Hey Greg, surface and object highlighting works fine for me in the 3D and Shaded views. I can't notice any difference in speed for normal. The first port of call in any problem like this is always your video driver. Also, most gaming vards let you adjust settings ona per-application basis. I've never noticed any difference using this, but it's possible that there's a setting somewhere causing a problem.
On the forum, I agree, it can take an ages of the earth to show the list of topics.
- mark
Thanks for the comment, Mark.
Hmm, all I can say is that I have an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 GPU on my (Lenovo) Legion Y540-17IRH gaming laptop (less than a year old) with an Intel Core i7 9th Gen CPU.
The NVIDIA display control panel works, but doesn't offer any different settings for different apps. I am at a loss as to where to look further.
My understanding is that OpticStudio does not actually use the GPU for any raytracing calculations. (This should be on the wish list!!! imagine how much faster NSC raytracing could be...). I would think that the GPU might be used for these 3D and Shaded views, though...and for graphics windows showing results!
-- Greg
Raytracing doesn't really get a lot of benefit from GPUs in our tests as there's too much memory to move around. However, the layouts and analysis drawings do, and they are rendered on the GPU. I have a Lenovo laptop too, less powerful graphics card than yours, and all is fine for me.
Don Dickinson @ Zemax may know more, but to me it sounds like something isn't right on your machine. I'd try reinstalling OS, and then -gulp- doing a restore of the operating system. Good luck!
Hi guys!
Greg - this sounds like a graphics driver-related issue to me. In situations like this, the first thing I would suggest is to make sure each of your graphics cards are up-to-date. As your laptop is less than a year old, they probably already have very recent drivers on them.
Next, you can try to update some of the graphics-related settings in OpticStudio. We have a list of the different settings to modify in the Knowledgebase article https://support.zemax.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500005576622-What-to-do-if-the-graphics-windows-in-OpticStudio-are-black-or-blank. In particular, it would be a good idea to work through fixes #2, 3, and 4.
Try out those suggestions and let me know if that helps!
Best,
Allie
I didn't at the time, but wanted to update the community that in August I *did* succeed in speeding up my graphics...it was a graphics setting. I proved this and fixed it as follows:
Graphics Settings in Windows 10 Settings has a 'Graphics performance preference' and I set specific preference of 'High performance' for Zemax OpticStudio. That alone did not seem to help.
I could incriminate graphics settings as follows:
Lenovo Legion gaming laptop came with a gaming-oriented control panel called Lenovo Vantage.
'With Vantage Edge, your settings will be automatically tuned based on usage. Maximum performance when gaming, longer battery life when you're not.
'Hybrid Mode
Disable advanced GPU settings when not gaming to boost battery performance'
When I did this (and restarted computer), Display and Video settings were missing from NVIDIA Control Panel, but 'Manage 3D settings' was still there.
OpticStudio highlighting was faster (only 1-2 seconds when changing objects in NSC Editor), so this improvement by 'disabling advanced GPU settings' suggested that the slow response was indeed caused by a graphics setting.
But staying in 'Hybrid Mode' is not for me...it even disabled adjusting the display brightness down and up (Fn-F5 and Fn-F6)!
I *did* find the KnowledgeBase articles helpful, especiallyhttps://support.zemax.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500005489421-Setting-OpticStudio-to-use-an-advanced-graphics-card by Erin Elliott and Don Dickinson.
My NVIDIA Control Panel doesn't look exactly like the one discussed in that article (it's a newer version than in the KB article); specifically, only one graphics card (the NVIDIA) is shown in Device Manager, and there is no choice of another 'preferred graphics processor' offered.
But I now see Global Settings and Program Settings (perhaps similar to the more-distilled/automated profile in Windows 10 Graphics Settings?).
*****
Setting Zemax OpticStudio to High Performance was not sufficient. I think that I finally fixed it when I also set the ***second program*** 'zemaxgraphicsinfo.exe' to High Performance in the Windows 'Graphics settings,' too. (see below):
*****
Now the refresh of the NSC 3D Layout when another object is selected is only 1-2 seconds; not instantaneous, but as good as it was in 'Hybrid Mode.'
-- Greg
