IES VisualAnalysis User's Guide
Improving Performance
VisualAnalysis algorithms are fast by design. Your computer can execute billions of instructions per second. Most VisualAnalysis models you create will analyze in less than 2 minutes and produce reasonable reports. However, just like with any tool, you can get in over your head and become a slave to the machine, waiting literally HOURS for things to process. Please do not let this happen to you.
Most VisualAnalysis customer models contain far less than 10,000 nodes and 150 load combinations. If you model might approach either of these values, then you should really think about performance long before you start modeling.
When you make changes to your project, VisualAnalysis will show you a progress indicator in the status bar, showing it is doing some work in the background. You do not need to "wait" for this! VisualAnalysis takes advantage of the fact that your computer is sitting idle 95% of the time. We use multiple-threading to get some work done. This will not slow you or your other programs because the threads are separate and given low priority. You may use Windows Task manager to monitor how your processor (and all of its cores) are used, and when, and by whom.
Build a model that answers only the questions you need to answer. You might need different models for different questions.
Think about what you want to learn from your model, then model only the essential components. If you can split your structure along a line of symmetry, or at an expansion joint, or otherwise, it might save many hours. Working with a few smaller models can be significantly faster than working with one gigantic model.
Processing time increases on the order of N^3, where N is the number of nodes in your model.
You have likely heard the phrase: "Keep it simple, stupid." When modeling your structure think first, sketch later. Start with the fewest number of elements to accurately model the geometry and boundary conditions, especially with plate elements. Then refine from there, as needed.
Picture View mode can be more expensive than drawing without it, especially in a Result View, where displaced shapes are drawn with stress colors.
Your video card hardware can have a significant impact on graphic performance. VisualAnalysis utilizes Microsoft's DirectX graphics system. If you experience poor performance, graphical "artifacts" such as stray lines, unusual blocks of color, fuzzy text, or similar usability issues, you should investigate or update the video card and drivers. There are a wide range of hardware manufacturers, but the cards are usually based on chip-sets from one of three major companies: NVIDIA, ATI-AMD, or Intel. We have found that most video cards for PCs work just fine. Laptops or tablets may have much lower-quality and/or performance.
We have seen very poor performance from NVIDIA Quadro series cards, which are common on 'workstation' type machines.
Your mouse and mouse driver could also impact performance and behavior to some extent (middle-mouse button configuration and mouse-sensitivity settings, etc.). There is a known issue in Microsoft code that affects certain mouse drivers and maximized windows--if you see strange crashes that do not happen if your window is not maximized, you might try a different mouse.
The fastest analysis is a first order analysis with a linear model. P-Delta is more expensive. Direct Analysis adds load combinations and more iterations. Moving Loads and Time History analysis can be very time consuming.
Analysis, design, and reporting are all directly impacted by the volume of results. The Live Load Reduction feature will add additional load combinations. The Direct Analysis Method adds "Notional Loads" and therefore more load combinations.
Before you add 10,000 loads in 35 load cases with 200 load combinations, check to see that your model is stable under self-weight and then proceed. If you are using automatic Building Code combinations, you might end up with many "redundant" load combinations, ones that you know will not control. The computer program cannot make this judgment and blindly assumes any one of them could control. It pays big dividends to get rid of extraneous combinations, not just in analysis and design time, but also in report size! You can perform this pruning in the , on the tab.
Design performance is directly related to the number of elements, the number of result points along members, and the number of load combinations that need checking. During 'preliminary design', you might use just a few custom load combinations rather than the full set of building code combinations. The performance vs. accuracy settings below can also speed up design checks. Design checks are performed in parallel, so using a CPU with more cores or thread capacity can improve performance.
You can skip unity checks by disabling design groups that you are not directly working on. You can change the check-level in a design group to get better performance during unity check operations as well.
With numerical solutions, answer are always approximate and oftentimes calculated at a number of discrete points. You can reduce the number of places where this happens, balancing between performance and accuracy. VisualAnalysis provides an easy place to manage these settings: Project Settings, Performance.
Most desktop computers have faster CPUs, video cards, and other systems. Laptops can be very low-end. Upgrading your machine can potentially have a big impact on your performance. For a good look at hardware comparisons and available products visit: 
www.cpubenchmark.net
See also: Analysis Performance