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V25 - Some aspects of UI performance are visibly not as good as V24

simonb65

Alibre Super User
I've just opened a mid-size assembly that I created in V24. The first thing I notice is that just panning, rotating and zooming around the model soon gets V25 hung up for 5-10 seconds and becomes very laggy. The hang up is so long that I have time to open task manager, looks at the processes, and get a 'snip' capture of the Alibre process info ...

Resources after much panning, rotating and zooming around the model ...
1657063219464.png

This never used to be an issue in v24. By comparison, v24 was way better from a responsiveness perspective. I'm not sure what you folks at Alibre have done in v25, but it's not a step in the right direction. Hopefully you have already seen this from other users and are on the case, but as it stands, I maybe reverting back to v24 to work on this project, because v25 is not helping me get work done as quick.

Anyone else seen a change in v24 to v25 performance?

Anyone wondering why 2 Alibre processes are shown, it's just the Home Window and Assembly Workspaces, so that's very normal and expected ...

1657063481992.png

EDIT : Interestingly, closing and restarting Alibre and the memory usage is much lower, still laggy, but not as bad (still no where near as good as v24 though). Is there still a major memory leak somewhere? ...

Resources immediately after a restart ...

1657063975042.png

EDIT #2 : Close the assembly workspace (and back to the Home Window), then open the assembly again ...

1657064358697.png

Close the assembly workspace again ...

1657064402289.png

Open the assembly ...

1657064454240.png

Close the assembly ...

1657064487175.png

@Max, Not sure if Alibre uses the .NET Garbage Collector internally or good 'ole fashioned Malloc()/Free() or create/delete, but something isn't getting emptied or Free'd when a workspace is closed! Maybe you can pass this on to dev please. I would have raised a ticket, but you can't express issues as easy and flexible as you can on a forum post.

30 minutes later after no Alibre activity and no assembly open (just the Home Window), and memory is still being tied up and not released ...

1657064734423.png
 
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Nick952

Senior Member
Regarding the pan/rotate/Zoom issue, DavidJ posted a possible reason for this in another thread.

See post #15 in the following:-

 

simonb65

Alibre Super User
Not trying to derail your thread but here was my test results for creating parts by script.
Thread 'Alibre Speed Test v24 to v25'
I'd read that previously Nate, this seems to be just related to mouse interaction and changing the viewport. In a 3D world, with no data or geometry changes, I would expect the 3D engine to just change the 'camera' location when you pan, rotate and zoom, then the GPU just renders the scene. Don't see why mouse interactions and no editing would present any lag to the UI. A lag that takes upto 10 second in some cases.

Also, whilst API operations may be faster in some cases, there are a few comments on your thread too regarding the UI being much more laggy in v25. I think there is something that needs looking at, it's not just me seeing this.
 
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simonb65

Alibre Super User
Regarding the pan/rotate/Zoom issue, DavidJ posted a possible reason for this in another thread.

See post #15 in the following:-

Nothing has changed in my hardware or performance settings between v24 and v25. They were already optimal in v24! v25 is just very noticeably not as quick.

I suspect part of the lag is that after many models (and sub-assembly parts) have been opened, edited and closed, the lack of freeing memory used by those workspace sessions is forcing my PC to use the windows swapfile more and more. It doesn't address why just moving the users view point around a model causes so much background processing, when the GPU is the only place where this should be happening.
 
I have had the same thing happen where Alibre slows down and hangs up. I open Task Manager and see that Alibre is using a massive amount of memrory. I end that process and I see amother instance of Alibre running even thoigh I killed the first instance and there is nothing on my screen. I kill that process, restart Alibre with the same project and memory is tremendously lower in Task Manager. This has happened a number of times.
 

pridbor

Senior Member
@Max, Not sure if Alibre uses the .NET Garbage Collector internally or good 'ole fashioned Malloc()/Free() or create/delete, but something isn't getting emptied or Free'd when a workspace is closed! Maybe you can pass this on to dev please. I would have raised a ticket, but you can't express issues as easy and flexible as you can on a forum post.
Simon, This issue has been around for a looong time! (I have been monitoring this issue via Task management for years now) I'm sure that you already know this issue too. It's been so bad that my working habit is to save, shut down, and restart at regular intervals as in the past, it appeared to me that there was no "garbage" collection/memory management" being performed.

I sincerely believe that this version is better in this regard while agreeing with your findings.

Now the issue I have seen in V25 is that Alibre shuts down completely (with multiple parts/windows open) when I shut down just one such.

So again, my workaround is to save frequently, or I potentially lose design details/changes.

Preben
 

Briggs

Member
Simon. This is EXACTLY what I'm experiencing. I also have a thread going on sluggish behavior. And loss of constraints in a larger assembly.
 

simonb65

Alibre Super User
Of course. I only meant to point out there are definitely some "reversions" vs my v24 tests with regard to speed.
Totally agree, my internal tool that uses the API in 'headless' mode is faster in v25 than v24, so some aspects of v25 improvements are good, but sadly some noticeably aren't.

I've noticed that hovering over items, whether that be in the design explorer or model geometry, is much slower at determining what entity it's over. i.e. its a good second or two from hovering over a design explorer item, to being able to get the right button context menu to appear (assuming that until it's determined the item, it doesn't know which context menu to display!). Also, hovering over the model, there is a noticeable delay in the edges or faces to be highlighted. This was more fluid in v24 and older (all be it still laggy occasionally). Still has the old issue that clicking on ribbon tools, doesn't select them unless you pause over the button for a brief second, let Alibre catch up, then press the LMB.

The summary is, that the UI is always way behind the user, far more so than any other CAD, Graphics Editor or code editing application I use daily.
 

bolsover

Senior Member
Seems like all is not well with V25
I just tried a quick test part.
It's been stuck like this for at least 5 minutes..
It was OK until I tried this extrude boss..
AlibreV25Performance.png
 

bolsover

Senior Member
Update..
Previous screenshot was not a one off issue.
I just reopened the previously saved file only to encounter the exact same issue.
All I did was add a plane, sketch and attempt extrude boss - Alibre becomes unresponsive. with message 'Computing Extrusion<9>.

I've done this twice now - completely reproducible issue.
db

Dell Precision 7710
Windows 11 Pro
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1535M v5 @ 2.90GHz 2.90 GHz
64.0 GB Ram
Nvidia Quadro M500M 8 GB GDDR5
 

bolsover

Senior Member
Thought I'd load the problem file - I have also reported to support
Open file and attempt extrude boss on Sketch<9>
Alibre appears to hang.
db
 

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idslk

Alibre Super User
Also to confirm: looked up here too. Made a test without the Sweep/Loft/Shell combination instead with rotational bodies and this works...
1657393621687.png
Regards
Stefan
 

Thompson

Member
The extrude works for me as long as it's less than 2.1875 or so. That looks like it's about the length where it completely comes out the other side of the main tube.

Result of 2.00" extrude: 1657395930068.png
 

HaroldL

Alibre Super User
It looks like an order of operations issue. I was able to get it to work by moving the extrude operation to before the shell.

extrude-shell order of operations.png

Also, to add a fillet to the extrude/body seam I needed to add fillet <10>.
 

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idslk

Alibre Super User
It looks like an order of operations issue. I was able to get it to work by moving the extrude operation to before the shell.
interesting. This works here too.
The original operation freezes near to immediate, it doesen't let me choose anything after pressing extrude with the highlighted sketch in the explorer:
1657399249027.png
After this the Taskmanager has to do his job...

if i press extrude without the sketch <9> highlighted in the explorer, i can choose the length, after this the sketch and it works:
1657399714893.png

Regards
Stefan
 

bolsover

Senior Member
It looks like an order of operations issue. I was able to get it to work by moving the extrude operation to before the shell.

View attachment 36454

Also, to add a fillet to the extrude/body seam I needed to add fillet <10>.
I reported the issue to Alibre support. I knew the order of operations was not optimal - I was just testing V25 - but my observation is that it 'should' work nevertheless and a hang of this nature is never acceptable.
The matter has now been passes to QA/Development for investigation.
db
 
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