Slowdown - caused by large file, my machine, or...?

adam_richardson

I've been experimenting with Onshape over the last few weeks, building successively more complex parts as I get to know it better. The one I'm currently working on is the most complex so far, and it's starting to become quite slow to work with - viewport manipulation, picking lines in a sketch, etc. Even when I'm in a Part Studio with just a few parts. Wondering if my machine (Surface Book, i7, discrete GPU, 8MB RAM, latest version of Windows 10) might be the issue, or if I'm starting to run into a slowdown with Onshape itself. I'm running this in Chrome, FYI. Document can be found here: Programma (hopefully this link works, it's my first time trying it)

In case you're wondering what the build is of, I'm recreating (as best I can from photos) the world's first programmable desktop computer, the Programma 101, built by Olivetti in Italy in 1964.

I've got one or two other questions about building strategies for some of the parts, but I'll do that in a separate thread.

Thanks! Adam

Paul_J_Premakumar

Hi Adam,

 Thanks for the link. I was able to view your document. Very cool model. I was able to manipulate the view without issues, on my laptop.

 View manipulation and picking happen solely on the client and we use the GPU for this. Your performance issues could be  either the browser doing a lot of work or the GPU not being able to keep up. Can you try this page https://cad.onshape.com/check and report the results back. The check page will run a performance test on your machine to see what the GPU performance is.


Paul

owen_sparks

Similar story here.

Model opened in approx 2 seconds, regen in 1.86s, smooth and solid scrolling.



Oh, and coolness of the project seconded

Cheers,

Owen S.

adam_richardson

Thanks for the input and the kind words! It's been years since I've done anything with nurbs modeling, so it's been fun to get back into it, says a lot about how easy Onshape is to pick up. I played around with Modo and polygonal modeling for a while, but it's not nearly as good for shapes like this.
Attached is a screenshot of the performance measurement. Seems to be decent. With this measurement I had my machine forced to use the discrete Nvidia GPU for Chrome, and it does give slightly better performance (about 5m more triangles/sec, though about 1m less lines/sec)

Paul_J_Premakumar

Hi Adam,

 Was the screen shot before or after the switch to the NVidia GPU? The reason I ask is because the GL renderer lists Intel(R) HD Graphics instead of NVidia.

Question: What is the version of Chrome you are using?

Thanks

adam_richardson

Hmm, I thought I'd had it with the Nvidia turned on (using the GeForce control panel). I just ran it again and got an improved result - 132m triangles. New screenshot attached. Maybe the Nvidia card wasn't properly active, potentially causing the slowdown (things do seem more snappy now).
Using Chrome Version 61.0.3163.100 (Official Build) (64-bit)