For a long time (At least KiCad V5 and two different (Both Linux) PC’s, I have been noticing intermittent performance in the 3D viewer, where it does not always react to mouse input, and I thought it was some irregular thing. After further investigation I discovered that the “rendering stop” is present at a regular interval every two seconds. I have timed 30 of them in one minute. In the screen capture below I am constantly moving the mouse in circles, and every 2 seconds, the screen updates stop for about half a second.
Recently I discovered this is not limited to the 3D viewer, but happens everywhere in KiCad. In the following screen capture, I’m constantly scrolling up and down though a menu in the Schematic Editor, and it also shows the freeze every two seconds.
Also, when scrolling through the menu test I notice my CPU fan spinning up and I see a CPU utilization of over 50% (one thread out of 12 (Ryzen 5600G)).
I tested this on the: Olinuxino A64 Rev C project. At first I thought it was related to the PCB complexity. I also tried it on the CIAA-ACC (HPC) project (also from Made with kicad | KiCad EDA but this does not show this issue. It renders fine.
I started creating a bug report on gitlab, but had some trouble uploading the .mp4 screen casts, so I thought to put them on this forum first.
Application: KiCad x86_64 on x86_64
Version: 8.0.1-8.0.1-0~ubuntu20.04.1, release build
Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.2.2
FreeType 2.10.1
HarfBuzz 2.6.4
FontConfig 2.13.1
libcurl/7.68.0 OpenSSL/1.1.1f zlib/1.2.11 brotli/1.0.7 libidn2/2.2.0 libpsl/0.21.0 (+libidn2/2.2.0) libssh/0.9.3/openssl/zlib nghttp2/1.40.0 librtmp/2.3
Platform: Linux Mint 20.3, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK, X11, xfce, x11
Build Info:
Date: Mar 14 2024 15:11:44
wxWidgets: 3.2.1 (wchar_t,wx containers) GTK+ 3.24
Boost: 1.71.0
OCC: 7.6.3
Curl: 7.68.0
ngspice: 42
Compiler: GCC 9.4.0 with C++ ABI 1013
Build settings:
I opened my most recent (rather simple) board, displayed it in the 3D viewer. I can continuously move the mouse in circles with no hesitation on the display. In the lower left corner I can see the “last render time”. For my system if ranges from 3 to 16 ms. Curious why the variation since I will see 5 to 8 3 ms render time then a few 15 - 16 ms renderings. Visibility there seems no difference I can detect.
I post this only to suggest it may be a Linux or Linux version of Kicad issue.
You may also try moving the 3D using the keyboard only (no mouse). See if the hesitation is still there.
I’m on Linux (Lubuntu) running V7 and have never seen this.
Also not with 5.1 or 6.
An unresponsive mouse is more likely related to BIOS or the basic OS functionality.
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The thing is, the mouse is not unresponsive. Note how the pointer continues to move smoothly, it’s only the 3D image (and the menu in the second vid) that freezes.
This points back to KiCAD (although not definitively, of course). I’ve seen stuff like this when a debug build has been accidentally released.
I just did another little test. The A64 Olinuxino Rev C, still freezes for an instant every two seconds, while the “Boatcontrol” project does not. So it appears to be related to some configuration setting, but Accelerated Graphics is on for the A64, both in the schematic and the PCB.
I also find it weird that I see the slowdown in all of KiCad’s sub programs for the A64 project. Even in the symbol editor:
Can someone try this on another PC?
The A64 is one of the Made with kicad | KiCad EDA projects, and you can find it in the repository below.