Practical limit to model size?

øyvind_kaurstad

As I wrote in this thread: https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/2694/after-using-onshape-for-a-few-months, I have spent a lot of time waiting for Onshape while working on this particular model. The worst waiting is (naturally) when going back in history to do some modifications. Everything is then quite slow, and in many cases there are no indication (not even the spinner) to show that Onshape is working. While I had kind of hoped that someone from Onshape would reply to that thread (I feel I raised some valid issues), that hasn't happened (at least not yet).

My experience with that model tells me that it is too large for Onshape to handle with decent speed, so I am wondering how large models other people make with Onshape? I do realize that this is a difficult question, because it largely depends not only of the number of features, but also what kind of features are used. Some are more computational intensive than others, probably causing even more slowdowns than "lighter" features.

Here's a screenshot with model statistics of the model I am talking about:



As you can see, my model has a lot of arcs and splines (and sweeps), which is probably giving Onshape servers some additional work.
Am I asking too much when I want to have a model of this size and complexity in a tool like Onshape?

philip_thomas

Oyvind - this is very impressive and I will be showing this image to some of our senior developers to get their input. 
I may be reaching out to you privately to ask if you would be willing to share this with us so that we may run a performance profile against it (we cannot see anyone's data unless they explicitly share it with us). Thank you.

øyvind_kaurstad

Thanks. I'm sure my modelling techniques leaves a lot to be desired, but in the end it turned out quite well. The model is also on Thingiverse BTW, and I even made a (not so great) video of it in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8waFJVV6c8s

philip_thomas

Oyvind - we are very impressed. Onshape is evolving rapidly, but we have to admit, we have been optimizing for mechanical design (castings, machined parts and mechanical assemblies). We fully intend to give you a complete toolset to complete projects like this, but as you have clearly demonstrated, it's doable today. I don't want to gloss over the acknowledgement that we know you have struggled at times and we want you to know that we are committed to making Onshape the go-to tool for industrial designers, plastics engineers and mechanical engineers alike. Stay tuned for more enhancements that are coming. Again - well done!  

brucebartlett

This is the model statistics for a project I am working on, all mechanical, I am starting to feel like we are running out of grunt but hopefully not. I am also trying to think of strategies to improve performance but hoping I don't have to use these.

This is assembly only has half the parts included at this stage, I am about to start filling it out with the rest, will be very interesting to see the result's. There will be also hundreds of bolts and nuts but I don't think I'll be able to include these. Would like to show some pictures but still confidential.  

øyvind_kaurstad

That's a large model, judging from the stats. I hope you will have less issues than I had, but I see that you are on a (presumably) US modeling server, while I'm in Europe. Could be that Onshape's US partners deliver better performance.

Would be interested to hear how you get along with working on this model, as I have a feeling that in it's current state, Onshape has some challenges when model sizes starts getting large.

adam_mercier

I'm on the edge with one of my assemblies, it takes a while to load but once loaded it runs OK on my desktop, but not very good (very slow) on my laptop at work. the most annoying part is the time needed to display mates on parts at times. 

michał_1

Oyvind, Bruce is from Australia, so he should have worst connection...

øyvind_kaurstad

Yes, I see that now. Sorry about that.

michał_1

One more thing,your model is very impressing, I really like it.

øyvind_kaurstad

Thanks. You should know that you helped me a great deal when you answered my question about creating a marble rail. That was of course the precursor to this model, so you can take some credit too.  :-)

matthew_menard

øyvind_kaurstad said:

Thanks. You should know that you helped me a great deal when you answered my question about creating a marble rail. That was of course the precursor to this model, so you can take some credit too.  :-)

Is your marble track model done entirely in OnShape from the proof of concept you and @michał_1 discussed in this thread?:

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/2583/how-to-model-a-marble-track

I hadn't gone back to see your previous concept in the end of that thread and am absolutely floored at the execution of the concept.  How robust is the model?  It looked like Michal had made OnShape do some serious tricks to even get the proof of concept to work without 3d sketching tools, so seeing this finished product is amazing.  Absolutely amazing work.

philip_thomas

@matthew_menard : SolidWorks much?  

I will not incorrectly capitalize Onshape
I will not incorrectly capitalize Onshape
I will not incorrectly capitalize Onshape
I will not incorrectly capitalize Onshape
I will not incorrectly capitalize Onshape

øyvind_kaurstad

@matthew_menard Yes, my model is done entirely in Onshape, and my primary take away from the mentioned thread was the concept of extruding to surfaces, and then splitting those to simulate 3D splines. At the time of that thread, Onshape didn't have the split faces tool (iirc), so you actually had to extrude a second surface to use as the splitting tool. However, I didn't use that technique in my model, since the split face tool is now available. That means I can extrude one surface (from the "ground"), and split that directly with a spline on a sketch on a plane normal to the "ground". It is a bit cumbersome, but in the end you end up with a "3D spline" that a profile can be swept along. You can't sweep the actual track profile though, because it will twist uncontrollably, so I swept a pipe, and then thickened the vertical surface to become wider than the pipe. Copy that, and transform the copy so that the top ends up above the pipe, and then intersect those bodies to have a new solid that can be used to subtract the top half of the pipe while maintaining the edges parallell to the ground.

I don't think the model can be called robust, there are way too many workarounds and shady techniques (and I was also a bit too lazy regarding constraints), but the result is still quite good. And Onshape really generates extremely clean STL files. No repairing necessary whatsoever.

@philip_thomas Nudge, Nudge, OnShape, OnShape.  :-)

michael3424

Thanks for uploading the STL files for your Cyclone.  I'll be printing it on my Zortrax M200 soon.  It would make a nice gift for a couple friends kids.  Once I get done with it, of course.

matthew_menard

philip_thomas said:

@matthew_menard : SolidWorks much?  

I will not incorrectly capitalize Onshape
I will not incorrectly capitalize Onshape
I will not incorrectly capitalize Onshape
I will not incorrectly capitalize Onshape
I will not incorrectly capitalize Onshape

Duly noted, but I guess if I were staying with current capitalization conventions for other modeling packages, I should be spelling it ONSHAPE.  Old habits, I guess.  I blame the app on my phone for making me want to capitalize the letters.

matthew_menard

As an aside that's slightly on topic, is there a limit to the physical size of a model you can make in Onshape?  Another discussion board had somebody looking to model whole mine shafts in a different drawing package.  The problem was that the physical bounds of the software wouldn't allow for it directly.  There might have been a work around involving converting the units to kilometers, but I didn't look too deeply into it.  This got me wondering if Onshape could someday be used to create more civil engineering type designs.  Being able to take survey data and create 3d models of roadways with all of the utilities underneath would be extremely powerful.  I moved from civil drafting to mechanical about ten years ago. At the time it seemed like there were attempts at making software that would do this, but I don't know what the current state is. 

Sorry for the tangent, just some musings that I had recently that I didn't think warranted its own thread.

philip_thomas

Michael - ha ha

For Matthew - yes the physical limit is a cubic kilometer. From my previous life at SolidWorks and my work in Oil and Gas, components are modelled at life size and then for mockups, scaled to 1:10 and assembled for for full sea level to sea floor representations. This would work for mines as well. Don't forget though that pipes (and mine shafts) tend to look very thin at these scales. This technique while it works, is rarely used.

famadorian

øyvind_kaurstad said:

As I wrote in this thread: https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/2694/after-using-onshape-for-a-few-months, I have spent a lot of time waiting for Onshape while working on this particular model. The worst waiting is (naturally) when going back in history to do some modifications. Everything is then quite slow, and in many cases there are no indication (not even the spinner) to show that Onshape is working. While I had kind of hoped that someone from Onshape would reply to that thread (I feel I raised some valid issues), that hasn't happened (at least not yet).

My experience with that model tells me that it is too large for Onshape to handle with decent speed, so I am wondering how large models other people make with Onshape? I do realize that this is a difficult question, because it largely depends not only of the number of features, but also what kind of features are used. Some are more computational intensive than others, probably causing even more slowdowns than "lighter" features.

Here's a screenshot with model statistics of the model I am talking about:



As you can see, my model has a lot of arcs and splines (and sweeps), which is probably giving Onshape servers some additional work.
Am I asking too much when I want to have a model of this size and complexity in a tool like Onshape?

Did you link to this model? Would be interesting to study your way of doing it;) Takk så meget for det;)

owen_sparks

It'd be interesting to compare the 2016 regen time to the 2019 one, for the same file. 🤔

philip_thomas

@famadorian - that is a wonderful model that you have.
It is also full of very 'expensive' operations.

My first reactions are;
1) From the feature statistics, what is the total regen time?  This number is the total modeling server 'thinking' time - nothing to do with facetization or data transmission. If there are any 'very time consuming' features (more than a few seconds), then we should be looking at those.
2) I suspect that the part resolution is turned up very high. From lowest to highest, there are orders of magnitude more facets being created - that all takes time. Try setting the part resolutions to 'automatic' - chances are that will speed things up.

Happy to look at the model if you chose to share a link. That said, there is no way that this is 'beyond' Onshape

MBartlett21

@philip_thomas
I think it is @øyvind_kaurstad 's model

famadorian

philip_thomas said:

@famadorian - that is a wonderful model that you have.
It is also full of very 'expensive' operations.

My first reactions are;
1) From the feature statistics, what is the total regen time?  This number is the total modeling server 'thinking' time - nothing to do with facetization or data transmission. If there are any 'very time consuming' features (more than a few seconds), then we should be looking at those.
2) I suspect that the part resolution is turned up very high. From lowest to highest, there are orders of magnitude more facets being created - that all takes time. Try setting the part resolutions to 'automatic' - chances are that will speed things up.

Happy to look at the model if you chose to share a link. That said, there is no way that this is 'beyond' Onshape

It wasn't me. 

philip_thomas

@famadorian - ooops

Piotr_Smektała_VB

How can I invoke model statistics such as shown above?

owen_sparks

Piotr_Smektała_VB_ said:

How can I invoke model statistics such as shown above?

Assuming you're on a windows PC then "Control D" will get you there.

Owen S.

owen_sparks

Also worth noting the addition (since this post) of a way to show individual feature rebuild times.  That is accessed with the stopwatch icon at the top of your feature tree.

Owen S.

Piotr_Smektała_VB

Thanks @owen_craig

The stopwatch icon is clearly visible.

But there is no CTRL +D entry on "Keyboard Shortcuts" list

So:
Where can I find such hidden shortcuts?

Piotr S.

NeilCooke

@Piotr_Smektała_VB_ CTRL+D was never meant for end users, only for developers, but somebody leaked it some time ago.

Piotr_Smektała_VB

Ups! @NeilCooke

CTRL +??. Well, Already forgot it.

Thanks, guys

owen_sparks

NeilCooke said:

@Piotr_Smektała_VB_ CTRL+D was never meant for end users, only for developers, but somebody leaked it some time ago.

Sorry Neil.  I had no idea that was meant to be secret. 

Owen S.