Large Assembly performance

[brent_e_barbour]

I’m having a performance issue on large assemblies by our standards.  By large assemblies, I mean 867 unique parts according to the parts list generated at the part level.  I’m running…

Autodesk Product Design Suite Ultimate 2017 with Inventor Professional

Dell Precision T5500

Intel Xeon CPU X5647 @ 2.93 GHz (2 processors)

24 GB RAM

2 TB, 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive

Nvidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti, 1GB GDDR5, DirectX 11

Window 7 Professional, 64-bit, SP1

No internet access

To open the 867 part assembly took 8 minutes, 17.7 seconds.  Navigating the assembly seemed VERY sluggish.  There was a 2 instance array that included most of the parts and subassemblies, let’s say an 80% approximation.  I attempted to edit the array and change it from 2 to 3 instances.  It took a while to for the edit dialog box to come up.  From the moment I highlighted the 2 and changed it to a 3 up to the time it took for the 3rd instance to appear, took about 14 minutes, 24.3 seconds.

According to an Autodesk document I read, “Large Assembly Instructions.pdf,” a large assembly is 5000 or more unique parts and only recommends 6 GB RAM…

>5,000 unique part assembly recommends 6 GB RAM

>10,000 unique part assembly recommends 12 GB RAM

>15,000 unique part assembly recommends 18 GB RAM

>20,000 unique part assembly recommends 24 GB RAM

I’m nowhere near 5,000 and have 24 GB of RAM.

I upgraded the 2 TB hard drive to 2 of 1 TB Solid State Drive to see if that makes a difference.  The assembly opened in 6 minutes, 54.7 seconds.  A little faster.  Navigation seemed a little smoother, but still a little sluggish.  Not much change in the array calculation going from 2 to 3 instances.  I timed it at 14 minutes, 36 seconds.

Then I got all my Inventor patches and graphics card drivers up to date, and I moved my Vault workspace to the 2nd SSD (D: drive).  Inventor loaded much quicker.  However, there wasn’t much change in loading the assembly.  I timed it at 6 minutes, 45.7 seconds.  For whatever reason, I timed the array calculation at 23 minutes, 17.6 seconds.

In summary, the following are the times in (MM:SS) format…

	with 1 of 2 TB Hard Drive	with 2 of 1 TB SSD's	After software & driver updates
PC Bootup	00:48.4	00:37.7	00:38.3
Windows Login	00:26.4	00:06.3	00:05.9
Inventor Load	02:59.5	02:07.9	00:14.9
Large Assy Load	08:17.7	06:54.7	06:45.7
Array Calculation	14:24.3	14:36.0	23:17.6
Vault Basic Load	00:34.5	00:33.6	00:03.3

 Also, I followed the "Large Assembly Instructions.pdf" recommendations on Application Options settings.  Any other recommendations on what I need to consider to get this running more efficiently?

[mcgyvr]

Using "part count" is basically useless..

I can make 1 single complex part that would slow down inventor drastically...

Your processor is fairly slow and only 2 cores (not that all of Inventor can use them but drawings do)

I'd replace that for sure.. 

I wouldn't run Inventor with large assemblies with anything less than 4Ghz processor speeds now..

Memory speed also matters too.. 

You can attempt to benchmark your computer vs others here too with this neat utility someone created..

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-general-discussion/how-fast-is-your-inventor-pc-really/m-p/59...

[brent_e_barbour]

The system says 2 processor, but it's 8 core.  8 little window under "CPU Usage" in the Task Manager.  8 "Intel Xeon X5647 @ 2.93GHz" under "Processors" in device manager.  They make 4GHz now!?!?  Holy cow!  I haven't seen anything above 3GHz, maybe 3.5GHz for the longest time.  I just got this system because it was supposed to be fast.  I guess I need to price out another one.

[mcgyvr]

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@brent_e_barbour wrote:

@Anonymous system says 2 processor, but it's 8 core.  8 little window under "CPU Usage" in the Task Manager.  8 "Intel Xeon X5647 @ 2.93GHz" under "Processors" in device manager.  They make 4GHz now!?!?  Holy cow!  I haven't seen anything above 3GHz, maybe 3.5GHz for the longest time.  I just got this system because it was supposed to be fast.  I guess I need to price out another one.

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That processor may have been fast 5 years ago.. Its old/slow now ..

The modeling portion of Inventor (iam/ipt) can really only use a single core... But other portions can benefit from more cores..

That Xeon is actually a 4 core but you have hyperthreading turned on I believe.. 

But yes.. sub 3Ghz is what I consider "slow" for Inventor.. 

[smokes2998]

From dealing with large assemblies an inventor

Don't use arrays or patterns in assemblies, it slows the assemblies down.

Make sure that  the are the mates are constrained and design doctor is not coming up with errors.

Set the Levels of details up to speed up loading.

Use the assembly lightweight tool is you have it.

Don't use shrink wrapped assemblies it slows inventor down.

Make sure any imported geometry is stable.

Turn of the hyper threading in the bios so you reduce the Xeon core count from 8 to 4 it speeds up inventor

Make sure the network connection to the vault is fast as this was one of the biggest issues.

Prepare to make lot of coffee and  stare at the blue circle of boredom

[yun_chen_autodesk · Accepted solution]

Hi Brent,

Your hardware looks good except the graphics card. 1GB memory is a little tight.

If you are willing to share the dataset with us, we would love to take a look to see if we can reproduce the problem and identify what is going on. This year, we are spending lot of effect in the area of large assembly performance. I would be interested in how your dataset would do. 

We use data only for software development purpose. You can send me an email to yun.chen AT autodesk.com and we can set up a place for you upload the data.

You can also participate the Beta program at beta.autodesk.com to try with our in-development builds.

Thanks,

Yun

[Anonymous]

I have to work with big assemblies occasionally and have found that turning off Enable Prehighlight (Shift+RMB and uncheck. It's about half way down the list) can improve navigation somewhat because chunks of the assembly aren't trying to highlight every time the cursor moves over them. OK it doesn't help with your load times but it might make the editing less painful. I just re-enable it when editing then off again for navigation. 

I found Load Express good in some cases, yet in others it would load the assembly in what looked like a sectioned view, as in part of it was not visible like when you section an assembly. As soon as I loaded full it all appeared. I think it's worth a try but it's not brilliant. 

Hope this helps in some way. 

[yun_chen_autodesk]

Tom,

We are working on the pre-highlight performance this year. The performance should improved significantly in the described workflow. I highly encourage you to participate in the beta program to see what we are doing and play with the in-development builds to see if that resolves your problem.

Regarding the section view issue in Express mode, is there any chance you can record a video to show us the problem? 

Thanks,

Yun

[Anonymous]

@yun_chen_autodesk I can't at the moment but I will try to soon.