Cura Performance on Mac

[Bossler 8]

I've been using Cura 3.1 and now am using Cura 3.2 on a MacBook Pro Retina.

This machine is equipped with an iCore 7 / 2.5-3.7GHz main CPU plus an AMD Radeon R9 M370X GPU.

I have checked that Cura uses the Raedon GPU and it does.

 

But the performance when slicing and - especially annoying - dealing with layer preview after slicing a bit more complicated models is really bad, sorry.

 

There has to be some substantial design flaw in the software because the system described above is quite capable.

 

When looking at this picture:

 

...you see that Cura is not even using a third of the available computing power, even during slicing!

With that kind of computing demand to the system I doubt that the processor is going into "high speed mode"...

 

After slicing's done and when one works with the layer preview, CPU-usage is typically around max. 10% -
and Cura is very, very laggy then...

 

So you friends at Ultimaker may would like to go into some performance review and optimize +

Cura - which is certainly the best companion for Ultimaker 3D-printers out there at current.

I certainly would highly welcome such an effort.

As possibly a lot of other users would do as well.

[eldrick 65]

I run Cura 3.1 on an iMac, and have no such problem. However, I have 24Gb installed.

How much memory is in your Mac Book?

Oh, and BTW, you can turn off automatic slicing, which will allow your to change the settings without the lag of slicing for each change.

 

[Bossler 8]

This is certainly not related to the size of memory, my friend.

Did you read what I wrote? Completely?

 

I did write about processor load...

[RudydG 62]

Strange, i use a old (ancient mid 2012) macbook air, I5 1.8Ghz with 4Gb ram, and the speed is acceptable. 

Can we do some kind of benchmark? Slicing same object with same settings and time this?

Edited February 9, 2018 by RudydG

[eldrick 65]

Yes, Bossler, I did read what you wrote.
You didn't mention memory size, what version of OSX you are using, or a number of other things that could be relevant. The performance issue you seem to have is almost certainly something about your system and its software, and not Cura's fault, as many other Mac users, myself included, don't have any performance issues.
If Cura is only using 10% of the processor time, you may be looking at a task that only runs as a single thread (1/8 of total available processor time), or there may be some other bottleneck in your system slowing it down.

Again - there are many other Mac users who don't have any performance issues with Cura. Try creating a new partition, install a clean copy of OSX in it, and try Cura running from it - I'll bet you won't see a performance issue.

[Bossler 8]

Wow - you sound so very convinced, I think I will try what you suggest.

 

Thanks.

[ahoeben 1,948]

15 hours ago, eldrick said:

The performance issue you seem to have is almost certainly something about your system and its software, and not Cura's fault

 

I am not quite as sure of that as eldrick. Something that can also still play a role is the Cura configuration. It could be for example that the Custom FDM Printer still performs substantially slower than eg an Ultimaker 2+. I think it is a combination of factors, which is why it is so hard to track down.

 

Having said that, it would be nice to know if starting from a clean copy of OSX changes anything.

Edited February 10, 2018 by ahoeben

[eldrick 65]

The only performance issue I've seen on mac with recent Cura versions was the horribly slow load time due to the plethora of printer configs beling loaded. 
That one was easy to deal with by removing all the never-gonna-use printer configs from the executable.

[Msuurmond 28]

13 hours ago, eldrick said:

The only performance issue I've seen on mac with recent Cura versions was the horribly slow load time due to the plethora of printer configs beling loaded. 
That one was easy to deal with by removing all the never-gonna-use printer configs from the executable.

That has been fixed in the 3.2 version by only loading the printers you need.

[andycap80 0]

I'm running a brand new iMac Pro (32GB of RAM, Radeon Pro Vega 8GB) and I'm a bit disappointed that Cura doesn't seem to slice models much faster than my old Mac Mini with 8GB of ram, integrated GPU and 4 year old basic hardware.

[johnnygizmo 1]

On my Macbook Air, I was having terrible UI slowness. I started disabling plugins and found that removing the XRAY plugin made a difference.

[joanvm 0]

I have the same exact problem, terrible performance issues render the application unusable.

Disabling some plugins did indeed improve the performance.

 

But the same situation as the first post described, around 10% of CPU usage and 5GB of free RAM memory...

 

I'm aware I'm using an old HW (iMac Late 2009, 2,8GHz Core i7, 8GB of RAM and ATI Radeon HD 4850 with 512MB of RAM), but it doesn't make sense...