Rhino 5 hangs frequently with known model

I have a 250MB model that I have been working with for a while. Rhino 5 x 64 & Flamingo nXt. Nothing that I am aware of changed in the model but suddenly Rhino hangs for a minute or more when I attempt to do anything in the model. I did change some work space settings and reconfigured some toolbars.

I am making myself crazy trying to get back to the prior performance. This is a model I need to continue working with to generate high resolution renders.

Thanks in advance
Robb

Assuming you have plenty of RAM, is the AutoSave command happening too often?

Another hang-up I had was from my SpacePilot. It was slightly out of alignment, so Rhino thought I was always moving when I was actually still. Drove me crazy! The fix was a simple ‘calibrate.’

Thanks for the response David,

64 GB ram with lots of SSD drive and swap space available. New computer just for Rhino and nXt. Autosave set for 20 minutes. If I click anywhere in Rhino, the system (Not Responding) shows in the title bar for a minute or more. Totally unworkable as you may imagine.
New and smaller files don’t seem to be a problem - just these larger files. The exact file worked fine for weeks prior to my reworking my toolbars and options. I made no changes to the file that i am aware of but maybe something got changed in the Document Settings when I was trying to create some buttons to automate display and rendering tasks.

Robb

I suspect a plug-in is causing the slowness.
Try temporarily disabling the plug-ins that did not ship with Rhino, restart, and see if that makes any difference.

I suspect it will.
Then you can enable them systematically until you find the culprit.

This is a recent install on a new computer build that I have been careful to not load with plugins. The only addon I am certain I loaded is SimLabs 3D PDF exporter. The only change relative to that was to create a toolbar button for access. I disabled that and it did not seem to help. Is there an simple way to identify the plugins that did not ship with Rhino?

Launching the options panel or even exiting Rhino takes a minute or more with these models loaded. Other work seems to progress OK.

Options > Plug-ins
Change the list filter to “Plug-ins that do not ship with Rhino”

Anytime I hear “new computer” I suspect the user has not finished updating everything from the computer maker. Video drivers, BIOS updates, etc.

Thanks for that info. There are only 3 plugins showing as non standard - Flamingo nXt - Grasshopper - SimLabs 3D PDF. I just installed Grasshopper today for another project and it had no impact on my issues.

I built this box about 3 months ago and have been running it well for a while. I don’t let MS jam updates down the pipe but do check what they are suggesting on a frequent basis. Just updated the video drivers (nVida GTX 970) after I noticed the Rhino problem with no impact on the issue. Nothing else changed on the hardware or driver front to my knowledge.

Another thing to try: bad objects.

Once or twice I have had slowdowns and glitches with ‘bad objects.’ These were apparently trimmed at some illegal value (not sure!) and were not even visible in the viewport. I only knew something was up by viewport weirdness and slow-downs.

The Rhino tech support dudes suggested: Analyze → Diagnostics →Select Bad Objects. I then deleted the object and re-built it.

OK. Follow through,
Disable Flamingo and restart Rhino.
Does the problem go away or not?
If not, it’s not Flamingo.

OK I did disable Flamingo and rhino moves as expected with no hanging. The real challenge now is that I have this model set up with Flamingo materials which do not render with the Rhino renderer. Also, I am sending all these hi-res (7680 x 5760) renders out to the farm as they take a very long time for 100 passes.

I just loaded the same model on my creaky old laptop and it performs as before so it would seem that I have changed some setting in Flamingo on my desktop that is generating this issue. I went through the options pages one at a time and compared laptop and desktop. I could find nothing different. Is there a way to reset Flamingo back to default settings?

SelectBadObjects collected a number of objects but these have all been a part of the scene since early days. Nothing new there.

Thanks a bunch guys - I hope we can solve this soon.
Robb

@scottd
Any ideas here?

Did you try to delete them and then see what happens? I would then save the file with a temporary name, close, and re-start Rhino to see if that helps.

I believe I have figured it out. When I reset the Options>View>Display Modes>Rendered to defaults to clear out any customization ->

  • Lighting method gets set to >Scene Lighting
  • Use Advanced GPU lighting is checked
  • Shadows is turned on

If I set Lighting method to anything BUT Scene Lighting all is OK. This occurs with and without Flamingo nXt loaded. I am not sure what else might be going on but definitely >Scene Lighting with Shadows >on is a killer in this situation.

I am back at work now generating more renders.

Thanks all,
Robb

Hi Robb- does the scene have a lot of lights?

-Pascal

Yes… the scene has 13 spotlights with 3 different IES definitions + 1 spotlight with no IES + 4 point lights + 4 extrusions tagged as all direction light sources.

I have these set on different channels and Separate layers for management. Use lights on layers that are off is NOT checked. Setting Lighting Method to custom seems to be the same as default. Scene Lighting is working at this point but there is something odd about how it looks. I prefer the look as I am rotating or panning the view but then it goes much contrastier and darker when the model comes to rest. Not sure what to do about that.

Thanks for all the input,
Robb

Hmm- ok- I don’t know where the collision lies exactly, but I believe the OpenGL fakery of scene lighting is restricted to 8 lights total - maybe more these days, @jeff can straighten me out. And, I think, if I remember right, these are only interpreted as directional lights - so I don’t know what it tries to do with other types of lights of light emitting geometry- hopefully ignore them but maybe not…

-Pascal