Author Topic: Altium 16.1.12 slow during re-pour  (Read 4185 times)

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Offline Christian CarlssonTopic starter

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Altium 16.1.12 slow during re-pour
« on: December 14, 2016, 08:00:46 am »
Hello, our HW guys have some problems with slooooow Altium....

Conditions:
PCB size 396 mm x 351 mm, 10 layers
re-pour all polygon takes appr 1.5 hours - is this normal?

Laptop PC:
i7 - 2.80 Ghz
32 GB RAM
(no SSD)
 

Offline T3sl4co1l

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Re: Altium 16.1.12 slow during re-pour
« Reply #1 on: December 14, 2016, 08:11:13 am »
And I suppose there's enough components on that board to justify the size and layer count?  (Thousands of nets, 10k's of pads?)

It may help to use planes instead of polygons, and use smaller polygons rather than board-size polygons.

Did anyone call service?

Tim
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Offline DerekG

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Re: Altium 16.1.12 slow during re-pour
« Reply #2 on: December 14, 2016, 12:02:53 pm »
Laptop PC:
i7 - 2.80 Ghz
32 GB RAM

Close all other applications plus multiple web browser tabs can chew up quite a lot of memory.

Also, fully shut down your laptop (rather than using "hibernate" or "suspend") to ensure all memory is freed up. Windows has a habit of hanging onto memory if multiple hibernates/suspends are the usual modus operandi.
I also sat between Elvis & Bigfoot on the UFO.
 

Offline Christian CarlssonTopic starter

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Re: Altium 16.1.12 slow during re-pour
« Reply #3 on: December 14, 2016, 03:26:07 pm »
Thanks for feedback, answer in blue

And I suppose there's enough components on that board to justify the size and layer count?  (Thousands of nets, 10k's of pads?)
Strange question, but - yes........

It may help to use planes instead of polygons, and use smaller polygons rather than board-size polygons.
Not applicable for this design

Did anyone call service?
First of many things we have tried....

Tim
 

Offline Christian CarlssonTopic starter

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Re: Altium 16.1.12 slow during re-pour
« Reply #4 on: December 14, 2016, 03:29:15 pm »
Laptop PC:
i7 - 2.80 Ghz
32 GB RAM

Close all other applications plus multiple web browser tabs can chew up quite a lot of memory.
Well, as Altium quite often "crash", a restart is made now and then, with Altium the only running application after restart......

Also, fully shut down your laptop (rather than using "hibernate" or "suspend") to ensure all memory is freed up. Windows has a habit of hanging onto memory if multiple hibernates/suspends are the usual modus operandi.
See above.....
 

Offline free_electron

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Re: Altium 16.1.12 slow during re-pour
« Reply #5 on: December 14, 2016, 04:19:21 pm »
how many design rules do you have ? clearance rules in particular ... the more of those the longer the repour takes.

also : check the pouring order. you may have conflicts there.

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Offline tszaboo

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Re: Altium 16.1.12 slow during re-pour
« Reply #6 on: December 14, 2016, 04:48:19 pm »
I think you can significantly speed up the pouring, if you can increase the arc approximation/maximum deviation. Also, if you have multiple pours on the same layer with the same net, merge them.
I havens worked with so complex PCB design yet, but few minutes was possible with 4-6 layers and few dozen polygons. I would shelve a bunch of those inner layer polygons and only touch them at the end. Also, I use some mechanical layers to set up poligon boundaries, just a technique I've found useful.
 

Offline U.Bert

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Re: Altium 16.1.12 slow during re-pour
« Reply #7 on: December 19, 2016, 09:40:51 am »
In my experience (partially) disabling online DRC will vastly improve performance and reduce hours of wait time to just sluggish behaviour.
 

Offline technotronix

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Re: Altium 16.1.12 slow during re-pour
« Reply #8 on: January 14, 2017, 10:27:47 am »

What is the size of polygon?
 


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