Capture / Allegro V17.4 Issues

Hi guys, here is an update and this may help some out. I have had a long standing issue with 17.4 pcb editor in that the performance aka graphics speed was sub par compared to 17.2. Anyway Steve's post prompted me to take a fresh look and dig in since official support didn't even respond to my question or issue to begin with other than asking for some system info.

So I am running 17.4 ISR S012 on Windows 10 Ver ( OS Build 18363.1379) and previously was running 17.2 ver of Orcad/Allegro.

Since I had a previous release it suffices to say everything was setup to my preferences. You know the drill, Scripts, Libs paths etc. On 17.4 I used my previous 17.2 .env file as it had all the settings so as to make the ramp up easier.

So the first thing I did was follow Steve's suggestion on the Skill file as a possible avenue to see if that was impacting display performance. I found this not to be an issue.

Next I said you know what I am going to blow out the .env file and start fresh. So doing that meant starting with an out of the box experience. To my delight after loading a board I found the display to be very responsive doing pan, zooms etc. This was somewhat illuminating to say the least as I had never seen 17.4 work that good.

Digging around I noticed that the menus were not legacy and changed them to that mode. Did a restart, display performance was still good. Then something dawned me. My display cursor is not full but just the small + so I changed the cursor to infinite.

Oh My, changing the opengl cursor to "Infinite" brought the display performance back to a sub par. It really slowed down the display speed. Enabling the bug nt check box didn't make any difference. So the display issue is the actual opengl "Infinite" Cursor. Try it out on 17.4 and see if you see the same thing. You should notice when you zoom in and out it is not fluid and a small refresh circle like one would see for a system busy mode appears between steps.

Plain English " OpenGl full screen cursor does not work as it did in 17.2" BUG !!!!

Going on a little further I found that start page even when disabled is having an impact too. In particular the Start Page when using the "Full Screen Cursor" adds to how badly the FSC works. Without using the FSC "Full Screen Cursor"
the Start Page looks to have minimal impact.

Everything else looked pretty good. I did notice that re-sizing the Options/Find/View panel produced alot of screen refreshes. 17.2 in this regard is the same. Panel graphics seem faster in say 16.6.

On Capture with ISR S012 I found no issues like what Kenneth showed in his video. Clicking on Symbol attributes and selecting things worked fine. Selecting multiple objects produced no visible display lag. Capture seems to be working normally. I couldn't check CIS as I don't have it.

In the earlier releases of 17.2 Capture did have these issues but they got resolved. Memory is foggy on that but I think a bunch of those issues were related to win10.

By way of a suggestion I think now when a Major release is made available that you just go with system defaults for the pcb editor and then load your custom .env file and confirm all is good in particular if that .env file was used on the prior release. Lastly I can confirm I found no issues with scripts etc. All seems to work good now.

Anyway that is what I found. Cadence Please fix the OpenGl Full Screen Cursor in 17.4.

All the best.

Here's an older video I took for Cadence support using a camera.

https://www.dropbox.com/home/Cadence%20V17.4?preview=V17.4_dual_4k_zoom1.MOV

Hi Kenneth.

Couple of things. I went back and looked at Capture 17.4. On closer inspection I do see that refreshing like in your video. What I found is if you are zoomed in like I was when I checked it first and you click on say a attribute value of a component there is a refresh that happens to the whole schematic sheet when the Properties dialog box pops up. Zoomed in it is not very noticeable, Zoomed out it is. Capture 17.2 does not have this issue. To me it is like there is a display caching issue going on. I noticed your monitors from dell. Very nice. I can see on a larger monitor one having more real estate to work with so yes this constant refreshing is bad. In 17.4 over time talking about 30 minutes or so doing pan zoom click on values etc the refreshing of the sheet gets worse.

Seems broken to me. Does not work like 17.2. In 17.2 it is rare to see the sheet refresh at all.

On your video about shapes. What I see is when you hover over the shape and then re-size it  is there is a striped outline that appears. I don't see ghosting or anything unusual, maybe the video is not showing it very well. Anyway there is a setting called "Display_nohilitefont" under user preferences. What this setting does when checked is display the edge of the shape or bounding area of the shape as a solid line instead of striped as in your video.

My preference is to have it checked as I don't like dashed lines on shapes. Check that setting and see if it helps you out. I believe that particular setting actually applies to all highlighting of objects.

There is one other thing with 17.4 PCB editor. Highlighting Clines. Normally in the editor if you check the find filter for clines then pass your cursor over say a bus of clines each one will highlight very fast
pretty much instant as is the case in 16x, 17.2. What I am seeing here in 17.4 is that the clines do not highlight unless you move the mouse very slowly over them. This may well be another OpenGl issue
too.

All the best.

Here is a better resolution video showing the shape lag issue.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vgfh3azkkz52g84/V17.4_Allegro_Shape_Lag_Updated.mp4?dl=0

Ah I see now. When I select a shape and then grab the handles and lastly do a resize there is a Lag. 17.2 Has zero lag in this regard.

I was checking a few things here. Can you confirm if you set your find filter to symbols and then pass your mouse across symbols at a moderate pace that they highlight without issue or are you seeing that they do not highlight at all.

I have a few components in a row. If I swoop the mouse across them they do not highlight as per the norm. If I do the same at a slower speed they do.

Basically what I am seeing is any highlighting operation is out to lunch.

Yikes....

Ah I see now. When I select a shape and then grab the handles and lastly do a resize there is a Lag. 17.2 Has zero lag in this regard.

I was checking a few things here. Can you confirm if you set your find filter to symbols and then pass your mouse across symbols at a moderate pace that they highlight without issue or are you seeing that they do not highlight at all.

I have a few components in a row. If I swoop the mouse across them they do not highlight as per the norm. If I do the same at a slower speed they do.

Basically what I am seeing is any highlighting operation is out to lunch.

Yikes....

Zoom out and you'll see the shape lag becomes more pronounced.

I have the same symbol highlight phenomenon you have...but I'd be willing to bet that is by design as to not slow down the system with mega-highlights if someone is zoomed out on a large board and just swinging the cursor around...probably a delay they added...maybe anyways.

That highlighting issue applies to everything in 17.4. The full screen cursor and the shapes graphics issues all point to OpenGL as far as I can tell. Something is really wrong with this. I mean 17.2 is fine so there must have been a change to 17.4 that has really hammered the graphics speed on windows 10. BTW it is the same on Winserver 2012, 2019 too so not limited to windows 10.

For the moment I think 17.2 is probably my best option. 17.4 has the new Icons and it looks a bit like competitors products but you know what, honestly if the graphics speed is not there you flat out do not have a viable cad system IMHO. The PCB editor has always been fast as in blazing fast for many many years so I am kind of scratching my head like what on earth has happened.

Anyway hopefully Cadence can resolve these issues & I am sure they will.

Thanks for checking the highlighting at that end. If you want to see a horror movie, turn on the full screen cursor and try the shape operations with it

All the best.

I took a look at V17.2 and you are right, the highlighting is pretty much instantaneous unlike V17.4