Grasshopper FPS

Hello all,

I am currently working on a parametric model of house, that is to be animated in the near future. Grasshopper has allowed me to go the distance with this project, however, as the definition grows, the FPS is drastically reduced. I am running on GH 0.6.0059, and am wondering if there are plans to increase the FPS for large definitions, or if there is something i can do currently to increase the FPS for this definition.

Thanks

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on March 12, 2010 at 11:10am

By FPS do you mean the redraw speed of Rhino Viewports when Grasshopper is geometry is visible? Or do you mean the time it takes to calculate a new solution in Grasshopper?

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David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Brian Muthaliff on March 12, 2010 at 11:18am

My apologies, the redraw speed of the Rhino Viewports is fine, I am talking about the Canvas FPS within Grasshopper. To pan and scroll within grasshopper has become really slow. I have tested the Canvas fps for an empty GH definition and it is about 76 frames/second, but for the file I am working in it is 2 frames/second.

Is there anything I can do to increase the Canvas FPS?

I am wondering if this is a video card issue.

Thanks David

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on March 12, 2010 at 11:24am

Ah, then the answer is yes. I am continually trying to speed up the redraw. There's not much you can do about it though. I need to start paying more attention to zoom levels and possibly even add some algorithms that draw simpler shapes when the frames drop below 25fps.

Grasshopper redraw is performed on the CPU, not the GPU. The video card is not involved, but if you get a faster CPU the redraw should speed up.

2 Fps is definitely appalling. I'd love to have your definition to test with. Could you please mail it to me ( david@mcneel.com )?

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David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on March 12, 2010 at 12:15pm

Ok, so if anyone is suffering from slow redraws and the Compass is still visible, try switching it off.

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Brian Muthaliff on March 12, 2010 at 12:21pm

Amazing! thanks David, that problem set me back a lot of time.

running smoothly now tho.

Permalink Reply by David Stasiuk on April 23, 2012 at 1:58am

I am also experiencing extremely slow GH canvas redraws...it's odd. Even when I have the solver locked and large portions of my definition disabled, it gums up whenever I add, remove, connect or change a component, taking several seconds before allowing me to perform the next operation. I am using a fair amount of geometry (a few thousand Breps)...but I'm surprised to find it so slow, even when locked/disabled. I've disabled the compass...any ideas?

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on April 23, 2012 at 4:02am

If you're using the latest version the compass is no longer slowing down the redraw much, especially if you disable the compass bubbles in the Preferences.

I need to know whether every redraw takes a long time or whether there is a delay after changing the file only. How many frames per second are you getting if you use the Window->Canvas Redraw Speed menu?

I think you'll have to send me the file so I run some profilers, see where the bulk of the time is spend.

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by David Stasiuk on April 23, 2012 at 4:45am

Okay, so when I run the canvas redraw, I'm getting perfectly healthy FPS values, 44 on a really big def and >140 on a small one, so I'm mistaken in calling my issue one with canvas redraw.

What's happening is that my larger definitions are actually locking up for a period of time, showing a spinning wheel and/or a not responding/grey-out condition directly after I drag a component onto the canvas, add or change a connector line, or change a variable in a component. In my more complex definitions, it will freeze up on pretty much any of these actions for several seconds (sometimes upwards of 10). It makes perfect sense to me when this happens after I change a value upstream of any calculations...but even in such instances the "solution completed" notification differs from when I can begin working on my definition again by an additional several seconds. I'm more curious as to why after a definition has been solved, making changes that don't relate to the solved action should freeze it up.

The amount of time is definitely correlated to the amount of geometry I have either referenced or generated in my definition, so I can work around it a bit by developing my defintions with smaller regions of my model geometry at any one time and then solving for the whole to test it out. I suppose I could send you my definition...but I'd hate to trouble you as it would have to include an Excel sheet, and I'm using Horster, Lunchbox, and probably a few other components from various sources like Kangaroo. I'm afraid I'm not the most elegant definition maker, either, so you'd have to avert your eyes.

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on April 23, 2012 at 10:44am

There appears to be a redraw issue of the canvas when the solver is disabled. It doesn't update visually until the next thing happens. e.g. if you change an input to graft on the context menu the up arrow won't show until you click on the canvas or do something else.

Permalink Reply by David Stasiuk on April 27, 2012 at 3:03am

...interesting. I do have quite a bit of geometry in my model, so I'd been using the wireframe + "only draw preview geometry for selected objects" option as I thought it would save redraw/computation time for me. But It turns out when I disable all preview geometry my speed issue goes away entirely. Any downstream object adding, editing, deleting creates no encumbrance.

Permalink Reply by Phil Kolbo on May 6, 2012 at 7:41pm

I also have a slow canvas. It happens only on one machine. My work machine canvas speed is fast. My home machine (ATI 6950/ i5 3.7Ghz oc) the canvas drops to 17 fps with only 10 components on screen. It has to do with drawing the icons. If I zoom out to where the icons are not drawn, I get 70 fps with 70 or so components visible. Any thoughts?

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on May 7, 2012 at 2:06am

Switch to Name Mode instead of Icon Mode. Is it still slow? I have no idea why bitmaps are drawn very slowly on that machine, but there's only one way to draw scaled bitmaps in GDI+ so if it's slow, it's just slow.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

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