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Drawings really slow
dan_engerer
Member Posts: 63 PRO
Hi, just some honest feedback. Drawings load very slowly in general despite having great internet speed and a godlike PC. This is our general impression across multiple platforms, within different countries, different browsers and computers, etc. and this has been the case for the entirety of our time with Onshape. So no, this time Onshape's performance issue is not the user's fault- it's not a matter of some super technical and obscure browser setting that only an IT PhD would know, like the other issues generally are.
Sometimes very simple drawings even take several minutes to load. Nevermind trying to work on drawings when a collaborator is in your document at all- things will nearly grind to a halt. Super frustrating.
Sometimes very simple drawings even take several minutes to load. Nevermind trying to work on drawings when a collaborator is in your document at all- things will nearly grind to a halt. Super frustrating.
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Comments
Twitter: @onshapetricks & @babart1977
Many of my drawings have multiple parts (5-10) with single view of each - this was serious performance hit for Alibre and to be honest I've been very happy with Onshape drawings performance and stability (after the update last year where they got noticeable improvement on performance)
This took 15sec from hitting F5 to fully load (when visiting other tabs and coming back it's ready immediately), 2 sheets in total - no collaborators online.
Having time to get a cup of coffee is not 'reasonable'!
I would suggest that Pro users open a feedback ticket and share their document with support.
Free users, please post a public link here in the forums.
In each case, we will look at the document and determine the root cause.
Many thanks - Philip.
Drawings are typically made from released parts.
Even if the part/assembly isnt released yet, chances are there are versions that exist (or can be easily added with a single click)
BOOOOOM!
@3d see below what I'd call a simple drawing and various load times on my average internet.
42 second to load in the workspace.
3 second when switching back once loaded in the workspace.
48 second to rebuild
15sec in the main workspace linked back a version
59 seconds on the last version (@Phil_thomasshouldn't a version be as quick as referencing back to the version from the workspace)
shared link opened in a new browser session 1min 47sec
shared link of the same drawing in pdf format and saved to google drive 7 sec's
Twitter: @onshapetricks & @babart1977
wow, no wonder you say it is sloooow.
Hi Bruce,
Did you raise a ticket?
Twitter: @onshapetricks & @babart1977
Just off the top of my head, here are some things that cause a drawing to be 'sluggish' (but NOT necessarily slower than SolidWorks).
A bazillion parts.
Parts with threads (or anything with large numbers of silhouette edges (eg heat exchangers))
Drawings of assemblies that reference multiple documents
Drawings of parts that contain multiple derives
There are probably many more and desktop systems have analogs for all of these - these are NOT specific to Onshape.
Show us what you think is slow (as a reminder, we cannot see what pro users are making unless you specifically share something with us).
Thank you.
But drawings have always seemed to be a neglected thing in my opinion.
They have gotten a few small speed boosts since release but not quite there yet.
Small details are fine for me, but as soon as you show hidden lines you get (not exaggerating) at least a 200% decrease in performance, or more.
Like I've said support has helped me find some work arounds, but I was under the impression those were temporary until onshape fixed the issues.
Eventually OS will need to really spend some resources to focus on this portion with a real passion. There are many of us that cannot convince our customers that they really don't need the drawings they are paying for.
Assemblies are where I see the most trouble. Lou and Pete have been the two who answer the call most of the time for me, and could surely fill you in.
I don't consider these assemblies to be that complicated, but it really puts the breaks on when it comes time to detail.
And the trick you showed for versions may be fine for viewing, but that doesn't help us when creating/editing the drawings.
Here is a video showing what I mean about the hidden line performance. You can see when I hover over an object then pull the mouse away I have clicked and am waiting for drawings to acknowledge I have clicked something 3 seconds ago. Sometimes you see me attempt to click the object a few times before I even get a dimension line.
https://youtu.be/3sghldOD8v4
In the short term, detailing a version will be the fastest performing workflow (yes this requires a manual step with each version increment - updating the version).
In the longer term, we are very much aware of your specific circumstances and we absolutely have on our development plan specific improvements to address this issue. My apologies for not being able to give specific timelines, as you all know by now, they change all the time ('agile')
Everyone that submitted a feedback ticket will be on the list to be notified of progress on this front.
The fix for us for now is deleting the section views. If you cannot delete you section views we've also found using the shift z function within the drawing doesn't affect loading speeds.
We are currently trying to resolve this issue with onshape but at this moment no one knows the cause.
Next time it happens try refreshing the browser while clearing the cache, (ctrl+f5) on most browsers
@philip_thomas , your statement "Drawings are typically made from released parts" is not always true, and I hope Onshape doesn't emphasise on this when developing Onshape drawings.
There are some instances in past, this was partly true like, when I worked in a big car company, parts released from R&D centre are revisioned, and we in production division use those designs to create machine parts. But still design of those machine parts is carried out with 3D-modelling and drawing hand in hand. But other than that, I never worked any project where part 3d-model is released and drawing is commenced. There are certain advantages drawing gives during design, and sometimes I realise few things need to be changed while drawing, so go back and update the 3D-model.
Generally, My Onshape drawings are not too slow. I have one client who also uses Onshape, a manufacturer of tankers (trucks), pressure vessel construction for trucks, etc., and those involve a large number of big welding assemblies. On some assemblies we have more than 50 parts. My performance didn't reduce much but I remember if a certain sheet has cut-section ("Section-cut geometry only" helps) on assembly, or assembly with hidden lines, that sheet performance makes me cry when I am in hurry to release drawings
But I faced problems people mentioned in this thread, probably in assembly where we had to show entire truck. As client also uses Onshape, he sometimes tells me to screenshot the assembly, and just add image into drawing
So, another time, same client gave me certain tank that has already been modelled, has like 40-50parts, a small size, and they need production drawings. I need to make changes if necessary due to manufacturing constraints but these will be minor. So, for this I created a new document only for drawings. So versioned document containing 3d-model, and used those in creating drawings. I had to make several versions as I made changes. I didn't notice any significant performance boost this way. I had similar problems with assemblies that has 100s of parts, and no change (the sheet where I had to show tank position on the truck is very very slow). So, I am not sure if this fix helps a lot.
because while laying out dimensions you always find mistakes or typos. so you want to go in, make a quick fix, and update just that drawing.
but if you have every view set to a version, then you have to update the version of the entire document each micro update.
Then in the end you have to create one more version and update all drawings after every edit hereafter.
Worse than than, you cannot change your mind, you need to delete the view and re-dimension everything if you want to change to a version based view, or revert back to an active workspace view.
Worse than that, you cannot just right click the view and switch to the part, instead it opens a new tab and brings you to that version. So the you can either switch to the main workspace from there, or you can skip all that and just manually browse to the part studio, either way it just takes away from the simple work flow of opening the part through the drawing view.
Also you end with with hundreds of versions cluttering up your version tree which contain minor updates like typos.
It makes me throw up in my mouth just thinking about it.
drawings already set their views to a micro-version which just checks for changes and makes the update button glow yellow, which is why we need to hit the update views button after each edit. So it SHOULD work just as quickly as a proper version. Am I Wrong?
But Drawings have come a long way, It is very rare now that I have performance issues.
When I do, I have other work arounds other than version hell.
Like splitting up multi sheet assembly drawings into their own tabs when they get bogged down.
or splitting the detailing of parts into tab groups (which also helps when multiple people are detailing the same project, can't wait till we have multi-user drawings)
If the performance gets really slow, I will even create a display state which has all of the parts which are not visible in each view hidden.
for example:
the top view of this drawing is actually just the bottom layer of shelves.
Here you can see I ended up splitting the install tab into 5 separate tabs, since every update would take over a half hour to make, Now they take a minute or two, and only the tabs that have changes need to be updated, which is mostly pg2 and pg3
when I go to release drawings, I can export them all one at a time fairly quickly (since you can click export on each tab faster than they download anyway, you don't need to wait for each one)
then I have to use Adobe Acrobat to combine them into a single PDF, which is a subscription fee that I wish could be canceled if Onshape would allow bulk export of drawing tabs into a single PDF (also bulk export into separate tabs as well), (also bulk export of parts into separate step files...) but I digress.
I still think Onshape is making good progress, but Drawings still do need some attention. But they are very close to meeting all of my demands and I look forward to seeing where drawings ends up.
I often find drawings can get stuck in a half loaded state. 90% of the time if my drawing starts to load and I don't see at least some graphics pop into view with in 20 seconds, I refresh the browser tab and usually it just loads right in. Drawings are wildly slow though in general and I wish on shape would start expressing more public concern for this issue that no doubt everyone has. Maybe I'm blind but I feel like there is a lot of official silence over this. I have a feeling it is slow because of the way there system generates the geometry. Its like the drawing gets completely converted into some line based format before it gets displayed in the view. Hence why hiding parts and such right from the drawing view is not possible because the parts are not actually there. I really think on shape needs to revamp how there drawings are generated and make them be more like the assembly environment. Each view can be expanded and the individual parts and assemblies can be seen. The drawing system right now, I feel, is a little too inflexible. And everything I design are rather simple things. Can't imagine working on really complex mechanical assembly drawings. It must be just endlessly back to the assembly to update display state, back to drawing and rebuild, wait 5mins for rebuild. Over and over and over.
Clearly complex, precise 2D stuff can be done well in a browser. Just look at Figma. For many UI and vector graphic designers, it has replaced Illustrator, Photoshop, Sketch, Invision, etc. It runs in a browser and has collaborative editing. Its performance is beautiful. Can Onshape draw some inspiration from Figma?