Thrive Layout Tool Grief...

[KeithMan]

I am running a 12/24 Core/Thread Windows 10 machine with 64GB of RAM. Ripping files in Thrive's output Que seems pretty quick, but if I run things through Layout Tool to resize or edit, it seems slow as molasses and sometimes just hangs before finishing. I always seem to have poor experience with Java Apps. Is this just par for the course or can anyone give me some tips to try?

I am running the latest version of Thrive.

 

[KeithMan]

I'll assume you're running a SSD as well, are all of your stored production files on the SSD or a HDD? Is Onyx installed on an SSD also?
Pulling files off a HDD should be fast enough, but if you're reripping it back to the HDD, you'll see a pretty harsh bottleneck.

Yeah. Everything being worked on is kept on the computers SSD and then transferred to our RAID for storage.

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

Layout tool was excruciatingly slow on 10.2 and 12.2 so we never used it. Haven't even touched it on 21 yet... but I'm assuming it's much of the same.
I complained about it back in 2013, and they just said it's how it was and was more of a 'bonus' piece of software and if you wanted to use it, great, but didn't really want to hear about the complaints.

Edit: Just had a play in 21... Running on a 16C/32T 64GB machine w.SSD. Setting up a job with 200 labels (3" x 5") took <1 second however sending the job to the RIP queue crashed it... just sits there "Processing Images..." forever.

 

[Pauly]

Thrive X21.1
5950X 16c/32t | 32gb ram + SSDs.

Layout tool is useless. Also can't put fotoba marks on it. so now i really have no use for it. (haven't really tried)
Onyx nests out jobs pretty well automatically so i do it that way in the RIP queue.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Layout tool is old code to keep capabilities for legacy customers... It is not a speed demon at all.

 

[White Haus]

Layout tool is useless.

Basically sums up my experience with it over the last 6 years. Every now and then I get ambitious and give it another go, only to realize that it's junk. Could be such a useful piece of software for customizing your nesting etc. but it just doesn't work.

 

[Pauly]

Basically sums up my experience with it over the last 6 years. Every now and then I get ambitious and give it another go, only to realize that it's junk. Could be such a useful piece of software for customizing your nesting etc. but it just doesn't work.

It Could be useful...

IMO for it to be useful, they need to strip it down and use it in a workflow. Preflight - Rip queue - layout tool - send to printer queue.


I've used it now and then when i need to squeeze a bunch of files onto a board, Im lucky i have brute force CPU power to make it work good enough.
But onyx RIP-Queues auto nest does a fairly good job these days.

 

[Ryan Hamilton]

Thrive X21.1
5950X 16c/32t | 32gb ram + SSDs.

Layout tool is useless. Also can't put fotoba marks on it. so now i really have no use for it. (haven't really tried)
Onyx nests out jobs pretty well automatically so i do it that way in the RIP queue.

So pauly I was wondering how thrive performs on newer hardware? Right now we're running it on an older dell r710 I think with Xeon E5-2697 v2 it has 24 threads so presumably 12 cores . Tons of cores but might a newer CPU rip faster? You mention running it on 5950x what did you run on b4 the upgrade? Did you notice a substantial or worthwhile improvement? also I am not directly referring to the layout tool necessarily but just ripping jobs in general.

 

[balstestrat]

So pauly I was wondering how thrive performs on newer hardware? Right now we're running it on an older dell r710 I think with Xeon E5-2697 v2 it has 24 threads so presumably 12 cores . Tons of cores but might a newer CPU rip faster? You mention running it on 5950x what did you run on b4 the upgrade? Did you notice a substantial or worthwhile improvement? also I am not directly referring to the layout tool necessarily but just ripping jobs in general.

You would gain by upgrading to something newer that has faster Core clock speeds. Probably near double than what that xeon has. Also consider that fast storage (NVMe for example) makes things fly.

If you only have few RIP licenses you could gain a lot more by getting few additional ones. But that mostly helps to process hundreds of files every day.

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

So pauly I was wondering how thrive performs on newer hardware? Right now we're running it on an older dell r710 I think with Xeon E5-2697 v2 it has 24 threads so presumably 12 cores . Tons of cores but might a newer CPU rip faster? You mention running it on 5950x what did you run on b4 the upgrade? Did you notice a substantial or worthwhile improvement? also I am not directly referring to the layout tool necessarily but just ripping jobs in general.

If you moved to a 5950x you'd notice a considerable difference. Onyx isn't terribly efficient with multiple cores, and as balstestrat says above you'd be better off with stronger single core speed:

Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2 vs AMD Ryzen 9 5950X [cpubenchmark.net] by PassMark Software

Single thread benchmark is around double your current CPU, plus there are a few more cores as well as an added bonus. Price per performance the 5950x is very difficult to beat.

 

[Pauly]

I forgot the CPU i came from, but it was a 4c/8t. Xeon. i was bottlenecking it so badly, it would lock up on me.
the 5950x is leaps and bounds over it.
But..
it depends on how many RIP engines you run. As signmeup says, onyx is crap at multicore. it's somewhat better these days, but still sucks.

If you only have 4 RIP engines, you'd probably not need more than a r7 5800x 8c/16t
I only have 4 engines, but i rip 50 files at once. i do not come close to putting any load on it.

But will you notice a difference? Absolutely. Not only do you have faster and more efficient cores, it has a lot more instructions per cycle (IPC)

 

[Ryan Hamilton]

You would gain by upgrading to something newer that has faster Core clock speeds. Probably near double than what that xeon has. Also consider that fast storage (NVMe for example) makes things fly.

If you only have few RIP licenses you could gain a lot more by getting few additional ones. But that mostly helps to process hundreds of files every day.

So at this point we're not that big, I mean there only 4 ppl in the shop. We have a general use HP Latex 360 wide format, a Canon iPF Pro 6000 for fine art, and a Flatbed UV printer from CET (it kinda sucks but it gets the job done). Those are the printers we use onyx thrive for, we use print n cut workflow w a multicam flatbed router table and a Roland GX640 plotter. We also run blueprints through HP smart stream on our HP Pagewide XL 8000. So I mean I feel like we are a fairly diverse shop, kinda get into a bit of everything except like small format print.