Cura 3.1 is SO slow (GUI and especially layer preview)

[hoegge 6]

Dear All,

 

I have used Cura, Simplify3D and Slic3r PE intermittently and also tried out other slicers. I write now, since I am about to buy a Ultimaker 3 Extended but am a bit worried about having to use Cura (best integrated with UM3).

 

Cura 3.1 is SO slow.

1. Whenever you change a parameter, or toggle between extruders it takes forever (i.e. multiple seconds).
2. When you have sliced a model that is not very very simple the responsiveness of both the parameter editing (on the right), scrolling and especially the 3D layer preview manipulation (zoom and rotation) slows to a crawl.
3. As soon as you change a parameter and the slicing is gone it becomes more responsive again.

 

So there seems to be two weak spots - the GUI updates / changes and the 3D layer preview. It has nothing to do with machine capabilities - I have plenty of ram (32 GB) and a good NVIDIA graphics card and preview and rotation of huge models are happening in real-time in Slic3r PE and Simplify3D. So it IS a Cura problem.

 

I am really concerned that this will make the daily use of an UM3ex with Cura a real pain.

 

1. Do anybody have real-life experiences and will Ultimaker focus on fixing these serious performance issues in Cura?
2. Do anybody know about those issues in more details (e.g. an active developer of Cura)?

 

I cannot think it is unknown unless Ultimaker tries to ignore it deliberately.

 

Any input is appreciated.

 

Thanks.

Hoegge

 

Edited January 7, 2018 by hoegge

[MatejEU 1]

Hi, I was also annoyed by the performance at first, but then I've turned off the option "Slice automatically" in the Preferences->Configure Cura. This way, you'll be able to make multiple changes before slicing.

[burtoogle 513]

Hi. You don't say what platform you are using - I am using bleeding edge Cura on a Linux box with a relatively slow i3 processor with Intel graphics and performance is really very acceptable.

[hoegge 6]

I run on Windows 10 Version    10.0.15063 Build 15063
. Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3630QM CPU @ 2.40GHz, 2401 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s),NVIDIA Quadro K1000M, 

I experience the same slowness on my MacBook Pro running El Capitan. 

[hoegge 6]

Actually - will have to modify that - remembered wrongly. Just tested version 3.1 on my Mac Book and it is much faster on that. I tried to uninstall and reinstall Cura 3.1 on my PC and it actually helped a lot. Maybe something went wrong when upgrading from v2.6

 

It is still though:

1. Kind of unresponsive compared to other slicers when rotating the layer view - framrate around 5 frames/sec when it should be 30-60 Hz
2. The rotation and zoom is very strange. It is unclear what the point of rotation is and it is never really predictable - very different from a normal CAD program or Slic3r or Simplify for that matter. Really needs an overhaul.
3. Also the zoom gets slower and slower the closer you get to the object which makes it hard to zoom all the way in.

Hope Ultimaker will improve that soon since it taking a lot of the pleasure out of the work flow IMO.

 

Thanks

[hoegge 6]

... BTW the update speed of the parameter pane e.g. when scrolling is still very slow when you have sliced your model. As soon as you change a model it gets smooth again. That should not really be necessary

[hoegge 6]

hrm - it is better but it is still bad. Tried to slice to bigger models - not complicated but filling the bed and about 12 cm height. As soon as Cura is done "processing layers" the program starts to crawl. Even the slicing and the layer processing does not make it slow but as soon as it is done the mouse starts to be slow and the parameter section and the rendering. There must be a bug somewhere.

[MatejEU 1]

50 minutes ago, hoegge said:

Kind of unresponsive compared to other slicers when rotating the layer view - framrate around 5 frames/sec when it should be 30-60 Hz

My system doesn't have a great graphic or processing capability for this purpose so when I'm analysing layers I always active "Only show top layers" and "Show 5 Detailed Layers on Top" since the informational content in the previous layers is not important anymore, I've already inspected them. It's easier on the 3D viewer to do so.

 

They're mixing Python and C++. Not the best solution, because one interface can bring the speed down significantly. It will put the strain on a system "unnecessarily". 

 

1 hour ago, hoegge said:

• The rotation and zoom is very strange. It is unclear what the point of rotation is and it is never really predictable - very different from a normal CAD program or Slic3r or Simplify for that matter. Really needs an overhaul.
• Also the zoom gets slower and slower the closer you get to the object which makes it hard to zoom all the way in.

I've definitely experienced these two. The zoom issue is not constant and when it occurs I'm not able to reset the behaviour unless I restart Cura. Panning is so strange, often it will throw me somewhere from the build plate or I end up moving the model, then I have to reset its position and reslice it again  I know that I can lock its position, but I forget to do that.

[gr5 2,172]

cura is always fast for me.  I suspect your model has more polygons than you need.  I find running it through meshlab as explained in the following article can speed slicing up a lot.  If you follow the steps below, when you load the model it says how many polygons/triangles are loaded.  Try reducing that by 10X to see if the model still looks nice and clear/sharp.  If so it should slice 10X faster hopefully.

http://www.shapeways.com/tutorials/polygon_reduction_with_meshlab

[hoegge 6]

Thanks / I will try meshlab and see if it makes a difference. How many triangles do you usually end up with, when Cura still works fine? The two objects on my plate are about 10-16 thousand triangles each. 

 

 I wonder if it really will help, since the amount of triangles do not really affect the amount of lines in the sliced result and the slowness does not occur until the model has been sliced, i.e., not until tool paths exist and not just after loading a lot of triangles. Slice time is ok - similar to Slic3r PE I’d think and slower than Simplify (have not tested)

 

Slic3r and Simplify3D have no problems handling the same amount of triangles, though. 

Edited January 8, 2018 by hoegge

[nallath 1,120]

13 hours ago, hoegge said:

Actually - will have to modify that - remembered wrongly. Just tested version 3.1 on my Mac Book and it is much faster on that. I tried to uninstall and reinstall Cura 3.1 on my PC and it actually helped a lot. Maybe something went wrong when upgrading from v2.6

 

It is still though:

1. Kind of unresponsive compared to other slicers when rotating the layer view - framrate around 5 frames/sec when it should be 30-60 Hz
2. The rotation and zoom is very strange. It is unclear what the point of rotation is and it is never really predictable - very different from a normal CAD program or Slic3r or Simplify for that matter. Really needs an overhaul.
3. Also the zoom gets slower and slower the closer you get to the object which makes it hard to zoom all the way in.

Hope Ultimaker will improve that soon since it taking a lot of the pleasure out of the work flow IMO.

 

Thanks

The layerview should be 2x as fast next release. We didn't enable backface culling. Whoops.

Rotation is around a point in space. By default it's the last object you selected. I personally dislike the "normal" cad program style of doing it, especially for 3D printing. A normal cad program gives you a "free cam" because you tend to work with more objects and want to view them in very specific angles.

As for the zooming; this is the only way to get zooming onto a point working. But this happens if you view a few cm at the time.

As for mixing the python, it doesn't slow the 3D view down that much. Most of the 3D view is handled outside of python anyway.

 

[MatejEU 1]

@nallath Do you perhaps know if it is possible to avoid having to press shift + left mouse click to be able to pan? I tried searching for shortcut bindings in the software, but couldn't find anything. Would it make sense to make these configurations available through a plugin?

[kmanstudios 1,120]

24 minutes ago, MatejEU said:

@nallath Do you perhaps know if it is possible to avoid having to press shift + left mouse click to be able to pan? I tried searching for shortcut bindings in the software, but couldn't find anything. Would it make sense to make these configurations available through a plugin?

I have a mouse with the middle wheel. I push it like a button and it will pan.

[Vernie 0]

15 hours ago, MatejEU said:

 

I've definitely experienced these two. The zoom issue is not constant and when it occurs I'm not able to reset the behaviour unless I restart Cura. Panning is so strange, often it will throw me somewhere from the build plate or I end up moving the model, then I have to reset its position and reslice it again  I know that I can lock its position, but I forget to do that.

 

On macOS, the zoom-in tend to go more on the right side and down like diagonally inclined and it is hard to zoom-in on the center of the model. As a new cura user - I thought this is how it behaves (which is so odd but I have to accept it), so I search for tutorials and youtube videos only to find they are able to show how zoom function should behave naturally like everyone should expect. On the linux version however, the zoom and other navigation functions behaves naturally. I would say on the macOS version this is a serious bug in terms of navigation. The macOS version of cura 3.1 however is faster in performance when starting compared to the linux version which loads slowly (maybe due to loading of its own libraries). However, once the linux version completely started, it is really fast - faster than on macOS.  I hope this serious navigation issue on the macOS version can be solved. I would love to work fully under linux but the sketchup program I used is on macOS. I used the same hardware (dual boot macOS and linux) for comparison of the cura 3.1. 

[MatejEU 1]

18 minutes ago, kmanstudios said:

I have a mouse with the middle wheel. I push it like a button and it will pan.

Ok, this is much more reliable! Thank you kmanstudios  I had a different binding for my middle mouse button, I've changed it back to default. It's a bit awkward to navigate like this, a left+right mouse combo would be perfect  

[kmanstudios 1,120]

17 minutes ago, MatejEU said:

Ok, this is much more reliable! Thank you kmanstudios  I had a different binding for my middle mouse button, I've changed it back to default. It's a bit awkward to navigate like this, a left+right mouse combo would be perfect  

Not disputing that. But, I have bee3n trained by years and years and years of my software use to use it as I described. I cannot tell you how often (after more than a year of using Cura) that I still right click to bring up a menu to allow me to choose between move, rotate and scale.

 

 

Old dog, new tricks....creak sez da bonez.......

[hoegge 6]

Well, I think the conclusion is that: 1) Cura is very slow on PC and has been for while, 2) The 3D navigation is clumsy and not up to normal 3D standards and both need improvements.

[furdterguson 0]

1 hour ago, hoegge said:

Well, I think the conclusion is that: 1) Cura is very slow on PC and has been for while, 2) The 3D navigation is clumsy and not up to normal 3D standards and both need improvements.

 

I will speak to conclusion 1.

 

Here are my specs:

AMD Athlon IIX4 640 Processer 3.00GHZ
8.00GB RAM (7.75 usable)
64-bit operating system, x64 based processor
Win 10 Pro (authenticated)

 

Cura take 1 minute and 40 seconds to fully open.

Auto slicing is disabled, NO model is loaded, and it takes 7 seconds between any change in an parameter under custom before another parameter can be changed.

 

So I agree with you that Cura runs slow

[kmanstudios 1,120]

1 hour ago, furdterguson said:

 

I will speak to conclusion 1.

 

Here are my specs:

AMD Athlon IIX4 640 Processer 3.00GHZ
8.00GB RAM (7.75 usable)
64-bit operating system, x64 based processor
Win 10 Pro (authenticated)

 

Cura take 1 minute and 40 seconds to fully open.

Auto slicing is disabled, NO model is loaded, and it takes 7 seconds between any change in an parameter under custom before another parameter can be changed.

 

So I agree with you that Cura runs slow

wow......I have nowhere near that sort of performance issues.

[furdterguson 0]

48 minutes ago, kmanstudios said:

wow......I have nowhere near that sort of performance issues.

 

Terrific for you. But a complete pain in the backside for those it affects. Shortly after this thread was created another thread was created addressing the slowness of cura. So it is problem for multiple users.

[kmanstudios 1,120]

5 minutes ago, furdterguson said:

 

Terrific for you. But a complete pain in the backside for those it affects. Shortly after this thread was created another thread was created addressing the slowness of cura. So it is problem for multiple users.

No need to get snippy. I just commented on the fact that I do not have these pervasive issues. I am not disputing anything at all.

 

But I do notice that by an large, Win 10 seems to be the biggest issue followed by intel graphics chips.

[kmanstudios 1,120]

I just did a time test on my slower system and it starts up in 12 seconds.

[furdterguson 0]

4 hours ago, kmanstudios said:

I just did a time test on my slower system and it starts up in 12 seconds.

 

I also experience the slowness on a win 7 laptop with 8gb of ram, Not sure of the graphics card. The laptop is Intel based, and was slower than the desktop with win 10.

 

Edited January 10, 2018 by furdterguson

[hoegge 6]

Did a quick comparison to Slic3r PE. Loaded 3 parts each about 10 x 10 x 10 cm on the plate and measured graphics update rate when rotating view:

 

Rotation and zoom before slicing:

Cura: ~ 20 FPS (Frames per second or update frequency in Hz)

Slic3r: ~60 FPS

 

Rotation and zoom during slicing:

Cura: 20 FPS

Slic3r: ~20 FPS

 

Rotation and zoom after slicing in layer preview (and after generating layer preview in Cura)

Cura: 1-2 Hz / FPS = Unbearable

Slic3r: ~ 20 Hz

[nallath 1,120]

38 minutes ago, hoegge said:

Did a quick comparison to Slic3r PE. Loaded 3 parts each about 10 x 10 x 10 cm on the plate and measured graphics update rate when rotating view:

 

Rotation and zoom before slicing:

Cura: ~ 20 FPS (Frames per second or update frequency in Hz)

Slic3r: ~60 FPS

 

Rotation and zoom during slicing:

Cura: 20 FPS

Slic3r: ~20 FPS

 

Rotation and zoom after slicing in layer preview (and after generating layer preview in Cura)

Cura: 1-2 Hz / FPS = Unbearable

Slic3r: ~ 20 Hz

I understand the frustration, but comparing one application to another proves nothing. Looking at slicer, or any other program, won't provide us any information what is going wrong, because the software is fundamentally different. This is the equalivant of saying; "Hey, my android phone is slow and it does run fast on my iphone. You guys might want to port the iphone software to the nokia!".

 

Yes, it should be possible, no-one is disagreeing. Simply put; None of our developers can reproduce it. That makes it orders of magnitude harder to figure ougt what is happening, which is something you need in order to fix it (and of course, test any fixes).

All that being said; How fast is it if you put the layer view in legacy mode? Did you recently update drivers?