Making Alibre respond faster post V23-update

[aptivaboy]

Hi all,

Is there a way to speed up the program? I mean, since the updates the performance if Alibre is downright Post Office-esque. It will take over ten seconds for the Boolean Unite dialogue to come up after its selected, for example, let alone work. Project to Sketch takes up to fifteen seconds. Given the machine that I'm using, it ought to be downright snappy, I would think, and was before the update to V23. Heck, its faster on my 7 year old laptop running an ancient copy of Geomagic.

Date: Saturday, July 10, 2021 5:35:10 PM
Alibre Design™ Professional
Version: V23 64-bit [Build 23055]

Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.19041.0
Processor Information: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Eight-Core Processor
Number of Processors: 16

It also has a 2080 card and 64 GB of RAM, and Alibre is installed to a lightning quick SSD, so yeah, it ought to be pretty doggone fast but it isn't. I mean, its like being on dial up internet waiting forever for the dialogues to open and close. Even saving and opening designs sometimes takes waiting... And waiting... And waiting... Okay, I may be exaggerating a little, but not by much. Any ideas for speeding the program up?

Many thanks,

Bob

 

[NateLiquidGravity]

Faster clock speed as multiple cores are not utilised.

 

[aptivaboy]

My point was that my rig is more than capable of running Alibre and it has slowed down considerably since the update.

 

[JST]

I am NOT seeing that slow performance in normal use. And I have been complaining of slowness in certain circumstances, so I have a very good idea of how fast it is operating.. (It remains to be seen whether the memory leak slowness will re-occur.)

I think there is something in your system slowing it down. or a bad install.

Look through settings, and if nothing pops up, try a re-install.

 

[Max]

If you are seeing dialogs take 15 seconds to show up, something wonky is happening. That's not normal. Please contact support.

 

[HaroldL]

I have noticed that on my laptop it does take Alibre a bit longer to launch v23 than previous versions. I suspect that is because there may be more to the program than before, but I am not sure and it could be my imagination.

I do know that the Hole tool has always taken up to 5-6 seconds to open on the first use of the tool in a part. It seems to be quicker, about 1 second, for subsequent uses and that is on par with the other tools on the ribbon.

 

[JST]

You might check the memory usage with "Resource Monitor".

Right click in the windows toolbar, select Task Manager, then "Performance", go to the bottom and select "Resource Monitor".

My first move would be to delete Alibre, and re-install.

 

[DavidJ]

Hole Tool - has to load data from the xlsx threads file at first use in a session. That does result in a noticeable pause.

As Max mentioned, the long delays mentioned by Bob suggest a problem installation . That might be fixed by a simple re-install, but may need additional changes to resolve.

[EDIT - in case it isn't obvious, the current installers can be downloaded from the Alibre web site - Download Alibre's CAD/CAM Software | Alibre 3D CAD ]

 

[HaroldL]

Hole Tool - has to load data from the xlsx threads file at first use in a session. That does result in a noticeable pause.

That makes sense, Thanks for the insight.

 

[simonb65]

Hole Tool - has to load data from the xlsx threads file at first use in a session. That does result in a noticeable pause.

I personally would only expect a 'noticeable pause' if the file was on a remote file server and the file server disk it was on was parked and hibernating! Any 'noticeable' delay loading a small config/data file from a local disk is a significant performance issue that really needs some attention! #JustSaying

 

[NateLiquidGravity]

One thing I've noticed is many Alibre dialogs pop up, do some loading/calculations, then toggle their options depending on what is happening. To me this means the wrong event is being used to make those initial loading/calculations and toggles.
https://www.c-sharpcorner.com/uploadfile/mamta_m/windows-forms-events-lifecycle/

 

[simonb65]

One thing I've noticed is many Alibre dialogs pop up, do some loading/calculations, then toggle their options depending on what is happening.

I notice that in a lot of instances, there are 're-calculations' going on (as shown in the bottom status bar), which to me can be palmed off to a worker thread to keep the UI responsiveness fluid, or they are re-calcs that seem to happen even though nothing has changed! It is only the later AD versions that have started showing this behaviour, so it's something that has been introduced recently ... for whatever reason! but again, it needs some attention as performance gets worse the more functionality is added if it isn't optimised and kept in check upfront.

I use Blender a lot now and it's very noticeable how that can keep the UI responsiveness very sharp with massive models and operating 12-14 hours a day without restarting, etc! By comparison, I find AD very slow, laggy and soon gets bogged down with increasing model size (plus a few restarts a day to 'clear' things out!).

MOI3D is consistently very quick too!

 

[Drutort]

Ya I would love to see my 5950x chip being more utilized, it did speed things up just from the IPC and single core speed from my 3900x but seeing those cores/threads being idle is disappointing heh

 

[bigseb]

I use Blender a lot now and it's very noticeable how that can keep the UI responsiveness very sharp with massive models and operating 12-14 hours a day without restarting, etc! By comparison, I find AD very slow, laggy and soon gets bogged down with increasing model size (plus a few restarts a day to 'clear' things out!).

MOI3D is consistently very quick too!

Using Moi more and more. Not parametric but so much flexibility and great design tools.

 

[simonb65]

Using Moi more and more. Not parametric but so much flexibility and great design tools.

I thought Michael was bringing parametric into v4? or was it just general dimensioning? Not sure where he's up to with it.

 

[BlackBird28]

I thought Michael was bringing parametric into v4? or was it just general dimensioning? Not sure where he's up to with it.

Moi will never be parametric. You can use a addon ELEPHANT to do some node based parametric stuff like in Grashopper for Rhino.
I like moi and rhino, but the lack of parametric design is the reason why I use alibre more and more. You can make very quick mistakes in this programs because of misaligned snapping or something. And you realize the errors to late and need to start from the beginning. I don’t have the Time to start from the beginning over and over again. And the customer’s also want some changes. That’s why parametric historybased modeling is important to me.

 

[bigseb]

I thought Michael was bringing parametric into v4? or was it just general dimensioning? Not sure where he's up to with it.

No. But Moi just gets better and better with every release. Well happy with it.