Adding geometry to model - speed issues

AdamB

[Though Ruby's mark and sweep garbage collector is pretty ropey, its likely to be linear in time and probably account for a few percent of total execution time.]

I suspect the fundamental problem is that there is a method inside SU that is doing a linear search - ie start the beginning of a list and walk along until you find what you're looking for - and so the longer the list, the longer the time.

My 2 cents worth, I think Ruby is great for quick tweaks and scripting UI etc. But its simply not up for doing large amounts of "heavy lifting" - just too slow. I had a chance the other day of using Whaats ProfileBuilder; dead cool, but just insane delays as it builds geometry for each mouse click.

I'm coming to the conclusion that if you want to deal with whole models / large amounts of geometry, you really have to use the COM interface - unless I find out the 'linear search' is deep inside the SU proper...

thomthom

I was suspecting that it might be SU trying to intersect geometry with the model as it was added. Or maybe it's something to do with the inference engine.

But what I do fine somewhat odd is that the add_faces_from_mesh method also suffers rather badly. I'd hoped that method would be been more optimized.

Adam, what is this COM interface?

TIG

I meant GC.start which collects garbage from group making etc...

thomthom

@tig said:

I meant GC.start which collects garbage from group making etc...

You use that after creating a group?

In my case here, it's creating geometry in a series of groups which is faster than adding all the geometry into the same context.

TIG

@thomthom said:

@tig said:

I meant GC.start which collects garbage from group making etc...

You use that after creating a group?

In my case here, it's creating geometry in a series of groups which is faster than adding all the geometry into the same context.

GC.start is Jim's baby - built-in - As I understand it you start if before making the groups ?

thomthom

But making groups isn't the problem. In my case it's faster to create a few smaller groups than one big chunk of geometry. That's even when the geometry is generated as a PolygonMesh. The geometry is then added by a single .add_faces_from_mesh. The time it takes to add the mesh isn't linear to the amount of faces generated.
And making a PolygonMesh seem to be twice as fast as generating each face using .add_face - which comes really slow.

AdamB

@tig said:

@thomthom said:

@tig said:

I meant GC.start which collects garbage from group making etc...

You use that after creating a group?

In my case here, it's creating geometry in a series of groups which is faster than adding all the geometry into the same context.

GC.start is Jim's baby - built-in - As I understand it you start if before making the groups ?

GC.start is Mr.Ruby's baby . It gets called automatically (every 256 instructions) by the Ruby interpreter and you generally don't need to call it yourself unless you really know what your doing.

@adamb said:

Adam, what is this COM interface?

Its a hateful, clunky and ultimately pointless way of calling C++ that was introduced by MS many years ago - and since largely abandoned in favour of regular OO solutions. My point isn't about COM, more about calling the SU API directly without using Ruby. AFAIK Google only provide a COM interface to their underlying C++ API.

Jim

@tig said:

GC.start is Jim's baby - built-in - As I understand it you start if before making the groups ?

I thought I learned of it on this forum!

I don't think it's the GC that's slowing adding geometry - more likely it is Sketchup looking to make faces and break overlapping geometry as geometry is either added or exploded. (pure conjecture.)

Whaat

I don't think I've tested this on SU7 but on SU6, using the add_faces_from_mesh method was way faster than adding individual faces using the add_face method. I thought it was 3-4 times faster (but I don't remember for sure). Maybe they have tightened the gap between these method in SU7.1?

For a quick test, just use SDS. Normal operation using the add_faces_from_mesh method, but if you choose the 'copy materials' option, it uses the add_face method.

thomthom

@jim said:

I don't think it's the GC that's slowing adding geometry - more likely it is Sketchup looking to make faces and break overlapping geometry as geometry is either added or exploded. (pure conjecture.)

That's what I was suspecting as well. Was hoping for different result with PolygonMesh - that's it's simple be inserted as-is. But seeing that we don't actually know what it is... ...just guessing.

But I take it there's no tricks hidden up in any sleeves?

thomthom

@whaat said:

I don't think I've tested this on SU7 but on SU6, using the add_faces_from_mesh method was way faster than adding individual faces using the add_face method. I thought it was 3-4 times faster (but I don't remember for sure). Maybe they have tightened the gap between these method in SU7.1?

For a quick test, just use SDS. Normal operation using the add_faces_from_mesh method, but if you choose the 'copy materials' option, it uses the add_face method.

Yes - I find add_faces_from_mesh to be faster than add_face to be faster as well. But comparing the number of polygons in the mesh with the time it takes to add the geometry - time does not increase linearly. It does seem that the time relates to the number of entities already in the context you add to.

AdamB

@jim said:

@tig said:

GC.start is Jim's baby - built-in - As I understand it you start if before making the groups ?

I thought I learned of it on this forum!

I don't think it's the GC that's slowing adding geometry - more likely it is Sketchup looking to make faces and break overlapping geometry as geometry is either added or exploded. (pure conjecture.)

Try this:

` def addfaces(ents = Sketchup.active_model.entities)

vertices = [Geom::Point3d.new(0,0,0), Geom::Point3d.new(1,0,0),Geom::Point3d.new(0,1,0)]

start = Time.new
1000.times do
	ents.add_face vertices	
end
puts "Same tris took #{(Time.new - start)}"

start = Time.new
1000.times do
	ents.add_face vertices
	vertices[0].z += 0.1
	vertices[1].z += 0.1
	vertices[2].z += 0.1
end
puts "different tris took #{(Time.new - start)}"


start = Time.new
1000.times do
	ents.add_face vertices
	vertices[0].z += 0.1
	vertices[1].z += 0.1
	vertices[2].z += 0.1
end
puts "more different tris took #{(Time.new - start)}"

end

addfaces`

Firstly adds 1000 triangles using the same coordinates, secondly adds 1000 triangles with unique vertices, lastly adds another 1000 triangles with unique vertices. Shows a 10x difference in performance, yet the geometry engine will be constructing the topology in all cases - ie doing work.

This would seem to indicate its an insertion bottleneck - which is consistent with thomthom findings.

What does it mean? It means its a brick wall and adding geometry in SU is slow and there is nothing you can do about it.

thomthom

@adamb said:

What does it mean? It means its a brick wall and adding geometry in SU is slow and there is nothing you can do about it.

thomthom

I ran that script four times:

` addfaces
Same tris took 0.05
different tris took 0.71
more different tris took 1.9
nil

addfaces
Same tris took 1.84
different tris took 1.68
more different tris took 1.87
nil

addfaces
Same tris took 1.85
different tris took 1.659
more different tris took 1.89
nil

addfaces
Same tris took 1.85
different tris took 1.69
more different tris took 1.86
nil`

Didn't delete geometry in between.

thomthom

Moved the geometry slightly away from original position and ran three more tests:

` addfaces
Same tris took 1.8
different tris took 2.64
more different tris took 4.13
nil

addfaces
Same tris took 3.62
different tris took 3.26
more different tris took 3.65
nil

addfaces
Same tris took 3.62
different tris took 3.26
more different tris took 3.68
nil`

TIG

How about entities.fill_from_mesh(...) rather than add_faces_from_mesh(..)
http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/entities.html#fill_from_mesh
is that quicker ?

thomthom

I had a mad hope that Sketchup.break_edges = false might change something...

` Sketchup.break_edges=false
false

addfaces
Same tris took 3.58
different tris took 5.62
more different tris took 7.56
nil

Sketchup.break_edges=true
true`

nope!

@tig said:

How about entities.fill_from_mesh(...) rather than add_faces_from_mesh(..)
http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/entities.html#fill_from_mesh
is that quicker ?

oooh. I've missed that method. Will give it a wirl when I get home. That even has a number of features which saves me some work when it comes to smooth vs faceted.

Jim

@whaat said:

I wasn't aware of this method! Has it really been available since SU6??

Me either. I thought I knew the API up and down (I act like, sometimes!) Makes me wonder what else is in there.

edit - maybe it was always "there", just not documented until the new automatic document system started?

Whaat

@tig said:

How about entities.fill_from_mesh(...) rather than add_faces_from_mesh(..)
http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/entities.html#fill_from_mesh
is that quicker ?

I wasn't aware of this method! Has it really been available since SU6??
Someone, please do a performance test of this method now! (I would if I could.... )

thomthom

@whaat said:

@tig said:

How about entities.fill_from_mesh(...) rather than add_faces_from_mesh(..)
http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/entities.html#fill_from_mesh
is that quicker ?

I wasn't aware of this method! Has it really been available since SU6??
Someone, please do a performance test of this method now! (I would if I could.... )

I tried it in SU6 - it's there al'right. I will try in SU5 later today.

I think I've overlooked it because I've never used PolygonMeshes before.