AFMG Network Forum

Arthur · Member

Just wondering what are the size limitations on the number of vertices, faces, etc for an EASE model? I would assume this may be tied to how much RAM I have. Anything to be careful of in reading the "Help/Memory Used" meters? I'm working on one right now that so far has 1056 faces and 1579 vertices, and I'm still not finished yet! Shocked

Stefan · Member

Hi Arthur,

you are correct, there is a limit. All data tables in EASE 4.x are based on 4-byte integers. This means you can use up to roughly 2'000'000'000 items of each kind. But as you already indicated, even for a Vertex a dozen bytes need to be allocated, so the actual RAM available sets a limit.

However, the greatest limitation appears to be the speed during the editing process. It seems that computers handle large numbers of items quite differently, so sometimes we see EASE being slow already for a few 100 items, sometimes it needs some 1000s.

We have successfully modelled buildings of up to 12000 faces, all drawn in EASE. No need to worry in your case, yet!

But consider, for acoustic modelling such an amount of detail is seldom necessary. Experience shows that usually 100-200 faces are sufficient to simulate any conventional venue. Especially for use in AURA, smaller faces should be rather realized by increasing the scattering factor of a large face than by modeling the knob on a door.

Best example for that: roof of a church with beams or floor of a church with pews. Don't model the beams or pews, just the large faces. Then assign sufficiently large scattering numbers to the faces, use the scattering wizard in the material database as a guideline.

If the time is available, it is mostly useful to build two models, a detailed one for presentation and maybe direct sound coverage and a rough one for room acoustics and ray tracing.

Stefan