More Current NVIDIA Graphics settings

[jmewen]

Unfortunately my drawing is under an NDA so i cannot share it.  

 

I have a new laptop and i have just moved from 2020 to 2022 after a couple of years of not wanting to change software in the middle of ongoing projects.  As I am getting up to speed i am noticing some surprising things.  The biggest among them is that I just tried to snap an unconstrained dimension in a viewport and it took 15 seconds for it to complete the snap.  I figured some other function caused a hiccup so I repeated the dimension to make sure, but it lagged again.

 

I am not a tech expert, but I think my laptop should be very up to the task.

• Xeon W-11855M CPU at 3.2GHz
• 128GB RAM
• 16GB NVIDIA RTX A5000 GPU, 

The drawing is a bit problematic. It is a composite of lots of people's work from different drafting platforms over many years that really needs to be regenerated by a single person with a single approach to the process.  It is meant to be a ground plan of a large area, but some sections are modeled, some flat lines are nurbs unnecessarily, lots of lines are doubled, etc. Zooming out and zooming in is fairly laggy.  I still don't see why what i am doing should slow things down other than I have not really gotten to optimize the graphics card settings.  I suspect the drawing is a big part of the problem; I have had other drawings open that hav enot experienced this trouble. But I feel like there should be enough power in my machine that this should still not matter. 

 

I have tried looking at the forum to find settings preferred for recent editions, but i mostly find that they refer to an article form 2014.  Is there anything more modern that might be of use?  I took several of the settings from the 2014 thread about Nvidia cards and applied where they looked like they belonged.  My NVIDIA settings are below.

 

Edited August 16, 2022 by jmewen
Corrected my hasty typing

[zoomer]

I also would like to see updated recommended GPU Settings,

for all GPU vendors.

The ones for VW that I know are from 2017 or earlier.

But they looked like being done by someone who had some

insight of what VW will need or not like.

 

 

But AFAIK for Pro GPUs, where there is no special driver for VW

which it could profit from - there are 2 drivers available.

One that works well and the other had issues in the past.

As I have no Pro GPU, I do not know which is which.

 

But you may find some threads about it on this and the German forum.

 

[jmcewen]

14 minutes ago, zoomer said:

I also would like to see updated recommended GPU Settings,

for all GPU vendors.

The ones for VW that I know are from 2017 or earlier.

But they looked like being done by someone who had some

insight of what VW will need or not like.

 

 

But AFAIK for Pro GPUs, where there is no special driver for VW

which it could profit from - there are 2 drivers available.

One that works well and the other had issues in the past.

As I have no Pro GPU, I do not know which is which.

 

But you may find some threads about it on this and the German forum.

 

Looks like i managed to start a profile with a typo in it and i could not get back into it when I tried.  Typing is not my strong suit today.

 

Thanks! I will brush up on my German.  I mostly only know how to order in a restaurant or shop at a hardware store.  This will be new to me.🙂 

 

I will look to see if my drivers are up to date as well.  I would still love to see recommended settings, though, if anyone has a a while to post what is working well.

[zoomer]

38 minutes ago, jmcewen said:

I will brush up on my German.

 

Maybe @herbieherb chimes in, he was aware of the Pro driver differences

and acts here on the US Forum too ....

[herbieherb]

Nvidia generally offers two driver types. "New Feature Branch and "Production/Studio Branch". The "New Feature Branch" is called differently for the Geforce graphics cards, namely "Game Ready Driver", but it is the same concept. The idea is that new features are released first in the "New Feature Branch" and "Game Ready Driver" and later - when everything is stable - the Studio driver is updated.

So most of the time the Studio driver is not the latest, but sometimes it is.

If Vectorworks has graphics glitches which are not caused by Vectorworks origin problems etc., you should first upgrade the driver to the latest version. It is best to look at both driver versions and take the one with the newer date. If the glitches persist, try the other one as well. However, this generally has no influence on the speed.

The driver settings also have no noticeable influence on the performance. If you have a good cooling system, it helps to select "Maximum Performance". On laptops and depending on the usage scenario, this can also have the opposite effect because the GPU generally runs hotter and thus the boost clock is not kept as long. The same applies to the Windows power settings.

Generally with modern hardware, only slightly more performance can be achieved with settings, drivers, overclocking and undervolting.

So I would adress your problem in the plan itself:

• Try to keep as much structure as possible when importing. Make sure that symbols and hatchings etc. remain as such. Distribute the dwg's on different layers and switch on only what you are currently working on.
• Divide slow layers further by moving certain areas to other layers and making them invisible.

Clean up radically:

• Pack recurring elements into symbols
• Replace exploded hatches with real ones.
• Replace circles broken up into lines with real ones.
• Build the new plan using intelligent objects: Walls/Doors etc.

Edited August 17, 2022 by herbieherb

[jmcewen]

21 minutes ago, herbieherb said:

 

So I would adress your problem in the plan itself:

• Try to keep as much structure as possible when importing. Make sure that symbols and hatchings etc. remain as such. Distribute the dwg's on different layers and switch on only what you are currently working on.
• Divide slow layers further by moving certain areas to other layers and making them invisible.

Clean up radically:

• Pack recurring elements into symbols
• Replace exploded hatches with real ones.
• Replace circles broken up into lines with real ones.
• Build the new plan using intelligent objects: Walls/Doors etc.

Will do what I can. Unfortunately, this is huge file will a lot of layers, many of which I do not know much about.  I am hoping after my current project with this is finished that I can turn cleaning the drawing into a freelance project. 

 

It has elements that have been imported from Rhino, AutoCAD, Sketchup, Solidworks, etc all drawn by different people over the course of a couple decades with no real file maintenance along the way. Each new drawing added its own layers and classes.  Turning these off one by one has helped some, but it is still clunky. Most of it was done by people who don't know much about drawing other than making lines.  Chunks of it have become 3D polys and NURBS even though it is strictly meant to be a ground plan.  Parts of it were models that got dropped in because someone was too lazy to flatten to a plan view, but when they dropped it into place they also broke it down into all its constituent edges, so I cannot just manipulate the larger model.

 

It is a mess.

 

I appreciate your help.

[herbieherb]

Something else you could try:
Vectorworks has been optimized over the years for plans that use OIP's and are highly structured. Therefore pure line drawings sometimes run better in older versions. I have tested it down to version 2016 and it was able to handle a lot more single lines (but a current Vectorworks can display a lot more geometry as long as they are structured with OIP's, symbols etc.).
Try to get the oldest version you have and test your drawing there. It is possible that you can work easier there.

I wouldn't go any further than 2016 though, that's when I think the earliest form for GPU acceleration of 2D plans was introduced.

Edited August 17, 2022 by herbieherb

[Jeremy Best]

Hi @jmewen, I provide Tech Support for Vectorworks users in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. I've encountered many cases where well-spec'd computers suffered lag simply due to the quantity of geometry present in a file. Based on your description of the document, the hardware you have and the relative performance of other documents, it sounds very much like this is the case for the file in question. @herbieherb made some excellent suggestions on how to optimise the file or minimise how much load it places on your hardware. 

 

Depending on how many hours remain to be spent on this project/file, making the file/geometry more efficient may or may not be worth while. If not, the easiest way to improve performance will likely be to just use Layer and Class visibilities to show only the geometry needed to guide your work, as Herbieherb suggested. 

 

One file like this that I reviewed recently went from frequent 'prolonged spinning wheel' moments to 'zero spinning wheel' moments, simply by applying the 'Simplify Polys' or 'Simplify 3D Polygons' commands to polygons that were excessively detailed. If you haven't used these command before, I recommend you review how they work in Vectorworks Help before you do.