Memory Management in CATIA V5 Drafting

Posted on April 22, 2021September 13, 2024 by Santosh Gade

Memory consumption in CATIA V5 drafting depends on the CAD data that is loaded in the CATIA session. The memory consumption increases due to loading of both 2D and 3D data, which further increases due to loading of the data in design mode. This blog focuses on the causes of high memory consumption and the ways to identify and manage the memory consumption issue in case of CATIA V5 drafting workbench.

Memory problem diagnosis in Generative Drafting:

In CATIA V5 Drafting, users generally face low virtual memory condition or the full memory space condition which is indicated by the Operating System error panel when there is no memory or low memory available.

In such cases, CATIA may crash with or without any warning message.

Memory Warning: Warning message appears as per the trigger set by the user in Tools à Options.

The pop-up message warns the user to save the data and exit the session as the available memory is low (the percentage of memory use needs to be set by the user).

Memory save by selecting required “View generation mode”

There are 4 types of view generation mode available in CATIA V5 Drafting.

1. Exact
2. Approximate
3. CGR
4. Raster

Choice of View generation mode:

Exact Mode: This view generation mode is used when fillet edges, threads, exact 2D geometry, complex breakout, unfolded view or associative 2D dimensions need to be created.

Tips to optimize the memory in Exact Mode:

Exact preview for view generation: When this option is deactivated, a part or product which is already open in Visualization mode will not be loaded in the design mode for the preview thus optimizing the memory consumption.

Geometry generation / Dress-up: Fillet representation, generation of Axis-lines/Centre-Lines/Threads needs to be deactivated if not needed. These elements will not be generated in the views thereby reducing the memory required for the view generation.

“Enable Occlusion Culling” option should be used to hide many instances or bodies. Only the parts visible in the view will be loaded instead of loading all the parts which occurs by default thus saving the memory consumption and CPU usage.

If the smallest instances inside the product structure need not be loaded, “Only generate parts larger than” can be used to filter these small instances.

Different fillet projection modes have varied memory consumption. “Boundaries” option as shown below requires the least memory consumption whereas “Projected original edges” requires the maximum memory in fillet generation.

Approximate Mode:

Approximate views are lower in precision and quality when compared to exact views. This mode reduces the memory consumption and improves the system performance.
Approximate view consumes lesser memory than CGR.
Approximate view generation is faster than CGR.

CATIA Graphical Representation Mode:

CGR views are generated by using the Visualization data. It is only the graphical representation of the geometry.
CGR views are lower in quality when compared to exact view and consume less memory during generation. However, the view generation is little slow.

Raster Mode:

Raster views are generated as images. This helps to quickly generate views for large products or assemblies, regardless of drawing quality.
This mode consumes very little memory. This does not load the parts in the design mode. If only an overview is needed, Raster mode is used to get a 2D geometry image.

How non-CAD users can stay connected to all the stakeholders in an organization?

Posted on April 22, 2021September 13, 2024 by Lakshmi Narayana

Design and manufacturing companies typically consist of multiple CAD, CAE and CAM applications. It is often a challenge for the managers and other team members who don’t have direct access to these applications to view, review and have discussions on design modifications with stakeholders across the organization.

Non-CAD users face multiple hurdles in order to stay connected. Some of them are listed below:

Difficulty to access the updated information each and every time
Effective communication with stakeholders
Accessing the right data anywhere and anytime
Connect different stakeholders and review designs on the fly if the organization is in a multi-CAD environment
Communication with respect to new concept designs is difficult without CAD environment

Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE web user interface – Platform Contributor (PCS) role addresses these challenges. Some of the benefits of the role is listed below:

Manage and collaborate the data in real time on Cloud
Store, share, search, manage, view, review, compare, navigate the 3D content and documents in the web interface itself
Latest web browser and a good internet bandwidth is good enough to access the application
Access multi-CAD data
Perform basic change management and project management
Save time and minimize errors using PLM approach to ensure cross-functional teams are always working with the recent updated versions of the design
Quickly review and validate designs with 3D visualization, markup and geometric analysis tools for 3D comparison, measurements and sectioning

There are two configurations in Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXEPRIENCE platform. They are Collaborative Business Innovator and Collaborative Industry Innovator. These configurations are explained in brief in the below infographics.

Impact of COVID – 19 & how it accelerated the adoption of disruptive technologies

Posted on April 22, 2021September 13, 2024 by Goutham S R

The lockdown, necessitated by the spread of COVID-19 pandemic was beyond imagination. It made majority of the people restrict themselves to their houses. The traditional way of functioning in offices and organizations came to an abrupt halt. The important question in this situation was how to manage work and how to make sure business continues.

The pandemic and the eventual lockdown paved way for new technologies and new normal which had to be adopted. It is during this critical situation, many of the business firms started looking at cloud-based solutions as an alternative instead of traditional on-premise solutions which required physical presence of personnel at office premises to perform the assigned tasks.

The pandemic, in fact, accelerated companies in India to quickly adopt cloud-based solutions irrespective of their scale (be it medium or large enterprise). In some cases, companies adopted stage-wise and requirement-based cloud adoption and in other cases, they adopted cloud solutions fully.

According to one survey, more than 60% of Indian organisations plan to leverage cloud platforms for digital innovations as the firms re-strategize their IT infrastructure. Even though cloud was adopted by some organizations much before the pandemic, the current situation accelerated their transition towards cloud solutions – Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS).

Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE on Cloud solutions provide a complete suite of industry leading solutions in turning various innovative ideas into reality in the areas of design, engineering, manufacturing, production, simulation, governance and collaboration.

The platform helps in connecting all the stakeholders of the organisation. Employees can access applications such as CATIA, SIMULIA, ENOVIA and DELMIA on the cloud and get the right data to work on as the platform provides access to the latest and updated data.

Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE is the business solutions platform which enables companies to connect with their suppliers, customers as well as internal teams. This makes the feedback process from customers, work status updates by suppliers and internal teams quicker.

Will data security be compromised after adoption of cloud solutions?

Many companies are reluctant to deploy cloud-based solutions because of data security issues. To address this issue, the security processes of 3DEXPERIENCE on Cloud platform follows industry standards such as:

ISO 2700x standards and in particular Implementation Guide ISO 27002
NIST 800 series
OWASP methodologies
CobIT framework

Will moving to cloud-based solutions increase my ROI?

Adoption of cloud-based solutions will drastically reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Reduced TCO implies greater ROI. The below infographic shows how an organization can reduce costs by moving to cloud-based solutions.

These benefits and security standards and the current pandemic situation make Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform as the most secure and desirable platform by organizations.

How to Ensure Uninterrupted Analysis in Abaqus by using Restart Analysis?

Posted on April 22, 2021September 23, 2024 by Shwetha S

The one aspect which is the most desirable while performing an analysis is that it should complete without any errors or interruptions. However, this is not the case. While performing any analysis, there are several interruptions more often than not like large memory, machine crash etc. To rectify these errors and minimize interruptions, there is a concept called Restart Analysis in ABAQUS.

Restart Analysis in ABAQUS helps to continue the previous analysis by the help of restart file. Any type of analysis can be restarted which is terminated at any particular level.

The following points need to be considered to restart an analysis in ABAQUS:

The user should plan initially and need to request restart output before the running the previous analysis
This request will generate .res file in work directory. Restart file allows previous analysiswith a new analysis.
Model used during the Restart Analysis should be same as previous analysis. Any modification with respect to geometry, mesh, material, loads, etc is not recommended.
Each step of the Restart Analysis reads the old file data which is available in the .res file and writes a new one.
All the loads and boundary conditions from the previous analysis remain unchanged in Restart Analysis as well.
If ABAQUS restarts the analysis from an unfinished step, it will try to finish that step first and then the remaining steps to complete the Restart Analysis.

To run Restart Analysis in ABAQUS, the following steps need to be followed:

Request restart output before running the previous analysis. Switch to step module, choose the Output Request in the main menu and select Restart Output. Enter “1” under the frequency for requesting the restart file in Step 1. If there are multiple steps, the file can be requested by entering the same inputs.

After pre-processing the model, job should be edited as “Job1” with analysis type as “Full analysis”. This run will generate .res file in the work directory which will be used for Restart Analysis.

To start Restart Analysis, right click on Model and select Edit Model Attributes. The job name of previous analysis needs to be entered and the exact step name from which the analysis needs to be restarted (terminated step name).

Create a step to run the Restart Analysis. Here, Step 2 is created and is used in Restart Analysis in ABAQUS by taking data from the previous job.

Run Restart Analysis by creating a new job and choose the job type as “Restart Analysis”. The analysis will continue from the termination point of previous analysis.

When complex analyses with large models are being run, they require more time to complete and often there are chances it might terminate at some particular step. It is efficient and recommended to use Restart Analysis in such type of problems because if the analysis terminates at a particular step, the whole analysis need not be run again. By using Restart Analysis, time and cost can be saved by restarting the analysis from the termination point.

Month: April 2021