ODBClient - element_connectivity method is quite time consuming for larger .odb files

[KarasTomas]

Hello,

We are writing script to extract results from Abaqus .odb into .vmap (or HDF5) file using pylife and its odbClient. We have an issue with element_connectivity method. It is quite time consuming. It takes about 160 s to load and save the data of approximately 50 k nodes mesh.

The 160 s is length of whole process from start to save (geometry of one instance and stress variable "S" in one frame of one step), where element_connectivity method took around 150 s.

We are using the element_connectivity method to construct a two level MultiIndex Pandas DataFrame (same as in Mesh Class) necessary for other applications. Namely saving the instance geometry to vmap or saving stress variable after averaging values at nodes.

element_connectivity_test.zip
I've included the code used in attachment and I can provide the .odb file used (but it is 0.8 GB). Uploaded code is modified to use .odb file from /demos/kt1.odb (which is significantly smaller)

I would assume that the long load time is caused by the connectivity DataFrame construction as it has list of nodes for each element with variable/not fixed number of nodes. That is why I includes different approach where i get the connectivity (or rather mesh) from the stress variable "S". But this is not ideal for cases stress might not be calculated. This speeds up the process form 160 s to about 15 s.

Do you have any ideas where could be the problem and how could be element_connectivity speeded up?

Thank you in advance for any advice, kind regards
Tomas
CTU in Prague

[johannes-mueller]

Hi @KarasTomas

thank you very much for reaching out. I have done some profiling and performance tests. This indeed seems to be an issue that needs to be solved. At this point I cannot tell how quickly we can get it solved.

You can track the progress in #121, closing the discussion here.

[johannes-mueller]

@KarasTomas Please try again with the new pyLife-2.1.3 release. Note that you also have to update odbserver in its environment.

[KarasTomas]

@johannes-mueller
Thank you for dealing with this so quickly. I'll try the new release and let you know.

Edit:
The issue seems to be fixed. The cell shown in the beginning of this conversation with previous element_connectivity load time of 150 s was reduced to 3.4 s.

Thank you again for resolving this.
Tomas