Appendix - Performance Optimisation

Best Practise for Optimal Performance

There are several options and ways to optimise the performance within UniversalPlantViewer (UPV). This document is intended to help find the best solution for your specific needs.

Optimising the Model and Data

UPV by itself is able to handle models and sessions of literally any size, but the performance depends on the setup of the device in use. Depending on the OS (Windows, Android, iOS), the CPU, GPU and RAM, there can be restrictions and limits regarding the usage of UPV or any other software. In this case, we recommend optimising your model with regard to the following:

Attribute Information

Even though the amount of attributes play a minor role for the overall model size, the number of attributes in the model can affect the overall performance. There are several leverage points to improve performance:

Avoid unnecessary attributes Many authoring systems create attributes that are of no informational value to the user, e.g., color, shading, and other information relevant to the authoring system only. By removing these attributes from the session in UPV Builder, you can streamline the information for your session. The less attributes the better the orientation in UPV and the faster the search and other functions perform.
Fixed attributes before custom attributes If you do not need to change attribute values during the UPV runtime, preferrably use the SDK import functionalities (e.g., ExcelImport plugin) before Custom Attributes. Custom Attributes are loaded on model opening and extend loading time noticeably if they are used extensively.
Optimise attribute hierarchy In UPV you can define your custom hierarchy, enabling you to streamline the structure of your data, thus improving performance for the model and display speed of attributes at object selection change.

Model Scope

Especially for mobile devices with restricted memory management, the scope of the model can have an impact on the performance. For these mobile devices, we recommend using the package functionality in UPV builder to reduce the full model to smaller packages, still enabling the mobile user to view the different packages separately on their mobile device.

Performance Options

In the UPV settings there are several options to tweak the performance of the viewer, influencing loading, caching and shading of the model:

Render quality level Low - display the model without shading. Recommended for best performance Medium - display simple shading. Recommended for overlapping surfaces High - best quality including shadows. Highest ressource comsumption
Triangles limit Defines the number of triangles displayed simultaneously. The more triangles are being displayed, the better the view gets but the more performance is needed.
Memory mesh cash size (triangles) These settings define the number of triangles kept in the memory. This has influence on the RAM usage. Setting the memory mesh cash size to 0 disables the caching - this results in slightly longer reloading times but lowers the memory usage of the viewing device.
Memory model cache size (bytes) Sets the maximum amount of RAM available to the model. This setting controls the memory usage and can be adapted to suit devices with lower memory sizes.

We recommend to adapt these settings/options to values that suit either most of your devices or - for maximum compatibility - to the lowest common setting. Users with more powerful workstations and devices with regard to CPU, GPU and RAM can adapt these values individually and save their settings to be loaded manually subsequently.

The Alternatives

Upgrade the Hardware

One alternative would be to upgrade the hardware on your devices (CPU, GPU, RAM on workstations or desktops or better equipped mobile devices). This often leads to a much better performance on the devices in question. When acquiring new hardware, consider these parameters for optimum performance.

Browser-Based Viewing

Alternatively or if none of the above measures leads to the expected results, you can use our browser-based viewing technology. This unique technology enables you to view your model in any industry standard web browser without any installation, plugins, or other requirements except for an internet (or intranet) connection to the server. This technology relocates the computing into the cloud or your corporate intranet. This requires powerful hardware on the server side but therefore enables literally any device to view models of any size at top performance.