then go on whatever speed you can reach. Cool down and turn off the engine. The start-up and turn-off are fixed cost.

Many thanks!

[Daan_M]

Hi @johnsonshiue 

Thanks, I further investigated the proces, the server I work on has 24 cores, and i see the following during a translation and saving operation:

Usage is about 2-4% avarage but you can see individual cores reaching their upper limits which would indicate a bottleneck. Also the HDD writing speed seems to limit preformance.

The server owner told me the CPU is 10 years old, i checked the price and it around 40$....

I think it is time for an upgrade either way so, once this is done i will update this post with the results.