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Why is resource selection taking an age?


Tom W.

Question

I've been ignoring this for several months now but thought it was about time I sought advice. Whenever I select a resource from a style drop-down in the Tool Bar, the attributes palette, any of the 'replace' dialogs, etc it takes an AGE (9 secs of spinning beach ball) for the Resource Selector dialog to present itself. I've instead taken to wherever possible finding the resource in the RM + double-clicking it to select it as a way of avoiding the wait.

 

Any ideas what's going on?

 

I'm not sure when exactly this started or what might have caused it. Everything else is working fine.

 

Any tips on how to get things snappy again greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks

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@Jeremy Best you seem like a man with answers: I do have a lot of Favorites files. I have always had a lot but I add to them all the time so they are steadily getting bigger + bigger... So is the slowness I'm experiencing selecting resources simply down to this? To be clear, I can zip through my Favorites in the RM + select resources instantaneously: it's the loading of the Resource Selector which takes 9 seconds...

 

And how come VW can have thousands of resources in their libraries + that's fine but if I have a few hundred in mine that isn't? Incidentally I'd be quite happy hiding the VW resources somewhere else if that would help matters as I hardly ever use them.

 

Thanks for your help.

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The Style Drop downs are populated from the files stored in the Libraries:ObjectStyles:Whatever folder.  You can follow this path in the Application Folder, Workgroup Folder, and User Folder.

 

Take a look at the categories that you feel are slowest and see if there are files in any of the three locations that you don't need. Open the files in the Workgroup and User folder (they are just normal VW files) and see if you have hundreds or thousands of versions of styles that you don't need and could clean up.

 

To populate the menu, VW has to look through all of the files in the appropriate files to make the list. More files and more styles take longer.

 

It could also be that one or more file is corrupt and being slow to access.  Temporarily drag the files from the Workgroup and User folder somewhere else, restart VW and see how long it takes to populate the drop down. If that doesn't help, put everything back. If it does help, put either the user folder or the Workgroup folder back and see if that helps. Then reverse which one you put back.

 

If you find that Workgroup or User is the problem and you can't just delete those files, then put the files back about 1/2 at a time and see if you can isolate the troublesome files.

 

HTH>

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Thanks Pat I haven't noticed any particular category being slower than another: it's all the same. Whether it's picking a Hatch or Line Style from the Attributes Palette or picking a replacement symbol in the 'Choose a Symbol' dialog or any of the other myriad ways you can select a resource. The exception is double-clicking on it in the RM which is instantaneous: why would it be that navigating the RM + selecting resources there is instantaneous yet via the other routes I get the spinning beach ball? Isn't VW doing the same thing in each case?

 

My favourites folders are pretty neat + tidy: if I had 100s/1000s of redundant resources in one of the folders I'd be aware of it as I'm accessing the folders day in day out via the RM but no harm playing around a bit + seeing if removing them makes a difference. Could/should I do the same with the VW libraries in the application folder? Like I say I rarely use these so no point VW searching through them each time as it's only my resources I generally want to access.

 

I don't use workgroup folders 

 

Thanks

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51 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

Could/should I do the same with the VW libraries in the application folder? Like I say I rarely use these so no point VW searching through them each time as it's only my resources I generally want to access.


You can control which resource sources you see in the Resource Manager by using the buttons at the top left-hand corner of the RM File Manager. Your favorites are activated with the ‘Yellow Star’ button, so you could disable some of the other sources if you only want to see your favorites.

22C74E95-9B01-4A25-8B80-8F9E0AFF3986.png.75103067f7809d7f5e3ec26971438971.png

Edited by rDesign
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1 hour ago, Tom W. said:

why would it be that navigating the RM + selecting resources there is instantaneous yet via the other routes I get the spinning beach ball? Isn't VW doing the same thing in each case?

Because when you are picking it from the RM, you are only looking at the resources in a single file. All other ways are giving you a combined list of all of the resources of that type from all of the files that are in the Object Style folder for that type of object. It takes time to open and review all the objects in  the file to find the ones to return.

 

I THINK that if you put a file with lots of different resource type objects, or even one with just a lot of things that are not resources into an Object Style folder it would be slower to access than a file with just the resources of the correct types of styles. So I don't think a "combined" resource style file that is then shortcutter/aliases into multiple Object Styles folders is a good idea as I would be slower. But I have not tested this.

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20 minutes ago, Pat Stanford said:

Because when you are picking it from the RM, you are only looking at the resources in a single file. All other ways are giving you a combined list of all of the resources of that type from all of the files that are in the Object Style folder for that type of object. It takes time to open and review all the objects in  the file to find the ones to return.

 

I THINK that if you put a file with lots of different resource type objects, or even one with just a lot of things that are not resources into an Object Style folder it would be slower to access than a file with just the resources of the correct types of styles. So I don't think a "combined" resource style file that is then shortcutter/aliases into multiple Object Styles folders is a good idea as I would be slower. But I have not tested this.

 

Hmm good point. But my Favorites files are arranged no differently from the VW Libraries, in that I have dedicated files for different resources e.g. Wall Styles, Hardscapes, Textures, Door + Window Symbols, etc. Some resources like materials, textures, hatches, tiles, etc will obviously be spread across multiple files because they are used by multiple styles/objects but that's no different to the VW Libraries...

 

1 hour ago, rDesign said:


You can control which resource sources you see in the Resource Manager by using the buttons at the top left-hand corner of the RM File Manager. Your favorites are activated with the ‘Yellow Star’ button, so you could disable some of the other sources if you only want to see your favorites.

22C74E95-9B01-4A25-8B80-8F9E0AFF3986.png.75103067f7809d7f5e3ec26971438971.png

 

Sure but this has no bearing on my issue which is the time it is taking for resources to load in resource selector dialogs. I have nothing against the VW Libraries + am quite happy having them in the RM + have no issues with the RM itself: as I said this is behaving normally in terms of navigating the folders + selecting resources. It's when I search for resources in the various ways you can do it outside of the RM that I get the spinning beach ball...

 

Like Pat says something must be happening whereby VW is taking the scenic route to find my resources... When I get a sec I will remove all my files from the user folders + see whether it behaves normally when it's just looking at the VW Libraries...

 

I also remember @Boh saying something about limiting the number of shared resources in workgroup folders because it slowed things down otherwise but I assumed this was specific to workgroup working rather than where everything is on the same drive...?

Edited by Tom W.
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As cad manager for our office I had a lot of RM favourites files and I found it slow browsing between resource types in the rm as well as selecting resources  in the RM via a tool. Others in the office didn’t have this issue. I found things sped up significantly when I cut back my favourites files to just 3.

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41 minutes ago, Boh said:

As cad manager for our office I had a lot of RM favourites files and I found it slow browsing between resource types in the rm as well as selecting resources  in the RM via a tool. Others in the office didn’t have this issue. I found things sped up significantly when I cut back my favourites files to just 3.

Absolutely same experience here. To reduce RM favourites files to only few. 
Then it dramaticaly speeds up loading. 
Turning off or rather hiding other libraries in RM will not bring desired effect. 

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Thank you @Boh + @drelARCH! So are you saying that if I consolidated all my resources into fewer VWX files without reducing the overall number of resources that that on its own would speed things up? Or do I need to reduce the total number of resources? I've just counted + I have 68 different VWX files in my Favorites... 

 

Or should I be saving my Wall/Slab/Roof/Door/Window/etc styles in the 'Object Styles' user folder rather than the 'Favorites' folder? Is that what you're saying @Pat Stanford: that it is inherently slower asking VW to search through multiple Favorites files instead of the dedicated files for each tool?

 

Thanks for your help

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We don’t really use the workgroup folders for much, rather we just have a few favourites files with most of what we need in them incl all sorts of different resource types.

 

I would think though that either more resources in fewer favourites files or spreading resources across the user folders would be the ways to go. 

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I think Boh is probably right.  If you are using the Search function in the Resource Manager (RM), then VW has to open every Favorite file and look to see if there is anything that matches the search. If you have a lot of Favorites then that will be slow.

 

If you have thinks like Wall, or Door, or Window Styles that you really only want to show up in the Tool pull down or the Replace dialog from the OIP, then you should probably put those into separate files in the Object Styles location appropriate for those objects.

 

If it make file management easier, you could even make a single file with all of the different types of Styles and use shortcuts/aliases to "put" the one file into the different Object Style folders.

 

Another thing that could help would be to make less but bigger Favorites files. 

 

Or even try Opening your favorites file.  My guess is that if the file is already open and in memory it will search much faster than having to open it and search it from storage.

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It's also my experience that favorites files in the resource selector slows VW down. It seems that at every restart VW loads all files. Since some of our favorite files are over 200mb this takes ages, especially when working from home.. So all my co-workers copied the workgroup libraries with the files to there local drive to fix this issue. But now they have to update those files manual, not ideal.

 

Hope that indexing those files works better with VW2023 as @Andy Broomell hints.

Edited by MarcelP102
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1 hour ago, Andy Broomell said:

I've noticed the same thing as the original poster, where any resource selector (including in the mode bar, attributes palette, and choosing a texture in the Render tab) can take multiple seconds to appear. I find this delay to be incredibly annoying and disruptive. However, as I'm beta testing a build of a future version, this delay seems to have been addressed and fixed (I hope saying so doesn't go against the NDA, since it's not really a new feature, just a bug that's presumably been addressed 🤞)

 

For further context... A while back I did some troubleshooting / testing as to what might be causing the delay, and I discovered it was indeed due to my collection of Favorite files. I filed a bug at the time [VB-185543], and while this bug entry hasn't been touched directly, some other bug of mine recently had a comment from the engineer that lead me to believe that Favorites aren't/weren't "indexed" the same way other library files are indexed. And if my understanding is correct, work was done so that Favorites will be indexed in upcoming versions, allowing these resources to more quickly appear in search results and Resource Selectors. (NOTE my understanding of this might not be exactly right, and I can't seem to find that comment to re-read it... so take this post with a grain of salt).

 

That's all good to hear thanks.

 

So out of interest, prior to starting beta testing the future build did you do anything to try + speed things up? i.e. consolidate the resources into fewer favourites files etc.

 

Although given what you're saying I might just sit tight + wait a few weeks until VW2023 is out + see if anything has changed, before going too mad reorganising everything.

 

It's funny because I've not dramatically increased the number of favourites files I have in the last couple of months: I'm pretty sure the resource selector delay started fairly suddenly a couple of months ago. It didn't coincide with me doubling the number of favourites files or anything. I've maybe added 5 or 6 new favourites files in the last year. This is out of a total of 68. But maybe it steadily got worse + I've just been pretending it's not been happening until it got so bad I couldn't ignore it...

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1 minute ago, Tom W. said:

So out of interest, prior to starting beta testing the future build did you do anything to try + speed things up? i.e. consolidate the resources into fewer favourites files etc.

 

The only thing that made an apparent difference was removing all my Favorites 🥲

 

But that was with limited testing. I'm not sure if it gets incrementally worse with more and more favorites, or if a particular favorite file or resource type was causing the bulk of the issue... I would have had to play with it more. Regardless, as you say, hopefully this will an issue of the past once 2023 is released.

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On 8/27/2022 at 11:09 PM, Tom W. said:

Thank you @Boh + @drelARCH! So are you saying that if I consolidated all my resources into fewer VWX files without reducing the overall number of resources that that on its own would speed things up? Or do I need to reduce the total number of resources? I've just counted + I have 68 different VWX files in my Favorites... 

@Tom W. I would start with fewer files present in Favourites location without reducing overall number of file/resources and see how it goes.

 

We are using workgroup folders and few files left in Favourites are ones from that workgroup folder.

 

Initially we approached building our office resource library same way as you mentioned: filling in our own content strictly into each type of resource dedicated default workgroup folder but over the time we found it difficult to manage (as many it individually and we have moved to system of as minimum resource files as possible.

 

So nowadays we have only two major office files:

 

1. Master Template file with predefined all organisation parts like: Layers/Classes/Stories/Saved Views including all layer/class tags/filters + basic or our most used set for all architectural/interior/site model/annotation objects like door/windows/stairs/railings/fences/columns styles/structural and framing members  ... + /various sanitary + kitchen symbols/kitchen units styles/furniture + annotation part spaces/data tags/callouts/scale bar/dim styles/section-elevation/drawing labels styles etc etc all in our preferred design and all properly categorised in classes/layers with tags if applicable in RM as well. This file is reasonable size of around 150MB and there is still space to grow our library within file if needed. Each project start with this file and in the beginning you delete unneeded part depending on type of project

 

Last change we did we completely eliminated separate file dedicated to layers/classes and moved it to template file so in 'Standard' folder we have placed alias (as @Pat Stanfordmentioned earlier, it works well)  for template file (original sitting in 'Template' folder so Layers/classes are accessible through import layer/class dialogue window.

 

2. Main resources file with library of 100s of raw building materials contained in wall/slab/roof/hardscape styles present in file as well. As we are building right now extensive library for material finishes we will probably create one separate file because it really gets very heavy due to tons of different textures...350MB. This file we have available in Favourites location.

 

Of course there are other resource files needed and we still keep them separate in workgroup folders like title blocks, reports, data visualisations, scripts, record formats, door hardware, profiles etc some of them present in Favourites, some of them not used so often...but there is still space to eliminate some of these files as well by moving staff into template file

 

IT is constant effort to reduce multitude of files...but for us this approach is working best to keep things tidy and well organized

 

There is one little way to quickly access your frequently used files in RM without using Favourites through using 'Browse a Document' menu command in RM and its 10 files listed under 'Browse a Recent Document' menu. It is two step process (if file need to be opened) but it is still quicker than searching and navigating through computer folder locations to find requested file. Only downside is that resource selectors keep each own history...

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Hi @Tom W.

 

I'm flattered you sought my attention! Thank you, and sorry I'm late to the party. I discovered your post just yesterday and wanted to browse my historical cases to check what conditions are confirmed to improve this problem. I've done that now but for some reason I can't find such cases although I know I've had them. As I recall, one variable that is most likely responsible is the responsiveness of the server where the Vectorworks resource files are kept. Server speed and availability and network speeds are the variables to check. - But this becomes less likely the cause in your case because the Resource Manager is faster than the various Resource Selector menus. 

 

Based on the many very valuable and well-qualified comments above it does indeed sound like the way the software is currently constructed doesn't cope well with numerous Favourites files - irrespective of where they're stored - however your mention that this slow performance appeared suddenly, after working well for a long time; This in my mind is more significant. Based on this observation alone I suggest the following likely culprits: 

  1. A particular resource you have added includes data that invokes a lot of processing for Vectorworks. This excessive processing could be caused by:
    • An object in a Symbol may include super-complex geometry or a Hatch scaled such that it includes a crazy amount of data or other types of conditions that invoke excessive processing. 
    • A corrupt object/resource or its associated data. 
    • One of the favourites files themselves could have become corrupt. (Less likely). 
  2. One of the Vectorworks preference files could have developed a corruption. - I've had cases where 'the spinning wheel' was happening a lot. They were fixed by the Resetting Vectorworks Preferences process, which includes steps to delete these files. But this is a sledge-hammer solution I don't like using any more. I prefer to delete only suspect files then verify results. Knowing which settings files to delete is an art (not a science) so I suggest you first try verifying them all at once, like so: 
    1. Quit Vectorworks. 
    2. In Finder, use the 'Go to Folder…' command to access: ~/Library/Application Support/Vectorworks/2022
    3. Append the name of the 'Settings' folder (perhaps with a date '20220901') to make it invisible to Vectorworks. 
    4. Reopen Vectorworks.
    5. If your Favourites are no longer visible, use 'Refresh Libraries' from the gear ⚙️ menu. 
    6. Test to see if the Resource Selector menus are now more responsive. 

I'm curious to see what comes of this issue! 

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Thank you @Jeremy Best!

 

I think first off (so that I'm comparing like-for-like but also because I'm lazy) I'm going to hold off doing anything until VW2023 is here as following Andy's comments I'm interested to see if things are faster there.

 

If not I will go through the rigmarole of consolidating all my resources into fewer files i.e. separate them into Resource Folders within a handful of VWX files rather than lots of VWX files organised in Favorites Folders. And again see if that speeds things up.

 

And if that doesn't work I will do as you + Pat suggest + investigate whether the issue is to do with a corrupt Favorites or Preferences file.

 

Many thanks for everyone's input on this thread as I've learnt a lot - I'm glad I posted!

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13 hours ago, Tom W. said:

Resources from Favorites are selecting speedily in all contexts as far as I can see.

 

...with the exception of the 'Choose a Symbol' dialog (when you replace a symbol via the OIP). But I think from memory this has always been slow...? @Boh + @drelARCH: when you replace a symbol this way does the Resource Selector load instantaneously or does it take several seconds for the Resource Selector to appear as it does for me?

 

1299837126_Screenshot2022-09-15at07_34_29.thumb.png.f529341854b661cc9fd168557e4e2e79.png

 

Thanks

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