[adman]

Juan, if I understand your new plug-in announcement post correctly, will I now be able to import more geometry to studio via MXS before hitting the geometry limit and the inevitable "C++ Runtime error" crash?

I am bringing in a section of Airbus fuselage and 80+ detailed seats and I am unable to get the last 20 seats into studio. I know the geometry is OK because I can load the remaining pattern of 20 into studio on their own.

Is the new studio posted yesterday changed or is it just the plug-in?

I have done some simple smaller objects too and the results are very pleasing....fast and real!
Very good to see improvements so quickly after RC5 release.

Adman

[juan]

Hi Adman,

No, the new plugin wastes the same memory than the others. The improvement is a post-process done just before the mxs is written.

In older versions of the plugin, sometimes a cube mesh could be generated with 12 triangles ( that's ok) and 36 vertex (3 per triangle, bad, we only need 8 in this case)
It deletes unnecessary triangles and normals and when the mxs is generated it has a smaller size, ( and a connected mesh, with is very important) andwhen you open it into studio it gets less memory and also you can use more advanced triangle selection tools.

But your problem is that your model is so huge than in the export process you have not more memory. You can try exporting the model in two parts, in SW hide or supress some parts of the model and generate the first mxs. Then you can show this parts and hide the rest and generate other mxs. Open the first one into studio and import the second one to the scene. All the parts should be properly placed, in the right position and orientation. Due the optimization process has been already done perhaps you have memory enough to work with it into Studio. We will continue improving the plugin looking to waste the less memory possible.

Regards,

Juan

[adman]

Hi Juan

Thanks for the explanation, giving me a little insight into what happens behind the scenes.

I have tried writing out three separate MXS files of different parts of the assembly but it is always the last one (regardless of import order) which freezes studio.

Does this mean I might do better with more RAM? or is it a limitation of Studio?

I have a spec for a rendering PC but will I need another MR license if I go for a 3800 x2 processor?

Thanks

Adman

[John Layne]

No doubt Juan will pop in here any minute to answer this but, I'll stick my nose in.

My understanding a Maxwell licence allows for up to 4 CPU's networked or on the same machine ie the ultimate standalone machine would be a 2 CPU machine with 2 dual core processors.

Note if you are currently using a machine with windows XP, XP only allows 2GB of RAM to be assigned to any single application. If you have 4GB’s installed Windows reserves 2GB’s for itself.

There is a way around the 2GB limitation, you need to enable the 3GB switch in the Windows boot.ini file.

A copy of my boot.ini below, ( I take no responsibility for anyone using it on another machine). Do a search for info on the 3GB switch and Wayne Tiffany who wrote an article about the switch and it's use in SolidWorks (Mainly to solve problems people were having with PhotWorks exceeding the 2GB limit).

This boot.ini will give you 4 different choices at boot time.

1/ is my original standard windows settings
2/ the second allows 2.9GB for user applications – and the most stable
3/ another standard version (Wayne Tiffany’s)
4/ the full 3.0GB

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional 3GB limited" /fastdetect /3GB /userva=2900 /SOS
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /SOS
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional 3GB " /fastdetect /3GB /SOS

[juan]

John has given a master class
how many RAM do you have adman? we are trying to reduce the memory wasted by Studio and SW plugin, I hope to give you good news soon.

Cheers,

Juan

[adman]

Thanks John
Exactly the information I was after.
One more question; when people quote PC spec's with 4,8,10G ram, are they running an OS which can utilise that extra ram or are they more likely to be stating total ram over several machines?
Or to put it another way; with the twin dual core setup you suggest, are you running more than one OS with ram dedicated to each or is there another OS to enable the four processors and lots more ram?

Juan
I am running 2G of ram and 3.6Ghz proc. on XP laptop. Not great but it is our fastest PC at the moment.

Adman

[John Layne]

32-bit systems can only address 4GB of RAM
64-bit systems could in theory address 16 exabytes (thats 16,000,000 GB's) most 64-bit motherboards will limit this to between 8GB and up to 256TB's on large servers.

On a system with 2 CPU sockets and that had say 4 RAM slots 2 RAM slots would be assigned to one CPU socket and 2 to the other socket.

The machine I mentioned in the previous post would only have one operating system (Windows XP64bit). This OS and suitably written programmes can load share tasks across the four CPU's cores.

Note it's worth enabling the 3GB switch on that 2GB laptop, because windows is creating a page file on your hard drive. Enabling the switch will free up more RAM for Maxwell.

Forgot to mention in previous posts , you must have XP SP2 to enable the switch, doing so on XP SP0 or SP1 will toast your machine -- you will not be able to reboot it.

Cacheman (there is a free version that’s more than adequate) Memory management software is also worth installing, I used to run it when working with PhotoWorks on a machine with 1.5 GB or RAM with the 3 GB switch enabled.

http://www.outertech.com/index.php?_cha ... e=products