Boosting Inventor Performance

MARK LANCASTER: Hello, everyone. And welcome to this AU class on boosting Inventor performance. My name is Mark Lancaster.

And I am a product-- oh, jumped ahead. I am a product support specialist for an Autodesk reseller located in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. I'm not going to get too much detail about me, but I support all the common Autodesk manufacturing products, vault training implementations. And I also get into licensing, subscription, and Autodesk accounts.

So when we think about our models, we want something to be like a Lamborghini-- supercharged, fast and efficient. For some apparent reason, we may feel like we're on a kid's tricycle-- slow, underpowered, takes us a while. Or the sense-- sorry. Or the sense that we're stuck in traffic. We don't go anywhere.

So I asked in the poll, for those who had the opportunity to take it, what do you consider is impacting your Inventor performance? A few of you came back and said, well, maybe I really don't understand what you mean by Inventor performance. And if you had coworkers who are impacted by Inventor performance, would they say the same thing? In some cases, yes. In other cases, no, because everybody's impacted by Inventor performance in different ways.

How many think-- and I know the poll kind of indicated it-- how many think upgrading your hardware would improve your Inventor performance? All right. So the polls showed approximately 80% who said, yeah, we'd consider that or I think that's the solution to my Inventor performance issues.

So today's class, we're going to take actually a different look at what's impacting your Inventor performance. You're going to learn that upgrading hardware, or hardware, is not always at fault. There's other things that could be impacting your Inventor performance.

I'm just going to set the tone-- what I really define Inventor performance. If I'm waiting around, I'm not modeling, I have to stop and fix my model. I consider that as Inventor performance issue. And it needs to be resolved. If I have numerous crashes, things are not working, those type of things.

So like I said, you're going to learn-- or my goals for this class today for you is I'm going to demonstrate that hardware upgrade or hardware is not always at fault. And like I said, we're going to take that different path. We're going to look at other things.

The information I'm going to share today is based on my experience, things that I come across when I'm working on support. My clicker, sorry, is a little sensitive. And I'm hoping that I can get you to the excellent side of boosting your Inventor performance.

Your goals for attending is-- you're probably getting sick and tired of hearing me saying this, that hardware is not always at fault. You're going to learn what's impacting Inventor performance. You're going to learn how you can combat your Inventor performance. And hopefully, the information I'm going to share today can get you onto the excellent side of the performance meter.

So what do we do when we're faced with Inventor performance? Now, I know when I used to be a CAD manager years ago, managing Inventor, I came across my users had problems. Guess what I did? I went and requested to my boss, to IT, we need faster hardware. We need faster machines, better hardware.

How many have heard, "Why? How much is this going to cost us?" And guess what? You got to wait one or two years because there's no budget. How many have heard those questions before or responses?

So like I said, we're going to take that different path. Sorry for the clicker. Let's say you're out in the Northern Atlantic and you come upon an iceberg. Where do you think the real danger is, above the surface or below the surface? Well, hopefully you said below the surface.

Well, a lot of times when we analyze problems, we visually look at things we can see. So we may associate that top of that iceberg as the hardware upgrade. Because it's easy. We can get more RAM, faster hard drives, those type of things.

But in a lot of cases, the root cause of Inventor performance lies below the surface. These are just some of the things that we're going to cover today. There's a lot more information.

But at the same time, I will tell you, I'm not a hardware expert. I'm not a geek guru, whatever you want to call it. But at the same time, I don't want to tell you that hardware is still not crucial. It is still important to combat Inventor performance. But I'm going to demonstrate here in the next slide a help desk case, where the user thought they needed to upgrade their hardware, the help of their Inventor performance.

So had a customer who had a supercharged PC, overclocked CPU, 64 gigabytes RAM, top of the line, video card. They were working on this certain model. And after three days, the user was just fed up. They don't want to wait around anymore for Inventor. So they run to IT and they demand a faster machine. But IT is not an Inventor user. They don't know about the product.

So they called me and said that, hey, we spent a lot of money on this machine. Do we have to sink more resources into this? And I said, well, in most cases, I think that's more resources than most people. Anybody have a machine that would be close to this?

So I said, let's look at the model. So after reviewing the model, there was just too much detail being carried across the entire model. In addition, there were some incorrect workflows being used.

So after the user took my advice, cleaned up the model, got away with that detail, guess what? I'm not saying that Inventor performance pegged all the way to the X inside of the meter. But it was back to where he thought it should be for this model. And guess who else was happy? IP, because they didn't have to spend a dime for any more upgrades to their computer.

So let me just set some class ground rules. Like I said, it's based on my experience. When it comes to Inventor performance, it is very hard to pinpoint because it impacts us so many different ways. There's so many different scenarios. I just tell people there's not that Stapes easy button or a one size fits all solution. I have a lot of information to share today. So you're going to learn about different things that could be impacting.

I will also tell you, as many times as I've heard this-- my coworker has the same PC, same configuration, everything. Why does it work on their machine and not mine? Hardware is unique. They're not exactly the same. They may look the same, but they're not.

The information I'm going to share today, hopefully you're going to get something new out of it. But there's also going to be stuff that you already know and say yeah, I already know about that. And there's other stuff you're like, well, maybe I'll try that. May not work for you. Or there's going to be stuff that doesn't even pertain to your environment. So the message here, just keep an open mind.

When you're faced with Inventor performance, the people who raised your hand thinking that I think hardware would help me. Hold off on that hardware aspect of it. Look underneath the surface. Try to figure out what's impacting it.

And at the same time, as many times as I've heard this-- well, my PC is not the problem or our network's not the problem. How do you know until you test? So make sure you're doing those tasks to confirm. If all else fails, then yes, look at the hardware.

Now, I put this in here because I really feel bad about it. I will not have time to take any questions throughout the presentation. We only have an hour. And we're probably going to be running a couple of minutes over.

So I have my business cards over there. But like I said, I probably won't have time for questions at the end. Take my business cards. Email me if you think about anything. And we can go from there.

With that, let's get started. I think this is a great one to start with. How many has experienced some Windows updates in the past few months and boom, everything goes? Most of you here probably do not have any control over Windows Updates because they're automatically done for you.

What I tell people, if it's impacting your environment, you need to have that discussion with management and IT. If you do have the capabilities of doing it, roll it back, or use a Windows restore point. Lately, Windows updates have been impacting the Autodesk community and it's causing a lot of headaches right now.

How many people fall in a restricted environment where you cannot install anything on your machine unless you have an admin account or admin user? How many are in that freedom environment where you can do anything that you want? Anybody in between? You can do some stuff, but not all?

Now, the people who raised their hand for freedom, I'm not here to pick on you. But it's my opinion it's not an ideal situation. When we do that, we get other things that get installed on our machine.

I can think of a couple applications if you're not careful, there are some options there. They could be causing conflicts. They may have nothing to do with your Autodesk product, but it could be causing conflicts on your machine.

So if you're in that freedom environment, just be aware of what you're installing. Make sure you're not click happy and just keep hitting next. Make sure you're reading each dialog to make sure you're not installing other things. Or just avoid it at all costs.

Now, this may be a touchy subject. We all know it's a lot easier to do updates now for Autodesk products through our desktop app. But I tell people, are you're really faced with an issue that this update will fix? Or are you updating it because it's there?

So think about that the next time you're going to update your Autodesk product, those two questions. Am I faced with an issue? Does that update fix it? Or am I updating because it's there?

Now, we all know that for the past year, year and a half, maybe close to two, that the Autodesk team has gone away for service packs for Inventor. Now, it's more of these mid-year releases. But I used to be a CAD manager. I would never allow my users to update until I tested to make sure that it worked for our environment.

So I tell people, hold off in test. But people say, we just don't have the time to do that. But my response is, do you have the time to take down your entire design community? Just because an update is there in the Autodesk desktop app doesn't mean you have to apply it.

Anti-virus could also impact Inventor performance. There are certain anti-virus applications-- I don't have a list-- that just do not play well with Autodesk Inventor or other Autodesk products. We all know it's crucial to our environment to protect our environment.

The solution here is you may have to get IT involved to disable it or to uninstall it. You need to make sure your anti-virus is not causing the Inventor performance. Run it for a couple days on one machine and see what happens. If there is, there is a Autodesk [INAUDIBLE] out there for adding exceptions to your anti-virus so it doesn't impact Inventor.

Malware. How many people are using malware protection on their machines? How many have it set to auto, if you have the capability to auto scan? That's another crucial thing. I've had a couple help desk cases where they had malware protection, but a lot of these malware protections are not auto-scanning like our anti-virus.

I've had cases where a user actually had malware on their machine. So if you don't have malware protection or you're not scanning, do a scanning every week just to make sure something is not there. Like I said, that can impact your Inventor performance.

How many have ever seen what I call the red zone, where disk space is limited? Well, when you get limited disk space, funny things start to occur. You get Inventor crashes. You get Inventor lock ups. Things can't be saved, those type of things.

If you're adding your network drives where you're storing your Inventor files or on your C-drive, if anything is in that red zone or think is getting close to red zone, make sure you clean up, organize. You may have to involve IT to help you clean it up. That's important. I've had cases, people call in and say, I'm getting this message about my temp folder or my undo file size. This needs to be increased, those type of things. That's the first thing you check, is your disk space where you're storing your Inventor information.

This section covers a lot of different things. A lot of times when I'm doing troubleshooting on a user machine, first thing I check is called those pesky temp files. Anybody know about this personal temp folder that's storing all your temp files? I've seen anywhere from 500 megabytes of disk space to 13 gigabytes of disk space.

So my experience is when you get into the one, two gigabyte range and disk space it's consuming, funny things start to happen-- Inventor crashes, Inventor lockups, Inventor performance issue. I tell everybody, once or twice a month, make sure you're cleaning it out. Now, some companies have that automatically being done. Just check that personal temp folder.

Now, we all know that we're getting all these new machines that have solid state drives in them. But we still have the old style hard drives in there. When's the last time you defragged one of those? Windows 10 does it automatically for you, but you still have to check to make sure that's being done.

We used to do a lot of disk defragging back when we had Windows XP and earlier versions of Windows operating system. How many still do disk defrags today? We've got a few.

So make sure that you're doing. It's not going to really boost it better, but think about if that hard drive has to search all the different sectors. It just leads to longer load times.

Windows Registry, this is a solution at your own risk. I am going to tell you that if something happens, you say, well, Mark told me I can do the Windows Registry. I've had cases where if you take a utility like CCleaner and clean up your registry, Inventor performance goes through the roof.

But at the same time, these utilities can take you down your machine. I was helping somebody on the forum the other day. They had used some utility. And it took out some registry entry. And it almost wiped their Windows operating system. So just be careful about that. Before you do anything with the registry, what do you do? Backup the entire registry.

Windows Services, there's another thing. Has anybody ever looked at Windows Services and see what all is being loaded? That's another crucial thing. Years ago, I was astonished at all, what I call the stupid drivers, that were being loaded that was impacting Inventor performance.

So make sure you check. You may have to work with IT to see if those drivers or those services can be uninstalled or stop. The key here, what's it say? You're not here to take down your machine. Because one little service could take down the entire Windows operating system.

How many have installed AutoCAD or any AutoCAD products, vertical products with '15 or '16, whether you're using them or not? Anybody have that? When AutoCAD 2015 was released-- as I take my mic off, sorry-- there was a service they added-- sorry. There was a service added called the Autodesk Content Service.

This is known-- apologize for this. This was known to crash, lock up, take cursor focus away. It will cause Inventor performance. Whether you had it installed or uninstalled, make sure you go into Services and make sure that Autodesk content service is not running. If it is, disable it or get it uninstalled. Now, if you're using it inside of AutoCAD and you're still using 2015 or 2016, then you're going to have to leave it there. But that service is known to cause issues with Inventor.

Now, we all know Windows is loaded with bells and whistles, and all these wonderful apps that you can add to your desktop and those type of things. Now, I'm not going to tell you here that you can't use those. But you have to ask yourself, is it really needed? Do you really need to see Facebook updates? Do you want to know what the weather is outside, your stock portfolio or scores?

Those type of things could impact your Inventor performance. One of the things, uninstall it. See if it's impacting your Inventor performance.

Out of date drivers. A lot of times when we upgrade Inventor or we may upgrade our operating system, we forget about those additional drivers that Inventor needs. For example, Mike Davis who's sitting up front, we were talking the other day. And he was helping some Inventor user who was experiencing Inventor performance.

Guess how old his video driver was? Anybody want to take a guess? Higher. It was actually eight years old. I don't know how possible that was.

So make sure when you're upgrading your operating system, you're upgrading Inventor. Always upgrade those drivers that Inventor depends on. A lot of times when I see people, certain things, I'm like, let's look at your driver. Oh, my driver's fine. Windows is telling me that's it OK. When I go look, it's like two to three years old.

Now, this may sound like a joke, and that's why it's up there. When's the last time you cleaned out your PC? Especially if you have a desktop, have you ever taken the cover off and blown out all the dust that's in there?

In the handout, if you have the handout, in that section is a picture of a laptop port. That's my laptop at home. I work from home. I have two dogs that shed a lot of hair. So as the air's being filtered in to cool down the PC, guess what gets stuck to the fan port? The dog hair. So if you have a laptop, and you don't really travel a lot and it's left on your desk, pick it up sometime and see how much is clogged in those air ports.

Another thing that's kind of rare is hardware failure. I'm not going to go into details, but I had a machine, another laptop that I had, that the fan port went dead. So I was down to one fan port. So my machine was overheating. And guess what? It throttled back to save the components inside. So these are the things that will impact your Inventor performance.

Anybody know or ever heard about group policies? Lot of companies push group policies down to your machine to control what you can do. Those who raised their hand in a restricted environment, you're being restricted by your group policies. They are crucial to a lot of organizations. But in my experience, at my last job, I had CAD designers who were impacted by the corporate group policies that were being pulled down on our machine.

And sometimes it happens in the renewal process. When they update group policies, they get hung. So you're kind of in half and half state. So they conflict. Just have that discussion with management and IT, just to confirm if your group policies are playing a important role in your Inventor performance.

Anybody ever have to reset their Inventor user profile? A lot of times when I'm doing troubleshooting and I see certain things, you know what my first question is? Can we have somebody else log on to your machine and see if they are experiencing it? That's a quick test to try to see if somebody else's account is also causing it. If they don't, that tells me that you have to run the Inventor reset utility.

Anybody know about-- except the ones who raised their hand, ever heard of the Inventor reset utility? I think it started in Inventor '17. It's in your start menu with your Inventor launch.

Now, there's going to be some cases where it's actually the Windows user's profile that's causing the issue. They are rare, but you are going to experience other things outside of Inventor that could be causing it. If that's the case, have IT rebuild your Windows profile.

This is another big thing. When you see these things out in the forum, and you say, my entire company is struggling with this. But you don't hear any other people-- I mean, there could be others complaining, but you don't hear a lot of [INAUDIBLE], well, this is not working. It all has to deal with how your company network infrastructure and how they configure your machines can play in how Inventor works.

What I tell people, the simple test is disconnect from your network slash internet. Launch Inventor. How does it perform? It is a lot better? Then there's something there that's impacting it in your infrastructure.

The other thing, how many have ever gone to their Windows event logs when they are experiencing Inventor performance, have gone and looked to see if there's any warnings or errors around that time? That's another key in troubleshooting Inventor performance. Go look at your Windows event logs.

The other question I ask, we all ask, is it just me? Or is everybody in my organization experiencing this? But in the end, when it comes down to the company infrastructure, it's very hard to pinpoint. You may have the implement process monitoring software and just see if there's something in your infrastructure that's holding it up.

How many people store their Inventor design data information on the network? I will tell you, I'm not a fan of it. But at the same time, I'm not here to say you can't do it. Putting your Inventor design data folder on the network will lead to non-responding.

How many people, when you're opening something, and you get non-responding? Anybody come across that? It could be if you have your Inventor design data folder out in the network, could be causing that.

Think about 10 people in your company printing to a single printer. It's first come, first serve. Every time Inventor opens up a model and it comes across a thread, guess what it has to do? It has to go open that thread table.

So if you've got three people opening up an Inventor model and they all have threaded components in there, they all have to wait in line as Inventor opens up that thread table, reads the thread information, closes it down, and moves on to the next threaded hole. So just keep that in mind. If possible, I tell people put it locally if you can do that.

How many people store their models on the network or in the cloud? I and others will tell you that Inventor's not designed to work across a network. It will lead to Inventor performance issues because you're pushing and pulling traffic across your network.

Now, I understand you may have to do that because that's your requirements for your organization. Or I've always heard, it's not our network. So here are some things to try out. Copy your models locally and just see, is there a difference? People I tell to do that, they say, wow, that's like day and night. So it has to be something with our network.

Maybe you only want to share your own-- the commonly used file. Maybe you want to move, copy, work locally, and then move, copy, push it back up again. Or implement a document management system like Vault or any of the other ones that are out there.

How many people have to work, what I call-- like you had a sister location and the miles are stored at another company location? You're working across the wider network. How many of you work from home and using a VPN connection?

No matter what you do, if you're under that situation, you're always going to be faced with Inventor performance. There's nothing yet you really can do. However, your IT group or your company can invest into technology called Riverbed. But it's a big investment. Or if you are plagued with those things, have that discussion with management and IT because they would have to provide that. So it's not something you're going to be able to do.

How many times have you started a sketch, modifying, it feels like in you're in the Stone Age? You feel like you're making that change with a chisel, with a stone. Anybody come across that?

The handout has a lot of great information. I could spend a few slides on that, but just some key bullets. Keep your sketches simple. A lot of times, I see people who come from the AutoCAD 2D world into Inventor and they try to draw in the sketching environment like AutoCAD. You don't want to be doing that. You want to keep your sketches as simple as possible. You want to project, properly dimension, and constrain your sketches.

How many have known about the Inventor BORN technique? If you don't know about that, in the handout there is a link to that article. So it's going to help you with your sketches.

Now, performance number eight and performance number nine, they're intertwined. I'm not going to get too much detail. But how many have seen the resolve link, duplicate file names? How many have seen those dialogs?

Basically could be some of the reasons why. Maybe you're on a network that you don't have access to. You get duplicate files or you're storing things in your user's profile, those type of things. These could lead to these type of messages.

Like I said, there's a lot of great information in the hand out for this section. Don't take the shortcuts. Use a naming convention. Make sure everybody has the same configuration in your organization.

Which kind of leads to this aspect of it. It's that loss, where you feel your project file is just complete loss. It doesn't know where your parts are. You're getting constant resolve links.

The key here is to have a properly configured project file. Now, I'm still amazed till this day when I'm helping people on the forums or Mike, Chip-- or Chris, sorry, thinking of another person-- that the project files, people don't realize that they're using them. They've been using Inventor for five years and say, I've never used a project file. When you started day one, you were using a project file.

The other thing is I've heard from a couple of users on the forum. Guess what they do before they do anything in Inventor? They check to make sure that the project file that they want to use is the active project.

Has anybody experienced that? Last night was working on project ABC, come in, funny things start to happen. And guess what? It's that project default. Anybody who's experienced that?

So I know it's an extra step. Just go do that. Take that extra step and look and make sure that the active project file is the correct one. Get into defining your workspaces, define the search path. Use the folder option. How many are using the folder options to define your design data and templates and content center?

There have been cases where the project file has become corrupt. If you think it's your project file and you struggle with it, just delete it and make a new one. It's a lot easier than struggling.

Also, there have been cases where you may have a project file for a given Inventor version. When you start saving it in the new version and it converts it, well, sometimes there's been incorrect XML formatting. So just watch that.

I think of the statement years ago, that hey, we're at the bar. And we came up with a design. We're using the bar napkin to jot down the design. We might do that with Inventor sometimes. We don't want to spend the time to do parts or assemblies. We just want to throw our design down.

Well, there are other people that do that on the basket concept. To me, it's not a correct workflow. If you're throwing all your design into one basket, you're not breaking them up in subassemblies, components, and those type of things, it just leads to complexity and performance issues. So the key here is make sure your demoting your assembly, simplifying and breaking them up, using the Inventor build material structure. How many know of all the different Inventor vendor build material structures-- Reference, Phantom, Purchased?

It's all in the details, details in our models. It's a very powerful communication tool. But too much detail is just that. It's a performance killer. So these are the things you need to be asking yourself. Is it really necessary? Is it going to make a difference in my model? Maybe you want to use a simplified version, use appearance overrides, maybe iParts, iAssembly, derived, Shrinkwrap.

And here's a help desk case that's related to too much detail. I had a customer about a year ago. Their entire design community was working on this big, huge project. And the entire department was struggling with this overall model.

Now, they all had medium range PCs, nothing powerful and nothing too low end. But when you looked at the model, 70% to 80% of it was duplicated parts. And I was even asking, why is Inventor having trouble with this?

So the reason is because when I zoomed to one of their smaller subassemblies, they had numerous hardware-- bolts, washers, nuts, screws, and those type of things. All this was in a seat. So they actually showed the stitching in the leather because they had to do that for manufacturing requirement.

They also, because they had equipment that needed to screen mesh around it, guess what somebody did? They modeled the mesh screen. Hey, it looks great.

And because they had perforated steps going up to this equipment, guess what they did? They had 12 steps that all were perforated. So I asked them, I said, do you really need all this detail? Well, yeah. We need to demonstrate to manufacturing.

Well, guess what they did with the seat hardware? They patterned it 100 times inside their model, just way too much detail. So the know here is because you may need it at a certain subassembly or at a part to convey manufacturing assembly process doesn't mean you have to put all that detail across your entire model.

Anybody ever open up their Inventor model and some of their parts were all twisted in different orientation and you think it has some magical power? When I see that, yeah, I say it's a performance issue. Because what did I say in the beginning? I have to stop and fix it.

When I see those type of models, something or incorrect workflows being used. So ask yourself, is my first component that I'm putting into my Inventor model, is that the foundation of my design? Am I grounding it, properly constraining it?

When it comes to my models, not only will I take my first component and constrain it to the normal workplace, but I also lock it down by grounding it. That way, if somebody does one constraints or ungrounded, guess what? My model is still locked down.

How many know about the degrees of freedom tool and the assembly productivity tool? Check your models to see if you have any freedom of movement. That will help you.

I always like this one. I say-- and I say it in the handout-- if you broke your arm, do you forget about it and go to the doctor later? When the design doctors lit up an Inventor up next to the quick access toolbar, go fix those.

Every time I get on a case and say, why is your design-- well, it's a sketch that failed. Or the constraint, something's wrong with it. You need to fix those. They will impact your Inventor performance. So go fix those out there. Don't wait till the end.

How many have ever done a Manage, Rebuild All on their models? How many knew that was there but never used it? How many didn't know that it was there?

I tell people, every so often in your model, go to the Manage tab, whether it's parts or assembly, do a Rebuild All. Because sometimes when you do the Rebuild All, guess what lights up? The design doctor. So occasionally do that every time you open up an Inventor model.

Now, we all know constraints are necessary inside of our assembly. How many knew constraints actually consume memory? They will take away from your resources. Too much constraints will impact your Inventor performance.

If your occurrence counter-- yes, we have dinner. If your occurrence counter gets into the high double digits or the triple digits for a given constraint, you need to rethink about your model. Anybody have any models like that, where a single constraint like flush or mate is in double digits or triple digits?

If you do that, it's time to start rethinking about your model. Maybe you want to ground, suppress, break them up. Maybe you want to use a drawing underlay that started in 2016 or use the skeleton modeling technique. You got to limit the number of constraints you are using inside your model.

Now, we all know that Inventor has a lot of add-ins. There's a lot that come with Inventor. The message here, don't assume that they are working. Go into the add-in manager and make sure that they're loaded or they haven't got blocked. A lot of times in the forums, people say, well, this is not working. My first response, have you gone out to the add-in manager and see if it's working?

How many have gone out to the Inventor Exchange app store and downloaded an app that works for your organization? When I'm doing troubleshooting, that's one of the things I look, is my add-ins. If I see something that's not out of the box, I ask the question, what is this add-in doing? Well, it's for such, such.

OK. Can we unload it to see if that's impacting my Inventor performance? Sometimes you may have to unload all your add-ins that are not out of the box. See if it works. If it does, you need to start adding them one at a time to see what's impacting your Inventor performance.

How many have created their own add-ins for Inventor? The message is the same thing. Just don't assume that it's not your program. Unload it and see if it does make a difference.

Autodesk add-ins such as Mesh Enabler, Nastran, they are not developed by the Inventor development team. They are developed by another team. They could be impacting your Inventor performance.

Just because it's Autodesk, don't assume it's not the issue. I've even had cases where the Vault add-in was the cause of the issue due to some configuration profile issue. If it's not the out of the box, just unload them and test them. And like I said, load them back in one at a time.

How many use Content Center? When you install Inventor, whether you're using it through Vault or desktop, how many have loaded all the specifications whether you needed them or not? Years ago, it was important for fast Content Center not to load all the specifications. Today, it's not as important. But ask yourself, if I have to load ISO DIN and I'm not using it, why take the resources? Don't load them. Uncheck them from your project file.

How many are using Content Center filters where it says, I'm filtering out ANSI, those type of things? That will impact your load time of Inventor. If you're filtering out ANSI, then get rid of the ISO DIN, all the other ones. Don't use the filter aspect of it. It just helps faster load times.

How many are you using Content Center favorites where you say, this is the bolt I want to use, the valve, the elbow, those type of things? The more you put into that Content Center favorites, it will kill the Content Center. It will take longer and longer to load content.

Also, with the Inventor 2018, for those who are using Inventor 2018, you know how you can set up your own different browsers and stuff for Inventor? You can have one for your favorites. If you're doing that right now, when you get back, get rid of it. Because it impacts Inventor every time you open up a part or assembly. I don't know if it's a bug, but you shouldn't be using it as a Content Center favorite as a separate browser. Anybody had that? Good, you're in good shape then.

A while back, I said, with the updates, should you be applying them? Here's another example. How many are using Vault? How many know that the Vault client bill number can't be newer than the Vault server bill number?

So there's a big difference in that. A lot of times, because people say, oh, there's a Vault client update in my desktop app, guess what I'm going to do? Because I always update. I update it. It leads to Inventor issues. It leads to Inventor issues between Inventor and Vault. The solution here, either restrict your updates or inform your users, do not update your Vault client until I tell you to do so.

How many-- I asked before, but anybody using cloud services to either maybe transmit your files to somebody else, to an outside source? Anybody using cloud services? There are certainly cloud services out there that could impact your Inventor performance. Again, go and disable it and test.

Now, if you sat with me throughout my week or throughout my day, you will notice at the bottom of my screen all the Windows applications that are running because I support many different customers from AutoCAD-- AutoCAD mechanical, electrical, Inventor, Vault, and so on. I know this is common sense, but all those running applications are consuming resources. Even if they're minimized, they're still taking a certain percentage of your resources.

So the solution here-- sorry for my clicker-- is limit them. Close them out. Maybe you want to reboot your machine to clear out your resources and start from scratch.

How many work with very large assemblies or work with large assemblies? That seemed to be a recurring theme in the poll. Whether you know it or not, the Inventor development team has been making improvements over the years, past few years, to help with, combat, working with large assemblies.

How many have seen this article and read it? Although this is a few years old, I would make sure when you get back-- there's a link in the handout to this. There is still a lot of great information, settings-- not only inside of Inventor, graphics card, Windows operating system-- that will help you with Inventor performance with large assemblies.

Other things too when you are working with large assemblies, limit the number of applications, just like I said. Maybe you want to unload those add-ins. As I said, those add-ins are loading. They're taking resources from your computer.

Maybe you want it for update, manual update. Is anybody currently doing that? You don't allow it to auto-update. You just say defer and then I'll update later on.

How many have ever gone in real estate and you hear the words "It's all based on location, location, location?" When you're working with large assemblies in Inventor, the key word is simplify, simplify, simplify. I'm not going to go into those, but those are the things that you need to do, level of details. Maybe work in Express Mode. Maybe you want to do derived assemblies and those type of things.

When we create an Inventor assembly-- if we just create a simple part, put in assembly-- we create a family tree, that parent to child relationship. Over time, that becomes complex. When we start using adaptivity, it adds more complexity. How many use adaptivity in their models?

So ask yourself, what is this parent to child relationship that I'm building? If I'm not using that adaptivity, turn it off. How many leave adaptivity, for those who rose their hand, constantly on for the entire design process of the model? Is it necessary? Maybe you don't realize you're creating adaptivity. Go into the application options and disable the function.

I've had cases where I say, you got a lot adaptivity. Yeah, we finished that design about six months ago. We're working over there. So I'm like, so why do you still have adaptivity over here for that design? You're maybe not changing anything, but that adaptivity has to keep processing it each and every time.

How many have the old saying like, you're putting 10 pounds worth of stuff in a five-pound bag? Do your drawings look like that, where you try to jam as much stuff as you can onto a drawing sheet for an entire drawing file? So the key here is you may have to start rethinking. I was always a big fan. I want one drawing IDW that has all my sheets in.

But you can't always do that. You may have to break them up or use the file open option. Anybody use the file open option, defer quick load, those type of things? Drawing views, it's a powerful communication tool.

I started out with board drafting. I don't want to date you, but anybody started with board drafting? What did you do? Did you actually sit there and draw the fine details of the drawing? No, you laid it out. Where are those drawing views?

I take that same concept when I'm using Inventor. I don't want to see all that crucial information. I just want to get my drawing views down on to my drawing. So I always tell people, use raster view. How many are using raster views when they place their views in? How many leave the raster views as is until they print?

When you're working with especially large assemblies, do it as raster views. In my opinion, who cares if a hole's a little jagged or something? Get the information down. Then when you're ready to print it, then set it to precise. If you're using large assembly, set your preview on your tools application options, set it to a boundary box. Why wait for Inventor to sit there and paint all that fine detail onto your drawing?

Shaded views. I had a customer a few years ago, says, I've got this drawing and we just can't do anything with it. I said, OK, let's look at it. It was like a seven or eight-page drawing. There was like five or six views almost on every sheet. And guess what all the views were? They were all shaded.

So I said, you can't do this. Well, we need it because it's our communication tool. I said, I understand that, but you're going to have to break this up into smaller chunks. And that's what they had to do to resolve.