Not enough RAM - Solution
Has anyone else had difficulties running OpenSCAD on their computer?
Rather ambitiously I installed OpenSCAD on my ASUS X205T (Intel ATOM and 2GB
RAM) and unsurprisingly it keeps crashing. I was thinking about getting a
new PC but I’ve found a much cheaper solution, I’ve installed OpenSCAD in
the cloud (on Amazon servers) and now I’m using it through a remote desktop.
It means that I’m able to run it on an 8 core PC with 32GB of RAM for only
$1 per hour. The difference is quite incredible.
If anyone else is also having trouble with the speed of their laptop, I’m
happy to help you get set up in the cloud.
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Is there any chance you could share a bit of an 'idiot's guide' to setting that up successfully? I fully understand what to do in principle but would be very glad of some concrete pointers...! It would be amazing to add this to the OpenSCAD documentation - if it isn't already!
Alex
-----Original Message-----
From: Discuss [mailto:discuss-bounces@lists.openscad.org] On Behalf Of jamie123
Sent: 11 January 2018 14:21
To: discuss@lists.openscad.org
Subject: [OpenSCAD] Not enough RAM - Solution
Has anyone else had difficulties running OpenSCAD on their computer?
Rather ambitiously I installed OpenSCAD on my ASUS X205T (Intel ATOM and 2GB
RAM) and unsurprisingly it keeps crashing. I was thinking about getting a new PC but I’ve found a much cheaper solution, I’ve installed OpenSCAD in the cloud (on Amazon servers) and now I’m using it through a remote desktop.
It means that I’m able to run it on an 8 core PC with 32GB of RAM for only
$1 per hour. The difference is quite incredible.
If anyone else is also having trouble with the speed of their laptop, I’m happy to help you get set up in the cloud.
--
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On 2018-01-11 14:21, jamie123 wrote:
Rather ambitiously I installed OpenSCAD on my ASUS X205T (Intel ATOM and 2GB
RAM) and unsurprisingly it keeps crashing.
It should just slow down due to swapping a lot rather than crashing. I
found that on Linux it would just keep on trucking even if some renders
took 6-8 hours, but Windows behaved very badly under the same conditions
with the machine unusable for the duration and random apps would be
closed, and sometimes OpenSCAD itself.
I like your cloud solution.
The 32GB Ram is what makes it fast (and clever programming of course ;-) ).
The cores will only play a role, once we have a multithreaded or
multiprocessing version of OpenSCAD. Currently mainly 1 core is used by
OpenSCAD. To bypass this bottleneck, you can split the job and run several
instances of OpenSCAD in parallel to bypass this bottleneck.
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Yeah, playing around with the multi-thread snapshot from april i not sure if
its faster or not but the machine sure stays responsive under heavy load.
8 cores / 16GB
http://files.openscad.org/snapshots/
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On Thu, 11 Jan 2018 07:21:16 -0700 (MST)
jamie123 jamie@easytweety.com wrote:
Has anyone else had difficulties running OpenSCAD on their computer?
I never got much done with it on my laptop. Even if the render worked the
battery unsurprisingly went down rather fast. Laptops in general are not
good at compute heavy tasks because they have low TDP parts and less
cooling so while their peak performance is good a sustained crunch ends
up thermally constrained.
Rather ambitiously I installed OpenSCAD on my ASUS X205T (Intel ATOM and 2GB
RAM) and unsurprisingly it keeps crashing. I was thinking about getting a
new PC but I’ve found a much cheaper solution, I’ve installed OpenSCAD in
the cloud (on Amazon servers) and now I’m using it through a remote desktop.
It means that I’m able to run it on an 8 core PC with 32GB of RAM for only
$1 per hour. The difference is quite incredible.
That's not bad at all! You are probably wasting 6.5 cores because
OpenSCAD doesn't really parallelise yet.
I do most of my big memory processing on second hand Xeon rack boxes
because they are cheap and the RAM is dirt cheap (because it won't fit
"normal" PCs), plus they are noisy and a funny shape so nobody wants them
on their desk 8) Most of them also take 64GB+ easily.
You can pick up Westmere-EP systems really cheaply, and increasingly so
with Sandybridge. I look forward to a production standard parallel
OpenSCAD though - being able to throw 16 cores at it will be nice.
Alan
On 11. jan. 2018 18:07, Parkinbot wrote:
The 32GB Ram is what makes it fast (and clever programming of course ;-) ).
That's what I have locally :-)
The cores will only play a role, once we have a multithreaded or
multiprocessing version of OpenSCAD. Currently mainly 1 core is used by
OpenSCAD. To bypass this bottleneck, you can split the job and run several
instances of OpenSCAD in parallel to bypass this bottleneck.
I run parallel threads in https://github.com/arnholm/xcsg
I don't see why this can't be done just as easily in OpenSCAD.
Fundamentally, the CSG tree defines independent objects before any
boolean, so it invites multithreading.
Carsten Arnholm
I found on Windows (7/64) that once it starts paging the GUI responsiveness
drops to zero, or worse...
When I swapped to a SSD it improved to just usable. But RAM is your friend.
BTW the multi-threaded 'beta' works quite well, until it doesn't, you need
to check the results.
When it doesn't, you need to go back to single threading...
It is not possible to predict what will not work...
Admin - PM me if you need anything, or if I've done something stupid...
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BTW Jamie, the wiki https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/OpenSCAD_User_Manual
is good place for such a guide. I'm happy to help massage any docs you have
onto the wiki.
Admin - PM me if you need anything, or if I've done something stupid...
Unless specifically shown otherwise above, my contribution is in the Public Domain; to the extent possible under law, I have waived all copyright and related or neighbouring rights to this work. Obviously inclusion of works of previous authors is not included in the above.
The TPP is no simple “trade agreement.” Fight it! http://www.ourfairdeal.org/ time is running out!
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Apologies! This is somewhat off your topic Michael,
But sometime ago I offered to upload 5 booklets I had prepared for
introducing junior high school students (11-14years?) to OpenSCAD that
teachers could use in their classes. However I have lost contact with
the person who encouraged me to do it at the time. They involve an
introductory task, two more complicated ones, and two more as challenge
pieces.
Do you think such items are a good idea? I was thinking of having the
booklets in .pdf format on the site with a couple of links in the
appropriate section for teachers to find them and use them. OpenSCAD is
fantastic tool to both reinforce mathematics and science in the virtual
world, and as well through 3-D printing in the real world as well.
Publishing them in OpenOffice would be fine as well for people to more
easily adapt the booklets to their own needs.
If you are not personally available, does/can anybody else see value in
this idea? I am continually amazed at the heady concepts canvassed on
these pages and it is one of my favourite feeds (even though I
contribute almost nothing), and while these simple projects are
definitely at the opposite end to those discussions, I am hoping
bundling them into a handy teaching format may give some teachers out
there inspiration to start the ball rolling on a teaching resource page?
Cheers, Rob
On 12/01/18 11:54, MichaelAtOz wrote:
BTW Jamie, the wiki https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/OpenSCAD_User_Manual
is good place for such a guide. I'm happy to help massage any docs you have
onto the wiki.
Admin - PM me if you need anything, or if I've done something stupid...
Unless specifically shown otherwise above, my contribution is in the Public Domain; to the extent possible under law, I have waived all copyright and related or neighbouring rights to this work. Obviously inclusion of works of previous authors is not included in the above.
The TPP is no simple “trade agreement.” Fight it! http://www.ourfairdeal.org/ time is running out!
Sent from: http://forum.openscad.org/
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