Viewport Updating Slower and Slower

[willofmaine]

After updating a few viewports, my computer slows way down. The hard drive and color wheel spin endlessly while finishing the update, saving the file, and quiting VectorWorks. Restarting VW seems to help... for a while. And it seems like it's getting worse over time - fewer viewports and longer spinning times...

Any suggestions anyone? Permissions have been fixed. Might more RAM help? Is this a defragmentation issue? (I've still got 180 free GB...). Something else?...

Thanks, Will

[Robert Anderson]

Will, please zip up and submit a file that displays this behavior to bugsubmit@nemetschek.net. This will help us to improve performance on future versions of VectorWorks. Thanks!

[willofmaine]

Thanks Robert, I have sent a file to bugsubmit. In the meantime... is there nothing that can be done to improve things?...

[wezelboy]

Maybe try reniceing your VW process, but I have not noticed huge speed gains from this.

The way you would do this is pull up a terminal while VW is running and do the following command:

ps -aex | grep VectorWorks

You should see something like this:

435 ?? S 12:33.88 /Applications/VectorWorks 12.0.0/VectorWorks.app/Contents/MacOS/VectorWorks -psn_0_4849665 PATH=/usr/bin:/bi

504 p1 R+ 0:00.00 grep VectorWorks TERM_PROGRAM=Apple_Terminal TERM=xterm-color SHELL=/bin/bash TERM_PROGRAM_VERSION=133 USER=

The first number (435) in this case is your VectorWorks process ID. You will need this number for the next command:

sudo renice -19 435

It will ask you for a password. After you provide it, you are done.

Note: you have to do this after you launch VW every time. There are ways to get around this requirement, but they are a little more involved.

[islandmon]

Pursuant to wezelboy script.

FYI from Man ps page:

DESCRIPTION

ps displays a header line followed by lines containing information about

your processes that have controlling terminals. This information is

sorted by controlling terminal, then by process ID.

-a Display information about other users' processes as well as your

own.

-e Display the environment as well.

-x Display information about processes without controlling termi-

nals.

_______

| is the UNIX pipe

grep is UNIX search for all Vectorworks processes

______

sudo is SuperUser=root

renice -- alter priority of running processes

_______

DESCRIPTION

The renice utility alters the scheduling priority of one or more running

processes. The following who parameters are interpreted as process ID's,

process group ID's, user ID's or user names. The renice'ing of a process

group causes all processes in the process group to have their scheduling

priority altered. The renice'ing of a user causes all processes owned by

the user to have their scheduling priority altered. By default, the pro-

cesses to be affected are specified by their process ID's.

[wezelboy]

Pursuant to wezelboy script.

Don't get me started with scripting this stuff. The last thing we need is me ranting about the virtues of Perl.

;-)

[willofmaine]

Thanks for the responses. Though, really, a bit beyond me, I think. Sound's more like NNA's department to me! Yet, looking in Mac Help regarding Mac Maintenance, I did stumble across this "Terminal" thing, and even typed in "sudo periodic daily" to force daily maintenance. I think. ...you know what they say: a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!...

[islandmon]

Get thee a proven maintenance utility like Cocktail or Onxy from www.versiontracker.com/macosx

Avoid experimenting with Terminal and especially "sudo" unless you know exactly what you are doing.

One incorrect or misplaced argument can ruin an otherwise fine day ; )

[willofmaine]

I was good and only typed in exactly what Mac Help said to do. But, I agree that I am not one to be mucking around with sudos and niceties and things of that nature! It seems like having more control over the Mac's self maintenance, and also being able to defrag the disc, are two things that might be especially helpful. Is there a recommended maintenance utility that might do both of these, if that even makes sense. I know MacJanitor and Disk Warrior have been suggested. Thanks!

[wezelboy]

Avoid experimenting with Terminal and especially "sudo" unless you know exactly what you are doing.

One incorrect or misplaced argument can ruin an otherwise fine day ; )

Yes. And if Mac Help or anyone else tells you to sudo rm -rf /*

DON'T DO IT.