Alibre 2019: Attempt No. 3

[bigseb]

I really want to like this release but its proving difficult. It need some intensive polishing to get it up to standard. Was working on a preform and saw old issues resurfacing.

1) Attempt to change record marked as deleted. Why is this still happening? Its been happening for years and should have been sorted out a long time ago.

2) Missing faces at various levels of zoom. This has also been happening a long time and needs to be
sorted out asap. It looks totally unprofessional. See the screenshots of the preform. Same perspective with each, just zoomed in:



3) Display inconsistencies. This is a new one. After working on the model for while I felt the graphics looked pretty awful. Like this:


So I completely shut down Alibre and re-open the model and I get this:


In many ways I thinks Alibre Design has taken a few steps back. All the graphical improvements haven't really made the overall experience any better.

 

[bigseb]

And... 2019 is slower. Much slower. Which is weird since hardware has only gotten better. The software should better a lot snappier.

 

[bigseb]

Renamed thread to 2019 (was 2020). My mistake.

 

[JST]

Agree that there are strange things going on.

Yes, continuing of old problems with display, and with "capping" on fillets, and with the old bugaboo, lofts. I thought it was an ACIS issue, but that got updated, and they are still present.

I will allow that there may be only 80% as many as there used to be. If you insisted it was only 70% or even 50%, I'd not fight you, BUT..... The point is that the errors still happen.

I have also seen very odd and sometimes inconsistent errors occur, that are not replicated the next time the model is opened, or that seem to be the result of commands that were not actually given.

Some of the command issues may be due to sluggish response latency issues causing the command to be "registered" as referring to a different tab entry, when the user (me) clicks the command, and then moves th mouse before the command has been registered....

 

[DavidJ]

Regarding 'slowness' in v2019 - refer to https://support.alibre.com/support/...9-slow-display-response-in-alibre-design-2019

The new HOOPS graphics does place a lot more demand on the hardware.

Seb - have you updated to build 20055?, some of your issues seem like issues that the initial release build had.

 

[bigseb]

David, the pics from the first post are all done in the latest build: AlibreDesign2019_setup_x64_20.0.4.20055.

I get that there can be teething issues with new releases, especially when making a major change to the software. My beef is that issues from way back still haven't been addressed and that the overall 'experience' is worse now than it was. I remodelled the preform in 2018 after I posted the OP and it 'felt' a lot smoother. Only thing is no AA, but I can live with that if the modelling process is solid.

 

[bigseb]

Here's an interesting thing: the preform was designed using both 2019 and 2018. The .AD_PRT file size for each was different. 2019 was 2.8MB and 2018 was 3.8MB. Not a huge difference (its not a huge file) but a difference nonetheless. Exactly the same strategy was used.

 

[DavidJ]

2019 was tested on a lot of 'missing face' reports from users - it generally resolved them (where the issue was in the old graphics pipeline). If the issue was in ACIS it still remains.

The graphics customise performance settings in 2019 can cause some missing face issues - see the 'Hide Small Faces' threshold.

You can of course switch v2019 to legacy display mode if your graphics hardware is struggling.

On the file size, the design history shouldn't vary much, so that only leaves the workspace image that is used for display when file first opens and for the thumbnail. I don't know the internal details of what might differ. It would be interesting to take the v2018 file, open in v2019, F5 then Save and re-check the file size to see if it shrinks.

 

[bigseb]

The file size thing bothers me not too much. The missing faces... in this case its different because they disappear as you zoom out but are there when you zoom in. My graphics hardware is not struggling.

 

[DavidJ]

That would fit with the small face threshold setting - have you checked it?

 

[bigseb]

No. It isn't installed at the moment.

 

[DavidJ]

'Hide small face' does exactly what the name suggests. Because the threshold is set in pixels, the zoom level will affect the result. It is available to reduce load on graphics card for complex models (basically 'don't bother with the fine detail, until I zoom in').

You might want to set your default for new files to zero or perhaps 10 pixels...

 

[jhiker]

I really want to like this release but its proving difficult. It need some intensive polishing to get it up to standard. Was working on a preform and saw old issues resurfacing.

1) Attempt to change record marked as deleted. Why is this still happening? Its been happening for years and should have been sorted out a long time ago.

I had this last week - almost drove me nuts and I still don't know what circumstances caused it to appear. What does it actually mean?
I have the latest version BTW.
Thanks.

 

[anson]

It would be interesting to take the v2018 file, open in v2019, F5 then Save and re-check the file size to see if it shrinks.

The file size seem to remain the same other than minute differences(±10KB max) which appears to be a difference in thumbnail size.
I didn't test with different graphic settings, and not any really complex parts.

 

[JL82]

2019 is very slow with a ordinate dimension. I moved about ten dimension line within the ordinate dimension so it took about three minutes.

 

[DBC]

I too am seeing missing faces, but they seem to be linked to filleting. Doesn't seem to be missing if I bring the model into KeyShot, so it must just be visual effects in Alibre.

I kind of feel like an Alibre beta tester, when all I want is to be a happy Alibre user. :-(

 

[JST]

The "record marked as deleted " thing may NOT be new with 2019. I think I have seen that before with 2018 at least..

 

[jhiker]

The "record marked as deleted " thing may NOT be new with 2019. I think I have seen that before with 2018 at least..

Do we know what it actually means? Is it a reference to a plane/face/feature that no longer exists, or something like that?

 

[JST]

I have no idea.... your interpretation makes sense, but if it is delered, why is it visible? That makes little sense.

Overall it sounds much more like an "Alibre screwed up" message. Deleted things should not be showing up to be selected.

 

[bigseb]

The "record marked as deleted " thing may NOT be new with 2019. I think I have seen that before with 2018 at least..

It isn't. Said so in my first post.