Francois Levy Posted November 8, 2006 Share Posted November 8, 2006 We're working through a large residential project in Design Development, and taking section viewports of a 3D model to generate building sections and elevations. The site is large and complex enough that ther are a fair number of 3D polys, and the building has two main wings set 65? apart, with a shallow barrel roof in one case, and a flat roof in others--in short a fairly demanding model but not (IMHO) hugely so. We have thus far set up 6 sections, and are finding the machine is now very slow (brand new Intel core Duo 2 iMac, 1 GB RAM). Even moving a vewort on the page is painfully slow. Questions: --does anyone have any tips on speeding up hidden-line Section Viewports (other than turning off polygons)? --will more RAM make a substantial difference (we have an aditional 1GB on order)? Any suggestions welcome! Quote Link to comment
bclydeb Posted November 9, 2006 Share Posted November 9, 2006 Francois, We have always max-ed out the RAM on our machines because it has (in the past) made a huge difference in the performance of VW (and any other program as well). Quote Link to comment
MKingsley Posted November 9, 2006 Share Posted November 9, 2006 If your 3D polys aren't too complicated, try reducing the 3D conversion resolution to low in the 3D tab of VW preferences, if you haven't done that already. Biplab turned me on to that one. Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Biplab Posted November 9, 2006 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted November 9, 2006 Hi Francois, if you can please send us the file and we can take a look. Thanks. Quote Link to comment
Francois Levy Posted November 9, 2006 Author Share Posted November 9, 2006 Well I feel a little foolish. First, I didn't realize that I was running 12.0 on an Intel machine--I thought it was already upgraded to 12.5! Secondly, I set my 3D resolution to Low (from High). Finally, I traced the building footprint, offset it by 5', and used that polygon to clip the DTM, vastly reducing the number of 3D polys (and elminating many that I did not need anyway for those viewports anyway). Quote Link to comment
CipesDesign Posted November 9, 2006 Share Posted November 9, 2006 So the result is that 12.5 is much faster on the Intel Mac? Just curious as I am thinking of upgrading soon... Quote Link to comment
Gytis Posted November 9, 2006 Share Posted November 9, 2006 I haven't quantified it, but the same section viewports which I created in 12.0.1 on a G4 (and were full of complex 3D polys) render much faster when I open them in 12.5 on an Intel Mac. As a feeling, ie qualitatively ;-), it went frum painfully slow, to pleasantly quick. ;-) Quote Link to comment
mike m oz Posted November 9, 2006 Share Posted November 9, 2006 (edited) Peter - I went from a G4 laptop to the new 24"imac with 2GB of RAM. Good machine. I had a project which the G4 was struggling on. Took forever to render the Section Viewports and was struggling with the Renderworks bitmap renders. It works on the Intel Mac and I have been pleasantly surprised with the speed improvements. Just to test it out I tried an Artistic Renderworks render. I had the Activity Monitor going and was surprised to see that even with 2 GB of RAM it was still using 2+ GB of virtual memory as well. Moral to story - Get as much RAM as you can and make sure you have plenty of free space on your hard drive (that may have been the biggest problem with the laptop). Edited November 10, 2006 by mike m oz Quote Link to comment
CipesDesign Posted November 10, 2006 Share Posted November 10, 2006 Thanks to both of you ;-) Quote Link to comment
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