DERIVED Feature tree takes too long to generate

Greg_Keosayian

Sometimes on complex projects where I am trying to make one single complex solid body, I split up the body across multiple part studios creating for example the negative shapes in other tabs or specific portions of the body in separate studios. With the ultimate goal of making only Boolean operations in the final destination part studio as my desired part. This is how I try and create highly complex single bodies distributing the calculations across various studios which makes things run smoother. However, the derive feature tends to get hung up. I mean this should work as a simple file directory and just populate right away. I understand that it can be more powerful, and sketches and curves and surfaces also populate alongside the list. But I feel most of the time, it serves as a file directory and this shouldn't take more than a few seconds to accomplish your task. Perhaps there should be an option to turn on or off the details of: Parts, surfaces, sketches, curves, or even an image preview. Because how often do we need to see all of these options to derive at once. Sometimes, if you name your part files right, you can just quickly get to what you need to derive and keep going with selecting individual parts only from file names alone, maybe hover over the file name to then take the calculation time to see a preview to see if that's the part you really want. I am drawing objects in a non intuitive way as a way to lower the regen time, but if now the derive feature is making me wait too.. then we should optimize this process as well if we are all ultimately working around the long regen times as a result. 

EvanReese

I don't know enough about the software architecture to know why, but I do know that the derive feature is one of the heaviest features in Onshape because of it. It could be because it has to rebuild every singe source file every time it runs, but I'm not for sure on that. In any case, it's best to limit your use of it. If you do use it, and it's slowing you down, deriving in from a version instead of the main workspace speeds it up some.