Performance Tips for Viewing Models - SmartPlant Markup Plus - Version 2019 SP 2 (10.00.02.0022) - Installation & Upgrade

SmartPlant Markup Plus Installation

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English
Product
SmartPlant Markup Plus
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Installation & Upgrade
SmartPlant Foundation / SDx Version
10
SmartPlant Markup Plus Version
10.0 (2019)

The following are performance tips for viewing models using SmartPlant Markup Plus.

Video Cards

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.

SmartPlant Markup Plus uses software rendering if your system does not support OpenGL acceleration.

Virtual Memory

If possible, set paging files to the maximum fixed size (one per partition) to mitigate any issues when opening large datasets or datasets containing large individual graphic objects.

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.

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.