Mac browser performance?

S1mon

For a while I've mainly been using Chrome to run Onshape on my MacBook Pro (M1Max w/ 64GB RAM, just upgraded to Sonoma 14.0, but this was happening with Ventura as well). I was doing this because Chrome seemed to have better 3D performance than Safari (my main browser) and it seemed less buggy with my 3DConnexion Spacemouse.

Recently I've made an assembly which is pushing the limits of what Onshape wants to display without showing boxes (5 top level instances, 2137 parts, and ~31.5M primitives). I've reported this to support, but they unhelpfully blamed this on things not being versioned, even though they are.

I'm seeing very distinct behavior differences between browsers. For each of these I had the document tab open and hit the browser reload command at the same time I started a timer. I repeated the tests several times. It's tricky to say exactly when the loading was "done" with Chrome and Safari, because it basically never completes, but I judged based on when almost all the parts were no longer blocks.

Chrome - Version 118.0.5993.70 (Official Build) (arm64)
Always has some parts which stay boxy, but not the same parts, and they migrate around.
~2:50 to load 99% of the parts so they aren't boxes, but then some get boxy again
up to 56fps spinning
loading spinner for a few seconds, but continues to resolve boxy parts

Safari - Version 17.0 (19616.1.27.211.1)
~1:30 to load 99% of the parts so they aren't boxes
~25fps spinning, but occasionally just freezes badly
loading spinner for first ~:10 but continues to resolve boxy parts

Firefox - Version 118.0.2 (64-bit)
~:25 load, no boxes
25fps 
Shows loading spinner until graphics are fully resolved

I only have Firefox on my system to check for weird browser issues, it's really not my favorite for a long time now, but this is making me reconsider.

john_mcclary

I'm the same way.

I only have FireFox to check for this kind of stuff.
It usually is more performant with large assemblies and stuff.

But the only thing that holds be back is a couple of other things are glitchy, mostly in drawings.
It seems like there is a bit more lag when dimensioning and ballooning etc.

brucebartlett

Good old Firefox, I haven't used that for years. I might have to load it up and see if performs better on some of my slower documents. 

S1mon

I was about to write about how crazy fast Brave was (I got at least one 18 second load with no boxes!), and then I updated it to the latest, and things got much worse. Now it has similar whack-a-mole issues with boxes appearing and disappearing, just like Chrome. Brave is based on Chromium. It would seem that some WebGL stuff with memory limits has gotten worse since whatever version I had sitting around from a while ago.

If people at Onshape have contacts on the Chromium team, I would encourage them to dig into this. Something has clearly regressed. Going from an 18 second load time to minutes with parts going blocky at random times really sucks.

The more I tweak on this, the more I yearn for more intelligent loading and graphics complexity management based on zoom and visibility. One of the parts which often doesn't resolve is a PCBA (imported into a single part) which has a ton of detail on it. When I'm looking at the outside of these 5 top level assemblies, I don't need to load the triangles which show the extruded text which marks a 0603 capacitor.

With the 1.171 update, there's "Improve assembly load times by not loading graphics data for hidden components". I'll have to play around with display states and see if I can make a "lightweight" assembly by hiding internal/unnecessary parts.

john_mcclary

I usually stick to edge these days. 
Since it's chrome based, with fewer memory leaks. 

Hate Microsoft, but it does perform better than chrome in the last few years 

NeilCooke

Chromium can only address 4Gb of RAM that is the issue. Good old Firefox does 8 so use that if your assemblies are blocky. 

romeograham

I run all three browsers: usually Chrome for Onshape and searches and some other stuff; Edge for Microsoft things; and Firefox for when Chrome just can't handle Onshape any more and I don't have time to reboot).

For some (maybe imaginary) reason, I think I'm managing my RAM better this way LOL.

john_mcclary

@NeilCooke is that 4Gb per tab, or total? 

S1mon

FWIW, Edge on Mac is performing similar to best case on Firefox or earlier builds of Chromium based browsers which didn't restrict the RAM.

I'm getting ~19 seconds download to zero boxes with my test assembly.

Now, the amount of BS that needs to be turned off with Edge is crazy, but that's Microsoft shovelware for you...

NeilCooke

john_mcclary said:

@NeilCooke is that 4Gb per tab, or total? 

Sorry, yes that's per tab and it's always been like that for as long I've been at Onshape. I'm not keen on Firefox but I'll put up with it when working with large assemblies.

nick_papageorge073

Wow, I had no idea about the ram limit on Chrome. I'm running into huge performance issues on my top level assy. I hope trying Firefox will improve it.

Incidentally, I used to use Firefox my first year of OS usage. Then it had a bug that was repeatedly crashing/freezing it. So I switched to Chrome at that time.

nick_papageorge073

I had much better luck on my top level assy today using Firefox instead of Chrome. I was watching my browser memory usage, and it was about 4.5GB on the browser tab. I think Chrome was topping out about 3GB for the same assy yesterday. My system has 64 GB ram, and is an Apple M1 Ultra chip.

Also, I had no crashes like I was a year ago. I guess whatever the firefox bug at that time was has been fixed.

nick_papageorge073

I wonder if OS could/would develop their own high performance browser? It does seem we have to jump around between browsers every so often as the vendors make changes, to find the one that works best on large designs. Small stuff everything works great. I don't know how something super big like a car or airplane could ever run on OS. I don't see it the way the performance is today.

S1mon

What seems more likely would be to wrap Onshape in Electron or some other browser tech stack as an alternate to the pure web version. Much like Figma can be used in any modern web browser or in a downloadable application.