danwilley
Member
Others have also noted this memory problem. As I work on complex assemblies for hours at a time, Alibre's runtime memory footprint grows and grows until the available memory is consumed and Windows starts swapping out (things) to its swap file... and system performance just slows to a crawl.
This week I noticed this slowdown again and dug in a little deeper. I have a complex assembly that I used for this experiment. I loaded the assembly, waited for it to load and render, then immediately closed that assembly but left Alibre running. I opened and reopened the assemble a total of five times and watched the Alibre runtime footprint grow and grow. So unless Alibre is using a delayed memory sweep and release algorithm, there is a memory leak.
See attached screenshots for the memory footprint growth.
1st assembly load... I launched Alibre and let the home screen render. Then I loaded the complex assembly. After that assemble was rendered, I checked the Windows task manager and the Alibre memory footprint was 920MB. That's normal for this particular assembly. Not sure what all those Alibre background processes are for. I see them occasionally after a lot (hours) of Alibre design work, but not always.
4th assembly load ... I loaded the assembly three more times, closing the assembly between reloads. Alibre was left running between reloads. The screenshot above is after the 4th load of the assembly. You can see the runtime memory increased from 920MB to 1,752MB.
5th assembly load... This is the runtime memory footprint after the 5th reload. I probably rotated the assembly around a bit on the display but nothing else. The runtime memory footprint increased to 1,823MB. Windows starts to slow at this point for me, given my 8gig total system memory.
Alibre shut down... After the 5th load of the assembly, I closed Alibre and the assembly. Memory was released. Those pesky Alibre background tasks are still running. The only way to get rid of them is to use "End Task" in the task manager.
This week I noticed this slowdown again and dug in a little deeper. I have a complex assembly that I used for this experiment. I loaded the assembly, waited for it to load and render, then immediately closed that assembly but left Alibre running. I opened and reopened the assemble a total of five times and watched the Alibre runtime footprint grow and grow. So unless Alibre is using a delayed memory sweep and release algorithm, there is a memory leak.
See attached screenshots for the memory footprint growth.
1st assembly load... I launched Alibre and let the home screen render. Then I loaded the complex assembly. After that assemble was rendered, I checked the Windows task manager and the Alibre memory footprint was 920MB. That's normal for this particular assembly. Not sure what all those Alibre background processes are for. I see them occasionally after a lot (hours) of Alibre design work, but not always.
4th assembly load ... I loaded the assembly three more times, closing the assembly between reloads. Alibre was left running between reloads. The screenshot above is after the 4th load of the assembly. You can see the runtime memory increased from 920MB to 1,752MB.
5th assembly load... This is the runtime memory footprint after the 5th reload. I probably rotated the assembly around a bit on the display but nothing else. The runtime memory footprint increased to 1,823MB. Windows starts to slow at this point for me, given my 8gig total system memory.
Alibre shut down... After the 5th load of the assembly, I closed Alibre and the assembly. Memory was released. Those pesky Alibre background tasks are still running. The only way to get rid of them is to use "End Task" in the task manager.