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Slow viewport update, Hidden Line foreground missing


theob

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I am having issues with the general speed of vectorworks (all across the board - panning, zooming in and out, drawing, etc), but in particular this is apparent when I go to update a viewport.

I am working with a complicated building and a larger file size, and I set up my viewports to render with a "realistic exterior fast" background and a hidden line foreground. The viewport takes 5-10 mins to update the background, but it doesn't look great (or finished) when the update process completes and the hidden line rendering does not show up on top of it. This is probably the biggest issue.

The thing that bugs me is that if I drag the same file over to my 2011 Macbook Air, which should theoretically have much less horsepower than my Mac Pro, the viewports come out faster, they appear normal, and they are complete with hidden line on top of the rendered viewport.

This is pretty frustrating. Does anyone have any thoughts as to why this is? In general, everything in vectorworks seems faster on my Macbook Air and I am puzzled as to why that is.

Thanks in advance.

Specs on the MBA:

2011, 1.8 GHz i7

4 GB Ram

256 GB SSD

Edited by theob
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

If you render a viewport in just Hidden Line, does it appear as expected?

If so, you can layer a hidden line viewport over your original viewport, giving it no fill, which should emulate the same appearance as the background/foreground viewport, as a workaround.

However, please send the file where that is happening along with this from your Mac Pro:

http://kbase.vectorworks.net/questions/627/DirectX+Diagnostics+and+System+Profiler

to tech@vectorworks.net and we can have a look.

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Hi Jim,

Unfortunately, no. If I render a viewport in just Hidden Line, it comes out as wireframe only.

I'm wondering if this has something to do with the ATI Radeon HD 5770? Apple doesn't list this card as being officially compatible with the Mac Pro 3,1, but I know that this is a pretty common card that people have put in the earlier Mac Pros. Does anyone want to chime in that has this card in a Mac Pro 3,1 or earlier?

Edited by theob
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Theob, you say you are "working with a complicated building and a larger file size". I wonder if this is a simple geometry/complexity issue. There may be geometric complexity in your file that is bogging down the HLR, and that you can eliminate or ameliorate. For example, are you displaying door hardware in your renders? You could try hiding the door hardware (or swapping it out with some of the simplified geometry that was added in VW_2014) and see if that helps.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

I'm wondering if this has something to do with the ATI Radeon HD 5770? Apple doesn't list this card as being officially compatible with the Mac Pro 3,1, but I know that this is a pretty common card that people have put in the earlier Mac Pros. Does anyone want to chime in that has this card in a Mac Pro 3,1 or earlier?

I would say its unlikely, only because Hidden Line is one of the rendering modes that does not depend on the GPU heavily. OpenGL and Wireframe/Top Plan utilize the graphics card but Hidden Line and the other Renderworks modes mostly do not.

Edited by JimW
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Theob, you say you are "working with a complicated building and a larger file size". I wonder if this is a simple geometry/complexity issue. There may be geometric complexity in your file that is bogging down the HLR, and that you can eliminate or ameliorate. For example, are you displaying door hardware in your renders? You could try hiding the door hardware (or swapping it out with some of the simplified geometry that was added in VW_2014) and see if that helps.

I am working with a complicated drawing, but it is not overly complicated.

The frustrating thing is that the HLR component of the exact same viewport in the exact same vectorworks file will render in my 2011 Macbook Air (1.7 GHz dual i7, 4 GB ram - supposedly an inferior machine) and WON'T render on my maxed out 2008 Mac Pro (specs listed below). I am trying to figure out why.

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If you render a viewport in just Hidden Line, does it appear as expected?

If so, you can layer a hidden line viewport over your original viewport, giving it no fill, which should emulate the same appearance as the background/foreground viewport, as a workaround.

However, please send the file where that is happening along with this from your Mac Pro:

http://kbase.vectorworks.net/questions/627/DirectX+Diagnostics+and+System+Profiler

to tech@vectorworks.net and we can have a look.

Hi Jim,

Sorry that I am just getting back to this. I believe that I answered your question earlier, but a hidden line viewport will not render at all, even when that is the only component being rendered.

The frustrating thing (as I mentioned in the previous post) is that the hidden line viewport will update just fine with my Macbook Air but it will give my Mac Pro all kinds of trouble. The MBA should theoretically be the one having the problems. I kind of need to figure something out because the Mac Pro is my work machine and it should work well with vectorworks, at least on paper. The MBA is not a long term replacement for the Mac Pro.

I can send in the drawing file, but it is much too large to send via email. Do you have a preferred means of getting the file to you? I can share a dropbox folder if that works.

Edited by theob
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I was about to post a similar problem.

New iMac (3.5GHz i7 with 8GB memory) is blazingly fast. Current version of Vectorworks (v2014 SP2 Build 209336). For example, Flyovers in Final Quality Renderworks actually feel snappy. I know it just renders quickly after I release the click.

Except it chokes whenever I Update All Viewports. In this drawing I have about 45 viewports on about 15 sheet layers. Most are Hidden Line renders.

Update All Viewports takes over 2 MINUTES sometimes. It's not right.

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Updating 45 viewports in 2 minutes doesn't necessarily sound that slow, but maybe there is a hint of sarcasm that I'm not picking up here?

At least your viewports are showing up. My Hidden Line viewports don't work on my Mac Pro. They just show up as wireframe or don't show up at all.

Edited by theob
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There's definitely something wrong with my installation or with this latest v2014 SP2.

It's not just slow in viewport updating. Sometimes flyovers in OpenGL lags, sometimes not. It may have something to do with my particular document. But Purge doesn't show much to purge. And the current layer is relatively sparse.

I invested in hardware trying to avoid issues like this in software upgrade, which is always known to tax the processors. Only Vectorworks does this. Not any other app.

Don't know if it's a related matter.

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  • 2 months later...

Same issue here.

I think it's model complexity. I have other layers that render out to hidden line fine in my view ports. The layer that doesn't render to hidden line, and stays at wireframe without any prompt explaining the error is a complicated 3D model partially imported from a Rhino file.

Like I said, other layers render to wireframe fine. Also when I'm editing in the complicated design layer and try to view as hidden line it throws up an error stating that it's out of memory. (Good thing I have 16 gigs!)

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Same issue here. I think it's model complexity. I have other layers that render out to hidden line fine in my view ports. The layer that doesn't render to hidden line, and stays at wireframe without any prompt explaining the error is a complicated 3D model partially imported from a Rhino file.

Check the Rhino import layer for invisible (or perhaps corrupt) objects. I've had problems with this really slowing down VW. I could see it causing problems with a hidden line render. When I selected the visible objects in my own file after importing from Rhino and inverted the selection there were hundreds of invisible objects selected. Not sure where they came from (ie. they weren't in the Rhino file) but deleting them sped things up immensely. I suspect there's some sort of bug in the Rhino importer.

Kevin

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