General Question about Assembly Motion and Computer Power

[danwilley]

I have a complex assembly that I cannot get to move and operate. I can remove (suspress) various sub-assemblies and eventually the remaining parts do move (jerky in motion).

My question... assuming the overall assembly is properly formed, flexable and constrained (not over constrained), what is most likely the cause of this loss of motion? Under-powered CPU, Not enough main memory, Under-powered graphics card? Other?

Or, should a properly formed assembly always move regardless of the computer system but maybe only in jerky motion? (Which might imply my assembly is not properly formed.)

Thanks,
Dan

 

[bigseb]

My question... assuming the overall assembly is properly formed, flexable and constrained (not over constrained), what is most likely the cause of this loss of motion? Under-powered CPU, Not enough main memory, Under-powered graphics card? Other?

Any of those or a combination. What are your system specs?

 

[danwilley]

Eight-year-old system that was somewhat big in its day (but not so much now). I7-860, 8G memory, SSD & mechanical HD, Graphics card: Radeon 5760 w/1G memory. Windows 10 with recient upates. See the attached system summary.

When I get the partial assembly to "move", I always shut down all superfulous applications and so the system is pretty dormant. Even then the motion is slow to respond and jerky. I am mostly asking because I will be putting a new system together soon and curious where I should spend the money, etc. I understand the single CPU core point with Alibre so will stay with Intel (faster cores but less of them). If I could tweek this current system though, that would be great (in the short term).

 

[HaroldL]

Were you able to successfully move the assembly in v21 or is this new to v22?
How many sub-assembly levels deep are made flexible and that you need to move? I think it has been mentioned that Make Flexible only works on sub-assemblies one or two levels down. There has also been some discussion on the forum about the effect that Minimum Motion (On or Off) has on the constraint mechanism in large assemblies. Maybe that needs to be investigated more.

 

[bigseb]

... I7-860, 8G memory...

That's my old system too. Was all right actually, or so I thought.

 

[DavidJ]

You don't mention display settings (pixel count) - the more pixels that have to be calculated, the more demands get placed on the whole system.

1GB graphics memory seems light these days, but may be OK with a small display.

If you can get some improvement in motion smoothness by adjusting the 'customise performance' graphics options, and by turning off rendered cosmetic threads & the other visual toys - that would suggest graphics card is limiting.

You have the 2004 feature update for windows - IF your graphics card/driver support it, Hardware accelerated graphics scheduling will be an option in Windows - that can give a noticeable performance boost if enabled.