Surface frames (SFrames) component slows display

I noticed that if I increase the values of the U and V inputs in the SFrames component, Grasshopper and Rhino become permanently un-reponsive although the component itself doesn't take much time to complete it's task.

What I find even more strange is that , although the component is set to "Preview=false", it will affect the interface speed unless I disable all preview geometry ; only then will things go back to normal.

Cheers,

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on November 30, 2016 at 8:52am

Well, even if the preview is off for the component, it still calculates the preview data because if the [Preview Selected] option is on it still needs it. So it definitely sounds like the problem is somehow to do with the preview and not the computation. How many frames are we talking about? 100? 1000? 10000?

Permalink Reply by Olivier Suire on December 5, 2016 at 2:17pm

Hi David, I guess somewhere aroud 1000.

Generally speaking, I am under the impression that preview geometry slows down the display much more than the equivalent Rhino geometry does.

Is it grounded in reality ?

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on December 5, 2016 at 2:55pm

Is it grounded in reality ?

It could be. Rhino keeps all its geometry in a single place and gets to perform all sorts of optimizations by placing stuff in spatial buckets and whatnot. Grasshopper preview is kept all over the place and when its drawn it often not even that optimized. Not to mention Rhino draws its stuff in C++, sitting directly atop the display code. I have to go through a managed/unmanaged wall every time.

It's definitely something I'm hoping we can improve upon in the future. Steve has been pretty serious about speeding up the display for Rhino6, and when that's out of the door I'm hoping I can redirect some of that energy and knowledge towards GH2.

I can't get the display speed to drop significantly though, even using a 1000 planes. But then you've already established that actually drawing the planes probably isn't what's taking up all the time.

Can you post a file that performs poorly on your machine so I can see whether it fares any better on mine?

Permalink Reply by Olivier Suire on December 6, 2016 at 8:56am

Hi David,

Meh.. don't worry about my performance issues , I'll be dumping my old Macbook pro for a gamer's laptop any time now.

Good to hear about better graphics performance in V6.

I might consider giving it a shot when they finally decide to stop messing up blocks even further than V5.

I remember your Ferrari red MSI laptop from days of old :)

What's your work horse, these days ?

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on December 6, 2016 at 10:49am

Hah, this one:

I got it because it was cheap, but it turns out it's nearly impossible to convince people you don't care about cars in general or Ferraris in particular walking around with something like that :)

These days I'm just using a standard 5k iMac. I nearly went for a Mac Pro but in the end couldn't really justify the expense. I'm actually not too happy with the graphics performance of this machine, I think they put in a card that couldn't quite handle the 5k screen, but Rhino and GH run pretty smooth on this.

Permalink Reply by Olivier Suire on December 12, 2016 at 3:27am

Ha ha !

Joined the Mac side of the force eh ?

It makes sense with all this "McNeel pushing towards Mac OS" business...

I'm contemplating getting rid of my faithful MacBook pro and getting one of these.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on December 12, 2016 at 4:19am

Yup, not actually using the Mac side at all, but eventually I'll need to be able to test on it, so a dual boot is needed.

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