Slow 3D performance using 8.1

[Anonymous]

I am experiencing really poor performance on 3D renderings (particularly Shading mode) as follows:

Mode Initial draw (seconds) Move right (seconds)
------ -------------------------- ------------------------
Block: 4 (almost acceptable) .5 (acceptable)
Wire: 4 (almost acceptable) 2 (sluggish)
Hidden: 6 (sluggish) 3 (very sluggish)
Shade: 105 (unusable) 90 (very unusable)

View is a Generic Axonometry with 3D settings as follows:
3D Engine: Internal Engine
Contours: Draft
Vectoral Hatching: Off
Transparency in Shading: Off
Vectoral Sun Shadows: Off

System is reasonably performant / current:
2 way SMP 1Ghz P3 Xeon with 1GB ram (~512 free)
XP Pro SP1
Archicad 8.1.0 R1 (USA) (1307)
Performance monitor shows both CPU's running about 50% during rendering (~2% when idle).

I don't know how to quantify the project complexity (is there a dialog somewhere that shows how many objects there are or something?) but it's just a 2 story post and beam residence with some furniture and plumbing fixtures represented - not more complex than some of the samples I have seen.

Are others experiencing similar perf problems? Is there a setting I am missing? Is there a FAQ on this somewhere?

thanks,
greg

ps. Ironically my PPU key expired while timing the Shading rendering...sigh

[__archiben]

do you have openGL turned on or not? what is this specification of your graphics card?

go to the image menu and and check your 3D settings to see which processor (CPU, GPU) you are using for the 3D window . . .

~/archiben

[Anonymous]

Engine is Internal (not OpenGL).

I don't see a setting for CPU vs GPU - exactly which submenu is this on?

Graphics adapter is NVidia RIVA TNT Model 64 Pro (32mb).

CPU isn't pegged so I am going to swap the graphics adapter for a 128mb ATI - will advise.

cheers,
greg

[Anonymous]

OK, tried a few more tests, but nothing too good to report.

First, I replaced my 32MB NVidia card with an ATI 128MB card (ATI Radeon 9600XT) which improves things about 10% (the Shade render time test which originally was 105 seconds drops to 96 seconds). Also, the CPU profile changed such that one processor now was running about 20% and the other about 90%, i.e i am starting to suspect that only 1 processor is being used by the Archicad internal rendering engine.

To that end, I disabled the 2nd processor via the BIOS and re-ran the test, this time the CPU is 100% saturated and the uniprocessor test finished within 10% of the SMP test. So it appears that the Archicad's 3D internal rendering engine is indeed single-threaded and doesn't properly utilize SMP's, disappointing.

While my original 32MB card was in fact part of the original performance problem (as I got a 10% improvement), now I am simply CPU bound on effectively a single 1GHz Xeon processor. Not a blazing processor by todays standards, but still, these rendering times are reallllllly slowwwwww and this project really isn't all that complex (as described earlier, an incomplete house with some furniture and fixtures objects, a couple shrubs and car objects...), not some massive commercial structure.

To try to radically simplify the project, I turned off all Objects under the Image, Elements to show in 3D settings and performance improved dramatically (from 96 seconds to 6 seconds). However, simply showing the structure is not exactly what I want to use this tool for and there are far less expensive products that do this as well or better.

I turned Objects back on and tried simply deleting some random more complex objects from my project (scrubs, cars etc.) and found some more disappointing results. Deleting 12 scrubs gained another 10 seconds, deleting 4 cars dropped overall rendering time by 30 seconds!

Sorry for the long post, but is everyone else getting this kind of crummy performance? Do I need to re-think what I am using Archicad for, or do I still have some option set wrong for 3D rendering?

thanks,
greg

[__archiben]

Greg wrote:
Engine is Internal (not OpenGL).

I don't see a setting for CPU vs GPU - exactly which submenu is this on?

Graphics adapter is NVidia RIVA TNT Model 64 Pro (32mb).

CPU isn't pegged so I am going to swap the graphics adapter for a 128mb ATI - will advise.

cheers,
greg

greg

changing the engine to OpenGL is using the GPU as opposed to the CPU - sorry i wasn't too clear before.

i only use the internal engine for hidden line 3D now (OpenGL is really surface/texture rendering and can't do hidden line).

turn on the OpenGL engine and you will notice the difference! (it should have been on by default?)

by the way - i have heard that archiCAD works better with nvidia cards as opposed to ATI cards . . . i don't have anything to back this up, but i do recall a topic in the 'hardware' forum discussing the pros and cons of different graphics cards.

HTH
~/archiben

[Karl Ottenstein]

~/archiben wrote:
by the way - i have heard that archiCAD works better with nvidia cards as opposed to ATI cards . . . i don't have anything to back this up, but i do recall a topic in the 'hardware' forum discussing the pros and cons of different graphics cards.

That rumor (myth?) has been floating around since 8.0 came out. I have nVidia and ATI cards with current drivers and don't see any more glitches with one than the other. So, I'd shop price/specs unless someone reports that they are still having ATI problems...

Karl

[Anonymous]

My work around is to place all the complex objects on a separate layer, say Rendering Layer, and then turn that layer off when working on the design of the building. This way the 3D images generate quickly for working on the design. When the design is finally rendered for presentation the "Rendering Layer" is turned on and then captured as an image to print or email (and one hopes that there is not too much adjustment required to the complex objects).

[Anonymous]

Thanks everyone for your help so far. I have some more results to report, and unfortunately its a good news, really bad news story.

If you don't want to read this long post the short story good news is after messing around for 2 days and $350 + lots of Archicad PPU time I have installed the best OpenGL card I can find locally and 3D move/scroll/zoom times are now great across the board (smooth or subsecond) and I am no longer CPU bound.

Now the bad news. Initial rendering times suck even more (over 2 minutes for either Wireframe or Shade, even after all eliminating all Objects from 3D views).

Further this new "noisy fire hazard" video card has absolutely terrible 1024x768 fonts (my preferred resolution) so I have to run it in 1280x1024 which is amazingly crisp except I can barely read the type it's so small. I would put up with all this if the initial rendering times were acceptable (say < 10 seconds) but at the moment I'd say overall I'm worse off than when I started and fresh out of ideas.

Here's the details, I would appreciate any advice.

Ok, Archiben, got it re CPU=Internal / GPU=OpenGL (duh).

I tried OpenGL first with my poor little stock NVidia RIVA TNT Model 64 32MB video card - it appeared to crash Archicad after about 10 seconds (more on this later). I am not a gamer and not current on video card stuff so I took my teenage son with me and we selected the ATI Radeon 9600XT 128MB.

Eyeing the monster head-sink/fan a little suspiciously (and the massive pre-installation warnings about having to upgrade my AGP drivers?) I installed it anyways and noticed some annoying new video side effects during XP startup. It also "crashed" the same way as the NVidea card (again, more later), I checked out all the bulletin boards (including the help hardware forum here where I probably should have posted this in the first place...), anyways, installed all the latest patches settings etc. no joy.

I stumbled across the Archicad OpenGL Compatibility Report http://download.graphisoft.com/ftp/techsupport/downloads/pdf/opengl_compatibility_report.pdf and the 9600 wasn't on it so back it went. After scouring all the local major computer stores, they all had a good selection of video cards but not one of them was listed on this report? It appears to be suspiciously incomplete/out of date (claims 02Oct03?). I talked to the tech at the store and bought the best one they had, the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro.

I very reluctantly strapped this fire breathing monster into my system (it requires a separate power supply for it's fan that better not fail... after reading some of the core melt-down reports in the hardware forum I am wondering if I need to upgrade my fire insurance!). Anyways, it had the exact same "crash" results. Again, I upgraded to the latest video drivers and upgraded Archicard to the latest patches (1410). No luck.

I started monitoring the CPU more carefully; when I select the initial 3D render from my floor plan view (either Wire or Shade) both CPU's run reasonably hard for about 5-8 seconds (~60%) and then idle (~2%) and then Archicad is "crashed" (unresponsive to XP) and has to be killed by task manager. After trying a lot of test combinations, I got distracted during one by a phone call and to my amazement it finally rendered after sitting there for minutes. Scrolling performance was terrific (smooth/subsecond) and I started to get excited about this.

Unfortunately, after running the test a few more times I settled into my new reality:

1. The "crash" wasn't a crash at all. The pattern is that during initial render, both CPU's work hard for 5-8 seconds, then idle for about 2 minutes while the GPU crunches, then the CPU's pick back up for about 5 seconds while the 3D view finally renders. Probabably all 3 graphics cards would work fine if i was more patient (i.e comatose).

2. Scrolling/zooming etc. is now being handled by video ram and the GPU and is great.

3. Initial rendering of all view types now is now unacceptably slower. Removing more complex objects (by putting on another layer or just changing 3D settings to exclude Objects) no longer gives any significant benefit. Here is are the new OpenGL timings:

OpenGL
Mode Initial draw (seconds) Move right (seconds)
------ -------------------------- ------------------------
Block: N/A
Wire: 137 (unacceptable) <.1 (smooth, great!)
Hidden: N/A (disappointing, I like using this view)
Shade: 144 (unacceptable) <.5 (good)
No Objects: 129 (unacceptable)

Summary:

1. I am now GPU not CPU bound.

2. Move/scrolling/zoom even updating is great, smooth/subsecond.

3. Initial rendering of all views now universally sucks, even without complex objects.

4. My system in general is now worse off than it was (heat + noise + fontsize).

Again, sorry for the long post, not trying to vent/rant too much here, just want to pass on my experience....am I just doing it wrong or is this the way it goes?

Thanks again for suggestions - whats next?

cheers,
greg

[Djordje]

Greg wrote:
Thanks everyone for your help so far. I have some more results to report, and unfortunately its a good news, really bad news story.

Greg,

Increase your resolution, as 1024x768 is not enough for ArchiCAD 8.x

Your system is adequate, so all of this should NOT happen. I have the same ATI in the HP workstation at work, and there is a pretty long wait for the initial calculation of the model. After that, plain sailing. We are talking a 1500 m2 house with every tile modeled in ArchiTiles, all cornices, masharabias (wooden mesh screens), all false ceilings with every light fixture in place, and so on, and so on. Crazy, I know. I am really making the HP sweat (built up a swap file of 3GB today ...) but the 3D OpenGL (I am not immortal AFAIK so no analytic shaded 3D views) is nothing but smooth and real time, whatever I throw at it.

You should maybe reduce the size of the 3D window (what is it right now?) while working in OpenGL and DEFINITELY make a layer set that hides all that is not necessary.

If you posted a screen shot so that we can see WHAT is there, it might be helpful.

Hint: if you are using the steel structural elements form the standard library, check the radiuses of the steel and set all of them to Simple 3D. Whether the flange and foot joint is curved or straight does not matter, except in a few million polygons that the poor CPU has to chew ...

[Anonymous]

Thanks Djordje.

3D Generic Axonometric image with Objects turned off attached.

Initial render time is ~145 seconds. If I turn Objects back on (furniture, fixtures, landscaping, vehicles etc.) rendering time increases modestly to ~150 seconds.

As described previously, once initially rendered, move/zoom/edit operations are fast (subsecond).

3D window size is 1280x1024 - tried smaller 1004x230 and 502x115, no significant effect on rendering time.

Display adapter screen resolution is 1280x1024x32pp (ATI 9800 default / max).

As you can see, no steel elements, just timber.

Suggestions welcome.

thanks,
greg