Solidworks 2012-2011

[Rift]

I'm running into a bit of an annoying issue when I use my Space Navigator with SW 2011 or 2012.

The problem I'm having is whenever I'm in a sketch, and I use the SN to move around it works fantastic. However I often have my hand on the mouse so I can point and click on things while moving around with the SN. The problem is that doing so creates enormous lag, and everything becomes choppy. But the second I stop moving the mouse at the same time as the SN everything becomes smooth again.

Has anyone else experienced this? I can't imagine this is the way its supposed to be?

Thanks in advanced for any help!

[ngomes]

Hi Rift,

Do you see this effect with different documents?

When you see the effect, what is your CPU load? When you wingle the mouse pointer over the model, SolidWorks may being preparation for a user action and load the CPU. If you are also moving the view with your 3D mouse, then you may see a performance isse.

[Rift]

Hey there sorry for the delay in reply been pretty busy. I ended up trying this as well on a brand new i7 laptop that I got and it is not doing it on there.

I then went to check CPU utilization on the computer I noticed this problem with and it never went above 33% while this was going on. The difference however is that that computer is a Core 2 Quad.

I know my I7 blows the core 2 out of the water but I have a hard time imagining that its the CPU on the desktop computer that is causing the problem.

Also to answer your question I am not only seeing this when I move the mouse over the model. For instance I can enter a sketch and zoom out so that my mouse cursor is not anywhere over the mode, and this still happens no matter what.

Would it be possible for this to be GPU related? The laptop is running 2 GTX 580m cards in SLI, while the desktop is running a bit older 8800GT.

[ngomes]

Would it be possible for this to be GPU related?

It can, yes. Do see the performance issue in any document or just in some with more complex models?

[Rift]

Another late reply from me. I come back with more frustrating news. I see this issue on my i7 rig as well now using the same models on both machines.

This is happening no matter the complexity of the model, and it has gotten pretty annoying because I often have my hands on both the mouse and the 3d mouse. Moving the regular mouse even a hair causes the display to stutter.

Iv tried everything I can think of at this point and nothing helps.

[ngomes]

Is "dynamic highlight" turned on? Try placing the mouse pointer to a location outside the main 3D view (for example, place the pointer over the ribbon bar).

You can control dynamic hightlighting in the application's options. More information is available here.

[Rift]

Dynamic highlight is off and I have tried having the mouse cursor in many different places but it keeps doing the same thing on both the i7 rig and the core 2 quad.

[ngomes]

Have a look at the CPU load without touching the 3D mouse. Do you see SLDWORKS.exe increasing the load when you simply move the mouse pointer around the view? If so, how high does it get?

[Rift]

Had a look and it caps out at 12% while just moving the mouse within solidworks.

[ngomes]

Try unloading all add-ins (use the Add-In Manager) and see if you still see the same level of CPU load. Then enabled the 3D mouse support add-in ("3Dcontrol") to check if there's a difference in the movement smoothness.

[dpraetorius]

I've been running into the same issue now for the past few days. I had been fine running beta 14 with my SpacePilot using SW2012 SP4 at first after updating. However, the other day, I had my configuration start acting up, and the default profile started overriding all application-specific profiles, with SW being my main concern.

I got my SW profile to start working again by deleting the default application profile, but ever since then, I have had similar symptoms to the "stuttering" issue that Rift had described. My issue definitely seems to be related in some way to moving the 2D mouse shortly before or simultaneously with the 3D mouse. If I wait ~10 seconds or so after moving the 2D mouse before trying to use the 3D mouse, the problem will usually go away. System performance likely is not the issue, as I'm running this on a 6-core Xeon workstation w/12GB of memory and a Quadro 4000, and part complexity has no impact on how badly it stutters.

No other variables have changed that I know of, but it definitely was not an issue immediately prior to the previously described profile problems. I seem to remember having a similar issue at some point in the past (past year or so), but I cannot recall what driver version I was using, nor what I did to get it to go away.

[dpraetorius]

Experimenting a little bit more, it seems to happen quite reliably when A) switching back to SW from another application, and B) when switching to another file within SW that is a different type of document (i.e. part, assembly, drawing). Changes between documents of the same type (e.g. part to part) seem to have no stuttering issues. Could this be related to 3dxware switching between the different contextual profiles? The stuttering also seems to happen (less reliably) after opening/closing the S menu and manipulating features using the PropertyManager.

[Rift]

Did anything ever come of this? We switched to 2013 at work and I'm still having the same problem.

[ngomes]

Hi Rift,

We're not sure if we have the same scenario as the one you're looking at.

To try to reproduce the issue that you're seeing, we opened a simple assembly, activated the "corner rectangle" command and selected a face. At that point, SolidWorks enters an interactive mode where it will try to match key points to draw a new rectangle. We see the stops in smooth movement when these points are hit by the mouse pointer: the application is busy calculating them and drawing the helper lines.

The above is the expected behaviour: the application is busy calculating the helper lines.

Is your scenario consistent with the above?

[johnnylingo]

I went searching for a solution when I too noticed this. As best I can tell, Solidworks stops re-drawing the model while the cursor is moving. I did a little experiment where I moved the cursor (off the model so it's not a dynamic selection issue) while rotating the model. The rotation continues while the cursor is moving, but isn't refreshed until the cursor stops. It's a bit frustrating because the point of having a mouse in each hand is you can rotate and select quickly. If the model isn't redrawn, it's really hard to select.