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Master Cam slow down


TERRYH
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Is there something in the way a file is created that can cause MC to slow down massively? I am just getting started on this part I have  11 programs done and the file is 2,012,296KB already. we bring them in as a solid and convert them to surfaces the original files are created by our designers in NX and saved/exported as a Parasolid. it is taking just under 5 mins to save every time I save it, and there are a lot of back drafted areas I will have to mill 5-axis and going threw marking them all with a different color so I know where they are to not have to look for them in the future it takes a very long time. Is there something we can do to speed this up it's going to take forever to do this thing at this pace. Using 2019 

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2 minutes ago, TERRYH said:

Is there something in the way a file is created that can cause MC to slow down massively? I am just getting started on this part I have  11 programs done and the file is 2,012,296KB already. we bring them in as a solid and convert them to surfaces the original files are created by our designers in NX and saved/exported as a Parasolid. it is taking just under 5 mins to save every time I save it, and there are a lot of back drafted areas I will have to mill 5-axis and going threw marking them all with a different color so I know where they are to not have to look for them in the future it takes a very long time. Is there something we can do to speed this up it's going to take forever to do this thing at this pace. Using 2019 

Have you tried compacting the database?

File -> Repair File.

Deleting entities can use a lot of excess memory due to undelete.

On the Start/Exit page of the configuration, Limiting the number of undo events and size can also help.

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8 minutes ago, TERRYH said:

Is there something in the way a file is created that can cause MC to slow down massively? I am just getting started on this part I have  11 programs done and the file is 2,012,296KB already. we bring them in as a solid and convert them to surfaces the original files are created by our designers in NX and saved/exported as a Parasolid. it is taking just under 5 mins to save every time I save it, and there are a lot of back drafted areas I will have to mill 5-axis and going threw marking them all with a different color so I know where they are to not have to look for them in the future it takes a very long time. Is there something we can do to speed this up it's going to take forever to do this thing at this pace. Using 2019 

Hi Terry, i was just reading a new Knowledge base article that was recently posted about Groups causing large files sizes. Please try the solution shown in this knowledge base article here and hopefully that helps some https://kb.mastercam.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50735.aspx

 

i would also try Byte's suggestion for the repair file

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Josh since our last IT guy left we do not pay for access to that any more so I cannot get into it to look at to read it. When I start a new part I always run the test surfaces and get rid of any with backup, fix any self intersecting and delete any small surfaces and then run the Repair before I start anything this size. 

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3 minutes ago, TERRYH said:

Josh since our last IT guy left we do not pay for access to that any more so I cannot get into it to look at to read it. When I start a new part I always run the test surfaces and get rid of any with backup, fix any self intersecting and delete any small surfaces and then run the Repair before I start anything this size. 

It just talked about geometry groups causing performance issues..

If you move all your geometry to a new level, is there any leftover  (corrupt) entities?

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For clarity, here is the contents of that KB article. I don't think about Groups much, so this is definitely something I would have to read the KB article to understand.

 

PROBLEM:

Some large files are caused by having many groups.

CAUSE:

Groups have lots of geometry in each one.

SOLUTION:

1. Display all levels.
2. Open the Groups Manager and select some of the groups.
3. On right side, select Remove from.

ID50735-1.jpg.50637c1ab08197383185d49fa310c757.jpg
4. The graphics area is opened. Window select all the geometry.
5. Control returns to the Groups Manager.
6. Click the Delete option.

ID50735-2.jpg.31a8152ef912e66af8a0fe0622ff3466.jpg

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1 hour ago, TERRYH said:

Some times there are sometimes there is not, I've seen it both ways this is just dreadfully slow 

If there are empty levels that say they contain geometry, select them in the level manager and hit delete..

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4 hours ago, byte said:

Have you tried compacting the database?

File -> Repair File.

Deleting entities can use a lot of excess memory due to undelete.

On the Start/Exit page of the configuration, Limiting the number of undo events and size can also help.

They used to have a "ram saver" icon. What happened to that?

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On 7/13/2020 at 10:34 AM, TERRYH said:

we bring them in as a solid and convert them to surfaces the original files are created by our designers in NX and saved/exported as a Parasolid.

Is the file still keeping solids and surfaces?  If so, maybe this is part of the problem as well.  I hate using surfaces instead of solids, but everyone has their own way, so I'm not knocking it.  But all the individual surfaces add up in file size too.  Esp if the solid was complex to begin with.

 

Brent

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We do keep the original solid but move it to another level just so we have it as a reference because sometimes when we translate them into surfaces it messes with the color codes we use. We've used surfaces to program with since I have been programming going on 10 years in Nov. but only recently tried solids when we switched to 2019-2020 but found several issues with MC when using solids, so we just went back to what we knew worked till MC fixes stuff. and as far as deleting groups I'm kind of confused are groups what is also being called levels, because I only have levels that I use and cannot delete any of them. 

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On the View Tab, under Managers, click on Groups......if any groups exist, delete them.

It doesn't delete anything in your file other that references that create the groups...

Also, when a solid is complex, I have found it better to create surfaces from the solid and delete the solid from the file...and work with the surfaces...it can considerably lower the resources required and speed up Mastercam

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  • 3 years later...

What we do when we bring in part from Solidworks that we need as surfaces is we save it as an .IGES file, LOAD or MERGE it into Mastercam, then move it out of position in one direction at least as long or wide as the part, go to HOME, UNBLANK, then select all those hidden wireframes, click End Selection then delete those wireframes. Don't delete the surfaces that were blanked, those are needed for the actual surfaces of the part. We found the Solidworks .IGES export settings in the pic to work the best for us. It also makes a good clean file for Calypso software on the CMM. I'm not sure if these extra hidden wireframes will be in the NX files. You'll just need to give it a try.

.IGES_settings.PNG.6aae4ce66b8cf150f0ca0acbaef6f42c.PNG

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Now on the same topic of slowness, I found that Mastercam gets incredible slow opening a window after many windows opening and closing. The more windows opening and closing the slower it gets no matter how many hours I've been programming. If I opened and closed 10 windows in 8 hours, the windows open quickly , if I opened and closed windows a thousand times in 2 hours, the window openings get slower and slower. The 5 axis windows are the worse and take the longest. Looks like there is inefficient use of memory handling during those window routines. I've got a Precision 3431 with 16G ram. None of the other software I use causes a slowdown and the only other app running all the time is Outlook mail.

I don't recall this problem with Mastercam 2019.

 

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45 minutes ago, jpatry said:

I've never understood the reason for this

Because when you have large, complicated models it can and does tax the available system(computer) resources causing system performance slow downs.

A solid model is at its root a large complex math formula, surfaces are a lighter system weight.

You need to remember, a large model is not dictated so much by the physical size of it in the real world. It is more about how many faces the computer graphics have to render....I have had small, lens size files with 10k+ small rendered faces that bring the system to a slowdown.

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Soldis take more horsepower than surfaces.

I program 5X impellers ranging from Ø35" to  Ø72" 

Historically I've always created the surfaces I need to drilve my toolpaths

We were originally supplied  with only IGES files containing points tables, lines and splines

Recently our customer has gone to model based definitions with no points.... and at the same time

Mastercam 2024 has gotten much better at solid chaining and using solid surfaces for driving 5X toolpaths

Last month I tried programming an impeller using only the solid model.

Chaining the curves and picking the solid surfaces was really easy. 

The toolpaths crunched quickly and yielded excellent motion. 

Hower, the more operations there were in my file, the slower toolpath parameter pages took to open.

The more toolpaths I added, the slower it got, to the point it was taking 20 to 30 seconds to open a 

toolpath.  

By this time the file was about 350meg and I was at a standstill. 

I ended up going back about halfway through the file, creating surfaces from solids and reselecting those

to get the file finished.

It was a disappointing result as the workflow at the start was really nice and selecting my geometry 

directly from the solid model was a huge time saver.

 

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1 hour ago, jpatry said:

I've never understood the reason for this

I'm Terry's co-worker. Solids are useful, but they also have a ton of useless information in them when we are working with huge castings or even molds and other things which have a bunch of internal stuff like gundrilled holes and waterlines which we don't actually do ourselves. So, I like to work in surfaces and move all that extraneous information that I either won't need at all, or won't need until the very end when I'm doing the side work, onto another level. Then Mastercam doesn't have to mess with it when calculating our toolpaths to do the surface contour on top. It's also helpful to have the 'top' and 'bottom' surfaces on different levels so that when I'm backplotting I can see more easily if I hit anything that might be hidden below, or if I take drills from the bottom too deep and hit the surface 'above.'

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21 minutes ago, gcode said:

Soldis take more horsepower than surfaces.

I program 5X impellers ranging from Ø35" to  Ø72" 

Historically I've always created the surfaces I need to drilve my toolpaths

We were originally supplied  with only IGES files containing points tables, lines and lines

Recently our customer has gone to model based definitions with no points.... and at the same time

Mastercam 2024 has gotten much better at solid chaining and using solid surfaces for driving 5X toolpaths

Last month I tried programming an impeller using only the solid model.

Chaining the curves and picking the solid surfaces was really easy. 

The toolpaths crunched quickly and yielded excellent motion. 

Hower, the more operations there were in my file, the slower toolpath parameter pages took to open.

The more toolpaths I added, the slower it got, to the point it was taking 20 to 30 seconds to open a 

toolpath.  

By this time the file was about 350meg and I was at a standstill. 

I ended up going back about halfway through the file, creating surfaces from solids and reselecting those

to get the file finished.

It was a disappointing result as the workflow at the start was really nice and selecting my geometry 

directly from the solid model was a huge time saver.

 

Yep, that happens all the time with us even working in surfaces and moving all the useless stuff off onto another level. Heck, a lot of the NX parasolid files I read in from my engineers start at 100-200megs. And it's downhill from there as far as Mastercam getting slower and slower until I will 'limp' to the end of the 3axis stuff, and then I start a 2nd file just do the 5axis stuff so I'm not waiting 20-30 seconds, like you said, just to have a window or operation open that I click on...

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Been a while since I did complex mold work, but I used to try limit my file size to 250meg by saving multiple files, rough, semi finish, finish etc. Was a PIA to manage but helped the performance immensely. In-process stock models were great for rest machining but also bloated files quickly. my two cents !!

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15 hours ago, MrFish said:

Been a while since I did complex mold work, but I used to try limit my file size to 250meg by saving multiple files, rough, semi finish, finish etc. Was a PIA to manage but helped the performance immensely. In-process stock models were great for rest machining but also bloated files quickly. my two cents !!

A lot of what I do, I end up with files that are in the 4-500 meg range....on these systems I spec'd we do well with them. There are days where around lunch time things get a bit wonky, that's when I and tell  my guys, to save the file, shut down Mastercam and restart it...sometimes you just need to flush out the system.

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