Presentation file running extremely slow (60+ mins per tweak)

[Anonymous]

I'm currently having an issue with the 2018 presentation files running extremely slow. Has anyone else had these issues and know of any solutions?

As I add in tweaks to the file the loading times seem to become exponentially bigger. At the start of the file I was waiting 5-10 minutes per tweak as the file is extremely large which isn't much of a surprise. Now I'm waiting over 60 minutes per tweak with only around 15 tweaks added. Over the 60 minutes the RAM for Inventor is ever so slowly increasing which at least lets me know it hasn't just stalled.

I have 3 storyboards with one scene and using around 3000 parts with 40,000 instances. I don't like to create additional scenes for IPN files because it will load the model multiple times in the drawing as well as the presentation file.

I don't understand why added these tweaks would cause such a huge performance drop. From my experience with the new IPN files there looks to be a bug when creating storyboards.

Computer Specs
CPU: E5-1650 v3 @ 3.50GHz

GPU: GTX 1080 8GB

RAM: 32 GB

w/ 500 GB SSD

Windows 10

[johnsonshiue · Accepted solution]

Hi! This could be related to local Appearance and Material Styles. Try this and see if performance improves, Go to All Programs -> Autodesk -> Inventor Pro 2018 -> Tools -> Task Scheduler. Create an Update Design task and select the project and the project folder. Make sure the "Update local appearance and material styles" option is checked. Run the task. It will take a while. After that, does the performance become better?

Many thanks!

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the quick reply! Are you able to explain why appearance and material styles would have any impact on the performance of a presentation file in relation to the number of tweaks within the presentation file?

I will run task scheduler overnight and see if there is any improvements in the morning.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! I have seen this particular issue before. It is not so much about the tweak being slow. It is about the components in the assembly referenced by the presentation file having outdated or out-of-sync appearance styles or excessive unused styles. You may want to try this also. Open the top-level assembly file. Go to Manage -> Styles -> Purge -> set Yes to any unused styles.

Many thanks!

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the advice Johnson but purging the styles didn't make any difference. Still taking between 30 and 80 minutes to tweak. I have seen this in other presentation files in the new presentation environment. The more tweaks I add the longer the loading time is, seemingly exponentially. 

The stagnation of the RAM during this waiting time tells me that the program is being held up by something. My CPU is at around 8% and still have over 20GB of RAM not being used.

In the past I have kept away from presentation files because of how slow they are but not being able to make exploded views is very restricting. I guess i'll have to make special positional reps next time as a work around until presentation are able to handle large assembly files.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! Do you have Express mode enabled? Go to Tools -> Application Options -> Assembly -> "Enable Express Mode"

Is it checked? If yes, please uncheck it and open the top level assembly and save. It will clear out the cache graphics stored in the top-level assembly allowing the assembly to open faster.

After that, does adding tweak perform better?

Many thanks!

[Anonymous]

I always have Express Mode turned off because it constantly crashed in 2016 and I haven't dealt with it in 2018. I very rarely open models which I don't need to modify so I have no use for it.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Ollie,

I am running out of ideas now. If you could share the files with me (johnson.shiue@autodesk.com) on a cloud drive of your choice, I will try to reproduce the poor performance my machine.

Many thanks!

[Anonymous]

Hi Johnson,

So apparently I didn't check my task scheduler properly and there were a lot of files that were skipped when updating. It does seem like the issue was relating to files not being migrating from 2016 to 2018. My tweak times are down to 20 minutes instead of 60 minutes which is a big improvement. Obviously I still wish this could be done faster but it looks like this is a restriction with Inventor. It probably would be more time efficient to create position reps and draw in tweak lines for files this size.

Thanks for your assistance.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! Another trick you may want to try is to remove unused styles. Open the top-level assembly and go to Manage -> Styles -> Purge -> check "Purge styles in child docs" -> make all unused styles Yes to Purge. Save all files and close Inventor. After that, clean up %temp%. Now does it work better?

Many thanks!