Performance Issues and Tips - Intergraph Smart Review - Installation

Intergraph Smart Review Installation

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English
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Intergraph Smart Review
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Installation & Upgrade
Smart Review Version
13.x(2018)

3D Mouse Usage

For smoother and more intuitive navigation with your 3D mouse, you can turn off the Auto adjust motion rate setting (Motion Settings > Rates > Auto adjust). However, when you are farther away from the model, turn Auto adjust back on to quickly navigate back to a point of interest.

 If you are not using your 3D mouse with Smart Review, the 3D mouse driver might cause a 30-40 second delay when you open a model. To resolve this time delay, uninstall the 3D mouse driver, and then re-open the model.

Video Cards

The results of a survey of graphics cards used with Smart Review are available on the Intergraph Smart Support site. To view these results:

  1. Go to https://smartsupport.intergraph.com.

  2. Type your Intergraph Smart Support user name and password.

  3. Click View Downloads > Smart Review > Technical Notes & Whitepapers, and then select Graphics Cards used with SmartPlant Review.

Many 3D-intensive game cards are not suitable for engineering purposes. When considering a video card, select a video card designed for OpenGL-based, 3D-intensive scientific or engineering applications.

In addition to the video card, the device driver is also crucial to performance. We advise trying various card and driver combinations prior to committing to a particular card vendor.

After configuring your computer, be very careful about installing operating system updates or gaming software, because doing so can dramatically affect performance. Also, make sure you can return your machine configuration to a previous state.

For laptop computers with built-in graphics, sometimes the graphics chip manufacturer has a better driver available than the one installed by the laptop manufacturer. However, because the use of a non-laptop manufacturer driver might void your warranty, be sure to check with both the graphics chip supplier and the laptop manufacturer before using a non- laptop manufacturer driver.

You can also try turning off Vertex Buffer Objects (VBOs) for the first time you open the VUE file. The VBOs are created when Smart Review loads the file. However, VBOs should be turned back on after the initial opening.

Smart Review uses software rendering if your system does not support OpenGL acceleration.

Memory Usage (Estimating Required RAM)

Use the following procedure to estimate the amount of RAM (or system memory) your Smart Review project needs. Actual memory usage varies based on the project data and features being used. Runtime memory usage can increase significantly when using various Smart Review features, such as Animation, Display Sets, Collision Detection, Materials, Raytracing, and so forth.

  1. Estimate the total Smart Review data size by summing the size of all files required by your project that Smart Review reads into memory.

    • For DRI projects, add the size of the DRI file and all listed model files (DGN, PRP, and so forth). If the project database must be created (or recreated), add the size of any legacy project text files to be imported into the project database (MDB), such as DST, SET, TAG, and so forth.

    • For single file projects (DGN, PRP, VUE), add the size of the single file. If the MicroStation file references other MicroStation files, then the sizes of the referenced MicroStation files should also be added.

    • For .SVF (multiple VUE file) projects, add the size of the SVF file and all listed VUE files.

    • Be sure to add the size of any material files used by the project (MAT, PAL). Remember that all texture files will consume system memory when raytracing or if graphics card memory is not available.

      The label database (MDB2) is not read into memory. However, if the label database must be created (or recreated), then add the size of the single largest DRV and/or .XML file being used to create the label database to approximate the extra memory needed to process each DRV and/or .XML file data.

  2. Multiply this approximation by 1.2 for a rough estimate on the overhead of the Smart Review executable code in memory and the extra memory needed to process and manage the data in the other files during load and during the Smart Review session.

Virtual Memory (Swap Space)

Because the operating system and other applications take a portion of available memory, leaving less memory available for Smart Review, make sure you have enough virtual memory.

Calculate the minimum required virtual memory by taking the larger of these two calculations:

(1.5 * RAM) * the number of processors on the machine

(1.5 * the largest dataset used in the application) * the number of processors

Set the minimum and maximum virtual memory settings to the same value for best performance. If the page file has to grow, it can become fragmented. Although the operating system can address only 2 GB of virtual memory at one time for each application, the swap space can be larger because multiple applications can be in virtual memory at the same time.

  • For FAT and FAT32 file systems, virtual memory is limited to approximately 4 GB.

  • For NTFS file systems, virtual memory is limited to one approximately 4 GB page file per partition. The NTFS file systems can have more than one page file by using a page file on more than one partition.

  • For large .vue files, set the virtual memory to a value much larger than the .vue file size. For extremely large .vue files, set the virtual memory to the maximum allowed for your file system, defragment the drive, and close any non- essential programs to provide the .vue file with the maximum amount of space possible. To handle extremely large .vue files, in excess of 1 or 2 GB, you might need at least two 4GB defragmented page files.

Display Performance

Error Message: Memory limits prevent showing highlight/selection of display set

This message displays in the status bar when there is not enough memory available to show a highlighted or selected display set in the main view. The display set contains too many objects to show highlighted or selected at this time.

Many Smart Review settings affect display time. While there is no single combination of options that works best for all data sets or user workflows, the following features can improve display time, especially when working with large data sets. Use the View > Settings > View > Advanced > Time Display option to evaluate the effects of using these options.

View Settings

Update Interrupt - The Esc key cancels the current screen update. Only elements rendered so far will be displayed. This can be very useful if the full update of the model is not needed for the current task.

Range Rejection - Increase the settings as needed and activate to significantly improve display time for wireframe and/or shaded rendering by eliminating elements that are too small to be of current interest.

Dot Box - Draws distant elements less precisely for improved update speed. At a distance, these items will be represented by a small box of pixels instead of a full rendering.

Two-sided lighting - Turn off this option to improve display time for all models.

Stroking Tolerance - Reduce this setting to the lowest acceptable level (minimally 4) to improve display time for models with objects having round surfaces such as pipes, reducers, valves, and so on.

Perspective - Turn off this mode to improve display time for all models.

Views

Plan and Elevation Views - Turn off these views whenever possible to improve performance.

Overlapping Windows - Prevent the Main view from being overlapped by any other window (including toolbars and the plan or elevation views) to improve responsiveness.

Partial Recall - When recalling a saved view, either singularly or during Key Frame animation, use the partial recall feature with the Level settings option turned off. This significantly improves performance for datasets with large numbers of files.

Motion Settings

Rates - Increase to improve motion speed through the model. For example, you can change the Maximum moves per second rate from 30 to 100 in the Motion > Settings > Rates dialog box.

Display - Turn off the Allow all texturing, Update view cone, and Update position status options, to improve performance.

Data Reduction

Ideally, each Smart Review project should contain only the data of interest for the review session. The less data to review, the faster performance will be. The following features can improve display performance for any project by hiding any graphic elements not currently of interest for the task at hand:

Motion Clipping Plane - Motion display times can be improved by setting and activating the motion far clipping plane to the required extent. Elements are only clipped during motion through the model.

Clipping Planes - Display times can be improved by setting and activating the near and far clipping view cone plane settings to the required extent.

Clipping Volumes - Display times can be improved by creating a clipping volume to clip all data outside a particular volume.

Level Settings - Display times can be improved by turning off the levels of objects not currently of interest.

Display Sets - Display times can be improved by creating display sets of elements not currently of interest, and turning them off. Display sets can be created in a wide variety of ways, using element file, level, color, volume, and attribute data information.

Non-Model Data - Turn off the display and/or use of all annotations, materials, measurements, lights, comments, and textures whenever possible to improve display times.

File System

Make sure the system is using the fastest file system.

Data Fragmentation

  • Hard Drives - Perform defragmentation on your hard drives regularly. File fragmentation on the hard drive slows down the system and the application.

  • System Page Files - Keep the system page files defragmented as well as the disk drives. The page file is a system file and cannot be defragmented while the system is running. A fragmented page file may be scattered all over a disk drive and will not perform efficiently. If a page file becomes too fragmented, the system may not be able to open an extremely large 3D model.

    Typically, you defragment the page file at boot time, separate from the real-time disk drive defragmentation operation. Tools are available to defragment the page files.

  • Project and Label Databases - Use the DBCompact utility to compact and defragment your databases. If the label or project files are updated for an existing project, the software attempts to replace the label database records on a file by file basis. Deleting and replacing large numbers of records in the label database might lead to significant database fragmentation, which can lead to poor performance. Compressing the database on exit will remove this fragmentation. For more information, see SmartPlant Review Utilities.

  • However, if several design or label files have been changed because the current label database was created, we recommend simply deleting the existing label database (MDB2) and allowing the software to rebuild it from the current project data. If display sets exist in the main project database (MDB), then rebuilding the label database also kicks off display set resolution, which rebuilds the display sets based on the current label and project file contents. Only the label database (MDB2 file) needs to be deleted. For example, one label database took 7 hours to update by replacing records. This same data set was up in minutes when the old database was deleted and Smart Review was allowed to re-build a clean database.

Database Format

Smart Review creates Microsoft Access (64-bit) databases to store and manage your project data. Smart Review provides compatibility and enhanced performance options in regards to Access:

  • Enhanced Performance: The 64-bit Microsoft Access Database Engine 2010 Redistributable provides the maximum Smart Review performance. You can have 64-bit Access individually installed on your system, or it is available in 64-bit Microsoft Office applications (2013 and 2016). If you do not have any version of Microsoft Office on your system before installation, the Smart Review installer automatically loads the 64-bit Access Database Engine 2010 Redistributable .

  • Compatibility: Smart Review supports 32-bit Microsoft Office applications (2013 and 2016). This option does not provide any performance benefits.

Photo-Realism Module

To get the most out of the Photo- Realism module, we recommend the following system resources:

System memory

Additional memory is recommended to improve the performance of the raytracer. Additional memory is particularly important on multi-processor systems and/or with relatively large models. Creating smaller subsets of the larger model should allow portions of the larger model to be raytraced.

Processors

The raytracer has an efficient multi-threaded implementation that can improve raytrace performance when using multiple processors. When using multiple processors, the amount of system memory should be considered on a per processor basis. The amount of system memory, virtual memory and number of processors are likely the most influential factor in raytrace performance.

Virtual memory

Additional virtual memory might be needed to supplement the system memory for large models.

Lights

The typical number of lights supported by an OpenGL graphics card can vary from 8 to 24 or more and are dependent on the driver used. This will affect the display of lights using OpenGL type rendering. Raytracing does not rely on the graphics card for lighting calculation and will not be affected by the number of lights supported by it.

Textures

The amount of texture memory on the graphics card can affect OpenGL display performance. A greater amount of texture memory can improve performance. The amount of texture memory on the graphics card does not affect the performance of the raytracer.

  • The operating system shares resources (CPU, memory, disk, and so forth) equally among all processes running on the system. For maximum performance, reduce the number of processes and services while using Smart Review. Processes and services that are notorious for consuming vast amounts of resources are (but not limited to) virus scanners, media players, disk organizers, and mail programs. You might consider dedicating a machine for exclusive Smart Review use with minimal auxiliary programs.

  • Smart Review defaults to software rendering if your system does not support OpenGL acceleration.

Set Number of Processors

Use the View > Advanced > Processors command to set the number of processors used for normal rendering. Setting this value to a lower number (i.e. "1") limits the number of software threads that will be created for normal rendering. Setting the number of processors to 1 before or after opening a project can improve software stability on some systems, but can reduce rendering performance.