5 Replies Latest reply on Nov 10, 2014 12:03 PM by Jared Conway

star.exe stops responding during simulation solve

Steve Gorghuber Oct 11, 2010 3:14 PM

I'm wondering if this has ever happened to anyone else: I am running a static study on a fairly small assembly, details posted below. The study typically takes a little over two hours to solve (on the counter), however star.exe stops responding several times during the solve, usually for 5 to 10 minutes. This pushes the actual solve time closer to four hours. During the periods where star.exe hangs, CPU usage is at 0-1%, no significant hard drive, memory, or network activity. It will be running fine (80-90% CPU usage), then will quit for several minutes, then pick up right where it left off. This seems to occur only during the portion of the study when it is solving the contact constraints. I've noticed the problem while using the FFE plus solver, but not while using the Direct Sparse solver. Any idea why this would be happening?

As many details as I can think to list:

PC:

Dell Precision T3500

Xeon W3550 CPU

12GB ram

nVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 gfx card

dual 80GB 10k RPM SATA drives (RAID 0)

Windows 7 (64-bit)

SolidWorks 2010 SP4.0 (64-bit)

Model:

Curvature-based mesh

0.6 in Max element size

0.04 in Min element size

8 points in circle

3 element growth ratio

Global contact: bonded, incompatible mesh

30 to 40 contact sets, all are No Penetration, 0.05 friction, surface-to-surface mesh

DOF: 1055910

Nodes: 363575

Elements: 225944

Solver: FFE plus

Re: star.exe stops responding during simulation solve

Ryan Werner Oct 12, 2010 10:29 AM (in response to Steve Gorghuber)

Hi Steve,

What version of SolidWorks are you running? I remember this happening using older versions of Simulation but it seems better since 2010 was released. There is not much you can do as far as I know other than decreasing the number of No Penetration contacts.

Ryan W.
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Re: star.exe stops responding during simulation solve

Krishnakumar Kumaravelu Oct 17, 2014 2:44 AM (in response to Steve Gorghuber)

Hi Mr.Steve Gorghuber, this is a folder permission issue. Check your folder permission and give full control to the folder, and delete temp files of simulation and run the simulation again. Cheers!
K.Krishnakumar
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Re: star.exe stops responding during simulation solve

Jared Conway Oct 18, 2014 2:38 PM (in response to Steve Gorghuber)

where are the files stored?
does this happen on all models?
did it just start happening or has it always happened?
can you update to 2014 or at least a newer version than 2010?
what type of simulation are you trying to run?
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- Re: star.exe stops responding during simulation solve
  
  Krishnakumar Kumaravelu Nov 10, 2014 1:05 AM (in response to Jared Conway)
  
  Hi Mr.Jared Conway the temp files are stored in the same folder where your model was saved. That happens only specific models.
  I tried for SolidWorks 2014 sp4 static simulation.
  
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  - Re: star.exe stops responding during simulation solve
    
    Jared Conway Nov 10, 2014 12:03 PM (in response to Krishnakumar Kumaravelu)
    
    I would guess you are seeing that parts of your solution simply aren't multithreaded. This is expected.
    
    make sure hyper threading is disabled.
    
    worst case, you have an application that is using the resources, or flagging the app preventing it from running (anti virus or anti spyware) or maybe you have power saving enabled.
    
    run it on another computer and compare. Or call your var.
    
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