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Bad quality and other small issues

Question asked by Terry Cantwell on Dec 15, 2015
Latest reply on Dec 16, 2015 by Alin Vargatu

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Hello,

I recently built a new machine for the office and mainly for Solidworks use. The system is running on a new Skylake i7-6700k, with DDR4 RAM and 2x AMD w8100 FirePro GPUs. I don't know if there are settings that I need to change or what I need to do, but I am having a few issues that seem to be graphical most likely.

1) Lines around edges of parts in assemblies, showing broken lines behind surfaces where you normally wouldn't see them and weird jagged edges.

In the middle of the image and the bottom right, you can see little lines that shouldn't show up. Easier to tell in the bottom right hand corner, there are 2 short lines going down that you shouldn't be able to see? Also the small gray triangular edges going down the center. Under Tools > Options > Document Properties > Image Quality, I have the slider in to the red, and even if I go all the way to the end it still shows like this.

2) When I rotate an assembly, it turns a lot of the assembly in to blocks. When I first ran this machine it didn't do that, so I'm unsure as to why it is happening, but I don't believe it has to be happening?

3) This one isn't as easy to explain and doesn't happen as often, but when you put your mouse over a part in an assembly, it highlights it orange. Sometimes it seems to be running slow, and I can literally watch the outline trace around the part and have to wait for it before I can do anything. I don't think this system should be running slow by any means, it should run everything smooth and carefree. These few issues are the start, if I can get past them then maybe I can try and work on a few others I am having.

Any and all help is much appreciated!

Thanks,

Terry Cantwell

Jim Sculley Dec 16, 2015 2:48 PM

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OK. The option should only be greyed out if you have Software OpenGL enabled, or your video card doesn't support OpenGL 4.0. The specs for the w8100 say OpenGL 4.4, so that isn't the problem. Looking back at your screenshot of SolidWorks Rx, it shows that Software OpenGL is enabled. Turn it off by closing all documents and clearing the checkbox in the Performance tab under System options.

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Dwight Livingston Dec 15, 2015 11:13 AM
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Terry

Check that you are actually using your FirePro. You can see under the windows "screen resolution" utility. If it says it using an Intel card, that's probably why.

Dwight
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Casey Bergman Dec 15, 2015 12:06 PM
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You will have to look at the document properties of the files and under the image quality tab you can move the slider the shaded and draft quality HLR/HLV resolution higher.
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Terry Cantwell Dec 15, 2015 1:12 PM
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As I said in my original post, I've slid the sliders to the right and those screen shots are with it like that. I'm using the w8100:

And as far as drivers go, I had downloaded the driver from Solidworks website for the card, having the issue I then went to AMD and downloaded the latest driver (which was a newer version) and is what I am on currently.
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Dwight Livingston @ Terry Cantwell on Dec 15, 2015 1:32 PM
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I have nothing. Sorry your graphics are misbehaving. Maybe someone with the same card can chime in.
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Casey Bergman @ Terry Cantwell on Dec 15, 2015 2:12 PM
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Sorry, I didn't read well enough. What does it show when you run the Solidwork Rx for your video card?
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Terry Cantwell @ Casey Bergman on Dec 15, 2015 5:09 PM
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Strangely enough, when I run Solidworks RX 2015, it shows the GPU being on a driver version 8.xx but device manager says I'm on 15.xxx... and like I said, I got the latest drivers from AMD, unless I installed incorrectly but I don't think I did.
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Casey Bergman @ Terry Cantwell on Dec 15, 2015 5:23 PM
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I would recommend fully uninstalling the video card driver and starting fresh with the correct driver after a reboot. I would only do this if you feel comfortable doing so, windows will try to start installing once you reboot after the uninstall. I have had to do this before.
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Terry Cantwell @ Casey Bergman on Dec 16, 2015 8:29 AM
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After I uninstalled and removed both cards, my computer switched to the cpu graphics. I opened Solidworks before I restarted just to see, still the same issues. Restarted, installed new drivers, same issues.

You can see the lines through the face on the lighter part, it's like this all over the assembly. You can see the edge above there where it's really rough and overlaps the line.
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Jim Sculley @ Terry Cantwell on Dec 16, 2015 9:34 AM
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Does it look like this when you open the individual part file? If so, can you upload one of the bad part files?

The blocky appearance when rotating is controlled with the 'Level of Detail' slider (Tools...Options...System Options...Performance).
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Scott Harvey Dec 16, 2015 9:20 AM
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You say this is a recently built machine. Did the old machine have problems running this Assembly?

Can you display your AssemblyXpert feature for this assembly under the Evaluate tab?
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Terry Cantwell @ Scott Harvey on Dec 16, 2015 10:36 AM
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I opened an assembly that has 0 errors to make sure that any errors were not a factor in this. Also, this assembly is a total of 3 parts, 2 of which are the same part, so it's a very light and easy to load file.

The following image is of a single part file, it still has the short lines behind the part, like where a bend is at or whatever but showing through the part. Can't tell if mated edges still have the weird triangles and overlap because it's a single part, but problem seems there on parts and assembly just the same.
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Jim Sculley @ Terry Cantwell on Dec 16, 2015 11:01 AM
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Can you check this setting:
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Ryan McVay Dec 16, 2015 11:13 AM
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Wow! There is no way in Hades that my CIO would allow me to spend $2,500 on a graphics card, let alone $5,000 on two for one box! I've only seen those type of card put into VDI servers to manage multiple virtual desktops or some sort of massive rendering/video workstation. During some investigation on graphics I found that most CAD based cards are running idle or are barely used- they wait on data from the CPU. The CPU throughput/frequency is the bottle neck these days- not the graphics card. I know I'm going to push some buttons here but please take it with a grain of salt.
Hey, I hate to tell you but I couldn't find that card listed as supported by SolidWorks! Yikes..
Maybe take out one of the cards and see if it works with a single card.
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Terry Cantwell Dec 16, 2015 12:53 PM
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The option for "Optimize for thin parts" is grayed out and not something that I can check.

The cards were only about $1k a piece, so not quite as bad as you original thought.
I can try to remove one card this afternoon and see what happens, I would hope that isn't the case, but I won't rule it out until I try it though. I'm confident that the cpu is NOT the bottleneck causing issues in this situation. It's an i7-6700k running at 4.5 GHz at the moment. All of the multiplier assists have been turned off, so it runs at 4.5 constant.

The card is supported through Solidworks website, Graphics Card Drivers | SOLIDWORKS
You can find it under AMD cards, they allow you to download drivers for the card even, though there is a newer driver version from AMD.

edit: Shut down my pc and turned the PCI slot off for the second card. Turned it back on, recognizes only one card now and has the same display issues.
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Jim Sculley @ Terry Cantwell on Dec 16, 2015 1:30 PM
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Terry Cantwell wrote:

The option for "Optimize for thin parts" is grayed out and not something that I can check.

You have to have a file open to enable the check box.
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Terry Cantwell @ Jim Sculley on Dec 16, 2015 1:49 PM
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Jim Sculley @ Terry Cantwell on Dec 16, 2015 2:48 PM
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OK. The option should only be greyed out if you have Software OpenGL enabled, or your video card doesn't support OpenGL 4.0. The specs for the w8100 say OpenGL 4.4, so that isn't the problem. Looking back at your screenshot of SolidWorks Rx, it shows that Software OpenGL is enabled. Turn it off by closing all documents and clearing the checkbox in the Performance tab under System options.
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Terry Cantwell @ Jim Sculley on Dec 16, 2015 3:15 PM
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Fixed pretty much everything! The triangular mated edges went away, the extra lines "behind the scenes" went away and it seems that when I mouse over a part that highlights in an assembly, it doesn't take time to trace the outline but rather the line just shows up. I suppose I wasn't running off of the cards OpenGL but off of the Softwares somehow or something? Seems to have fixed it though! Now I need to turn my second cards PCI slot back on and make sure everything is still smooth. Thanks a lot for your help and everyone else for trying!
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Ryan McVay @ Terry Cantwell on Dec 16, 2015 3:19 PM
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Now hurry up and achieve your ROI on those cards! ;-)
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Jim Sculley @ Terry Cantwell on Dec 16, 2015 3:23 PM
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Yes. Software OpenGL means the graphics card isn't doing any of the heavy lifting. Instead the CPU is and the OpenGL implementation isn't as good as what you get from the native GPU driver. Typically, turning on Software OpenGL makes problems go away, but impacts performance. In your case, having it enabled caused problems.

If there is a SOLIDWORKS recommended and tested version for your video driver, please install it. Often times using the latest driver from the card vendor will cause other problems.
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Terry Cantwell @ Jim Sculley on Dec 16, 2015 4:18 PM
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The installed driver version matches up with what the Solidworks website recommends, so I should be good there. Hopefully this will take care of most issues that I was having. If I run in to any more trouble down the road, I'll surely be back!
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Alin Vargatu Dec 16, 2015 1:00 PM
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Move the image quality slider back from the red. Half way or less would be my preference
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Terry Cantwell @ Alin Vargatu on Dec 16, 2015 1:25 PM
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Doesn't affect it really at all, and definitely doesn't help on any of the lines that show up.
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Alin Vargatu @ Terry Cantwell on Dec 16, 2015 5:06 PM
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Terry Cantwell wrote:

Doesn't affect it really at all, and definitely doesn't help on any of the lines that show up.

It it affects other things.
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Bad quality and other small issues

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