NASTRAN In-CAD 2019 with Impossibly Slow Interface

[Anonymous]

Good Afternoon.

I have downloaded and installed NASTRAN IN-CAD 2019 along with Inventor Pro 2019. I'm working on the 30day trial as an evaluation of the software.

The model I'm working with is an assembly with 189 midsurfaced pieces, and 2 solid pieces, 14 connectors (2 springs, the rest are rigid). Part count is 227 discrete pieces. Overal model dimensions are 7'x7'x16' and I have it meshed with 2in elements throughout, not utilizing the mesh table for any refinements. The results log file shows 77220 elements. This is a "mid-size" model in comparison to the rest of the company.

The computer I'm working on is a rather new ThinkStation P320, i7-7700 @ 3.6GHz (8-core), 24.0GB RAM, Nvidia P2000 w/6GB RAM, and 256GB SSD running windows 10. The computer is screaming fast in all other programs, and even when doing advanced modelling within Inventor, advanced calculations in MathCAD, and even when compiling code in Visual Basic.

I'm finding the interface to be extremely difficult to work with. The solver appears to be running rather quickly, but the interface itself for viewing results, as well modifying part geometry (mid surfacing, meshing, etc) is impossibly slow. Saving once midplaned is also prohibitively slow (a single save took almost 10 minutes this morning). Other things like changing the visibility of the CAD bodies from the ribbon has taken several minutes as well. The solver ran in just under two minutes.

I found some threads here discussing disabling the integrated video card and seeing some improvements, and have done that. It worked.....sort of....There is still odd behavior and ridiculously slow times to do the most basic things basic things in the interface.

Is there anything I can do to speed up this model in the interface? Is there a guide I can be pointed to on how to optimize settings within NASTRAN to help with this odd situation? Should I be deriving a single part and doing the analysis on that instead of working within the Assembly directly? Any help would be greatly appreciated, as NASTRAN has some very real benefits over ANSYS in our situation, however if this interface isn't sped up it will be a non-starter.

[John_Holtz]

Hi @Anonymous 

Thanks for the detailed information. The comparison between the desktop and laptop is interesting.

• Maybe you should try disconnecting the multiple monitors on the desktop to see if that makes a difference. (I heard something recently related to multiple monitors, but I do not remember the context. Maybe something related to Windows? Some other software? In-CAD? I do not remember )
• Also, I see that the PDF file indicates that the desktop adapter has "Failed to create a device from the adapter" - 5 times. I do not know what this means, but it makes me wonder if it is trying to do something on each operations and times-out 5 times. (Maybe it is a one-time error and not every time the card tries to "do something".)
• Try unchecking "Display > Object Visibility > Undeformed Edges" to hide the red-dotted lines for the original model shape. I have heard that this can affect some models.

Anyway, I think your issue with the speed of switching the results is different than some of the other threads on this forum which are related to the number of parts or idealizations in the model. Your models do not seem to be that large, and the difference in speed between the desktop and laptop is trying to tell us something!

I have contacted the developers to see if they have some suggestions for this situation.

[Anonymous]

@John_Holtz Thanks for the reply!

Here are some answers.....

• Maybe you should try disconnecting the multiple monitors on the desktop to see if that makes a difference. (I heard something recently related to multiple monitors, but I do not remember the context. Maybe something related to Windows? Some other software? In-CAD? I do not remember )
  • I tried this. Didn't seem to make a bit of difference. I'm fairly convinced this isn't a graphics issue, but something in the way that the data is read in from the results for display. When watching task manager, the GPU loading on either machine never moves over 1% or so. While the Hard Drive read/write jumps into the 7-8Mb/s range. Hoping to get a verification from IT that I have the right BIOS and HD drivers in place. The rest of the machine is super snappy, so I doubt this will pay any dividends, but I want to exhaust all the options I can.
• Also, I see that the PDF file indicates that the desktop adapter has "Failed to create a device from the adapter" - 5 times. I do not know what this means, but it makes me wonder if it is trying to do something on each operations and times-out 5 times. (Maybe it is a one-time error and not every time the card tries to "do something".)
  • I saw this as well. I'm unsure what it means, or how to troubleshoot any further. Any advice you might have here I'll take.
• Try unchecking "Display > Object Visibility > Undeformed Edges" to hide the red-dotted lines for the original model shape. I have heard that this can affect some models.
  • I do this every time. I never like to look at those edges anyway. It has no effect on the display speed.

Would screen recordings help at any level?

[shigeaki.k]

Hello @Anonymous ,

we have noticed in your FEA (Nastran) notes.pdf

Graphics driver log information:
Failed to create a device from the adapter. 

It seems to indicate an issue with the graphics driver as per https://www.drivereasy.com/knowledge/failed-to-create-a-graphics-device-on-windows-fixed/

From your report you have,

Driver file version: 25.21.14.1678
Driver Date: 1 November 2018 0:00:00 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time)

Have you done anything with your graphics driver i.e. change the driver version recently?

Could you try reinstalling the driver?

Could you try downloading a newer version of the driver for you Nvidia Quadro P2000?

Alternatively, does using an older version of the driver help?

Regards,

Shigeaki K.

Regards,

Shigeaki K.

[Anonymous]

@shigeaki.k ......Both @John_Holtz and I both noticed that a the bottom there.

I have downloaded and installed BOTH of the newest drivers from NVidia's website. The "Optimized for Enterprise" release of 412.16 and the "New Feature" release of 416.78 (released 11-13-2018)

I see that just 4 days ago NVidia has released a new "Optimized for Enterprise" driver release of 419.17 (released 02-22-2019). I will download and give that one a try and report back. My suspicion is this is not the problem due to how the video card is not taxed during display load, however it is certainly worth a try.

All of the drivers I have tried have been WHQL certified. My thought is that the move to these WHQL certified drivers was going to lift some of this "testing and certifying" workload from Autodesk. Is my understanding in the how/why of moving to a DirectX and WHQL certified setup not correct?

[Anonymous]

@shigeaki.k .......I have updated my video drivers and retested. The display of results problem continues, as well as the "failed to create device" under hardware diagnostics. I've attached the latest Diagnostics Report from Inventor.

[shigeaki.k]

Hello @Anonymous ,

the other thing I noticed is that you use HD monitor.

• Can you try changing the resolution on it?
• Can you try turning off GPD scaling via the Nvidia Control Panel i.e. right click on desktop>Nvidia Control panel>Display>Adjust desktop size and position. Select "No scaling".

Regards,

Shigeaki K.

[Anonymous]

@shigeaki.k I made those changes to all monitors on the desktop. 

No scaling. Monitors native resolution is 1920x1080, so I left that alone. I also checked windows scaling. It is set to "100% (Reccommended)". I also checked the box to "Overide the scaling mode set by games and programs". I have also set all 3 monitors to 800x600 as a test.

No appreciable change in time to display results in either scenario.

An interesting comparison here is that my laptop is running a 4k display with windows scaling set to 125%. Much higher resolution than my desktop, without the performance hiccups.

Also, once the results are displayed, and the mesh is turned on. I can zoom/pan/rotate quite easily and quickly. The displays are nice and crisp with no aliasing, or artifacts at all. This will also bring the GPU utilization up to around 25-30% and stay there as long as the display is moving. When waiting for the display to appear initially, the GPU is never seen to go above 1%. I suspect something else is at play here that isn't GPU related. Are there any low level "codecs" that the newer processor might be utilizing to show the increase in speed? Are there any more drivers I can check for system level components that might be causing the slow down on the desktop?

Finally.....THANK YOU......It is very nice to be getting responses and help from Autodesk on this issue. I appreciate your time and efforts!

[RichardLee3904]

Has there been any progress with this issue?  I'm having exactly the same problem on a normally very fast desktop.  Solution times are fast, but extremely slow response of the user interface within Nastran.   Everytime I click on anything in the interface there are long delays. 

[Anonymous]

Hi

I would just like to add to your reference about meshes losing their place and relocating to arbitrary positions, essentially to say that I have often experienced the same behavior. Generally this appears to be a very buggy area of Inventor Nastran. To add to this affect I have also had many crashes related to re meshing / re-establishing offset surface shells once the original geometry had been changed.

The original geometry is typically composed of sheet metal parts. I use split surfaces to define mounting areas for bolt connection on the sheet metal parts.

From several past projects with Inventor Nastran there seems to be a weakness in re-associating surface bodies, Idealizations and meshes to sheet metal derived parts that have changed geometry.

I feel the software needs a rebuild function to re-association or at least a purge facility to remove all now redundant associations. The only real cure I have found is to delete all the shells and idealizations and start again which mean reworking every connection, surface contact , force and boundary condition. Very very time consuming and extremely frustrating. These bugs need a real fix or a management/cad doctor utility to help you work through a fix leading you to a

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hi Mdobrick,

I'm currently working on a similar (albeit slightly smaller) model using surfaces, and about 32,000 elements.

I don't have any tips for you, but I can only confirm performance is woeful on my PC, I've spent a whole week setting up, and debugging the FE model, and dealing with crashes etc. Save times are taking about 30mins, but our PCs aren't spec'd as well as yours.
The biggest issues I'm having is that mesh idealisations seem to be a bit forgetful - I'll select a set of faces and assign them to an idealisation, then when I generate mesh, it leaves one or two faces out, then I have to re-select and re-mesh.
Geometry changes are also buggy - I've had cases where a minor dimension change has resulted in a part's mesh being re-located to some arbitrary position, and there's nothing I can do about it - even deleting the mesh, or mid-surface and re-creating it doesn't work.

There's only 2 reasons I persist - its very easy to solve a plate model that isn't water tight, and its very easy to update geometry, and try again (when it works at all).

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remapping procedure.

[Anonymous]

I wanted to come and circle back on this post, as most internet forums are filled with people asking questions, and not really getting answers.

I've continued to spend time in the interface over the last, almost, year. It's generally unchanged, however I've developed some tips/tricks that help alleviate a good portion of my frustrations. I'll list them below, with a quick description of why it appears to help.

Turn off the mesh before clicking save.

This is single handedly the easiest thing to do to save time. Something about the way the save algorithm deals with mid-surfaced parts is wonky. It causes a full screen redraw each time, and does this "disco dance" thing where it flashes the model for every component. Turning off the mesh visibility before saving makes that not happen, and saves a good deal of time.

Convert your model to surfaces before entering IN-CAD Environment.

This is a little sad honestly. There are some neat midsurface tools within the In-CAD environment that will assign your shell thickness for you, and apply materials and that sort of thing. Using them SEVERLY slows down the save time of the model. Again, something in the save algorithm causes full redraws, and this only gets worse as you add more and more "midsurface" entities. If you take the time to create the surfaces in Inventor BEFORE you get into the NASTRAN environment, then the save time is literally seconds instead of minutes. The time savings on saves alone is worth this effort. It's really somewhat dumb, and cuts into the time savings from ALREADY HAVING A SOLID MODEL. Just a shame I can't use those Midsurface utilities quickly and easily.

Use Continuous Meshing Instead of Contact Elements

This one wasn't quite intuitive to me, especially considering the wonkyness of how meshing works in the NASTRAN interface. Here's what I've found. If I use pre-made planes/surfaces, and have an edge of a surface that touches the face of another, AND I use the mesh settings to mesh the entier model at one time. Then continous meshing is applied. If I have a mesh control on either surface, or the edge, OR if I use the Mesh Table to control mesh size then continuous meshing is NOT applied. This is completely non-intuitive, and makes meshing a large/complex model with different mesh sizes significantly more difficult than it needs to be. I have ended up creating the mesh overly large for the entire model, then applying VERY VERY VERY specific mesh controls to parts and edges of interface (splitting faces to get edges where needed) to get a tighter mesh in areas of interest. This method combined with the lack of contact equations has significantly sped up the solve time, and interestingly enough the display time as well.

Reducing Elements is the only real way to help display times

i'm working in a model now with 202437 elements. The display time is on the order of two minutes to display the output of the analysis. It's painfully slow and will test your patience. Using the above methods I have reduced the display time (from reducing element count) to this two minute range. In other models it has helped more. The more elements I have the slower it displays.......I still have suspicions that Autodesk is not playing nicely with my higher end video card though. My desktop runs a Nvidia Quadro P2000 card, while my laptop Runs an Intel HD630 integrated graphics. This same 202437 element model displays in 20 seconds or so on my laptop. Much more reasonable (although still slow compared to some other FEA software we've been testing. I have an Nvidia RTX 2060 sitting on my desk to test with when I get a slowdown in workload. I'll be sure to update with results if/when we make that change.

Overall, I'm still finding the interface to be fairly buggy and slow overall. These few tips and tricks have made it considerably better, however it's still not "there" yet. Please feel free to ask questions or for clarifications. I would love to help the developers (that I'm sure are listening in) in any way I can!

[johnster100]

Hi,

we're having the same problem here. I have a model build completely from surfaces which I apply shell elements to in Nastran.

The model has around 400,000 nodes.

It is very slow when switching between results (displacement to stress etc).

It is making the program unusable for us.

thanks,

John

[johnster100]

Hi,

we're having the same problem. We have a model build entirely from surfaces which we apply shells to.

It meshes and solves fine but then is very slow to view the results. It's especially bad when switching from one set of results to another (say stress to displacement).

It's making the software quite unusable for us.

We are running version 2019.2

thanks,

John

[John_Holtz]

Hi @johnster100 

Although the problem is similar (slow interface), the cause of the problem is different (reading results versus loading into the environment). You should probably create a new post related specifically to result. Here are the relevant questions regarding the results:

1. How many nodes (400,000) and elements (?)?
2. What size is the FNO file (located in the folder modelname\InCAD\FEA)?
3. Is the model saved on the computer's local hard drive or a network drive? (A network drive would be a bad choice.)
4. Is there anything special about the contour display, such as section view of the model?
5. If the deformed shape is off and the undeformed edges are not shown ("Display > Object Visibility > Undeformed Edges" unchecked), is the display faster?
6. How long does it take to switch results?

I do not know how to control this, but on my computer when I start File Explorer, there is a 1-2 second delay in the window appearing. I can feel the hard disk drive accelerating up to speed! If your drive is not a solid state drive, what RPM is it? Is there some way to keep it operating at a higher speed during idle periods so that there is no delay with getting it spinning at the read speed?

[John_Holtz]

FYI. I was working on a shell model from another forum post, and I noticed that it is taking approximately 15 seconds to switch from total displacement to z displacement (for example). The number of nodes is smaller in this model than @johnster100 's model, so I can imagine how a larger model is slower. I will send the model that I have to development so that they can see what can be done to improve the performance.

[johnster100]

Hi John,

that would be great, thanks.

Part of the reason we have so many elements is that we are modelling a fan impeller and due to the lack of axisymmetric elements we have to model every blade passage (we can't use the method described in the help as it's a two plane split).

In the mean time Autodesk Nastran is not suitable for large shell models?

thanks,

John 

[Anonymous]

I can confirm that back in 2015-2016 we were using these In-CAD releases without these slow results issues and we could sit down as a team and interrogate the results live. Today, I can say we can no longer effectively go through a large model. In our office, we run large shell element models of yachts with inertial relief. My current model has 1.2 million elements, about half of which are solid parts interacting with shells. My model takes 15 minutes just to open in the morning, and about 2 minutes to load a result window. Then if I want to make changes to the scalar display, the ranges, etc. then it's 1 minute to unload and another 2 minutes to load and quite slow in updating renders during view changes. My team will not sit and wait with me while this happens.

There must be some change in the I/O code for results loading that happened between then and now which is slowing things down.  

[AlexGlew8741]

The program is essentially unusable.

[AlexGlew8741]

This product should not even be on the market. It is so slow that the workflow is almost unusable.

[John_Holtz]

Hi @AlexGlew8741 

I hear your frustration. Can you provide some information about what you are encountering, such as the following? It will help us to prioritize the work to be done.

1. When is the software slow for you?
2. What type of elements are in the model? (Solid, shell, beams?)
3. How many idealizations are defined?
4. How many nodes and elements?
5. What type of analysis?
6. How many subcases or steps are in the analysis?

[wbruinsma]

Hi,

We're experiencing the same problem, even with a model of 42000 nodes and 103 midsurfaces. Using different CAD-workstations doesn't solve the problem for us. Running Nastran 2021 b.t.w.

Regarding the written problems above it looks like it's a software problem? Maybe any news of a coming update?

Kind regards,

Watse