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Vectorworks is REALLY SLOW lately!


Guest Texasguy

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Guest Texasguy

My Vectorworks seems to be getting slower and slower everytime I upgrade. I am on 2018 SP4 (just updated yesterday).

 

I have 32 gigs of ram on an I7 Alienware computer with a screaming video card it should be flying.

CAD and sketchup are fast, but VW is turtle like.

 

I was just deleting a line that was 40' long and it took 10 seconds! Not acceptable.

 

Just entering data in the seating section tool takes forever!

 

Anyone else having these problems?

 

Thanks for the help!

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I'm running on a Retina 5K iMac with 32G of RAM, i7 and an 8G Radeon Pro 580 and it is really slow too. Working with some very simple 3D plans and models, all drawn from scratch in the file so no external input issues but Vectorworks '17 is slower than using AutoCAD 2004 on my 8 year old laptop i7 at home.

 

The system struggles with general modelling, hidden lines, shaded settings, and can't render in decent times. 

 

 

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I had posted about this on the Facebook page. To me, the last stable version of VW was 2010. It was rock solid and fast. Of course rendering was slow but otherwise it was a serious pleasure to work on the platform. I stayed with 2010 until my hardware and OS forced me to change and that was 2015 w/ Service Select. It’s been worse every year. 2018 has been abysmal in my opinion. I am still on SP2 and have heard enough grumbling about updates that I’ll just sit back and watch the stupid beach ball spin. 

 

One thing the folks at VW are good at is sending those renewal notices. 

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Yup,  I'm experiencing the same stuff.    It's hands down the slowest starting program I have,  which becomes 1000 times more irritating because of how many time's over the course of a work day I have to restart it,  due to beach ball hangs, it no longer wanting to export to Cinema 4D,  and a myriad of other stuff.   Some tools are more awful at it than others.   My expectations for 2019 are in the toilet just so that I could *possibly* be pleasantly surprised. 

 

to the tune of Free Fallin' by Tom Petty:

 

I have a deadline,  coming like a freight train
I just want, to, draw a poly-line

but the program, it stopped responding
time to force-quit,  restart and we'll see...


Cause I’m BEACH
Beach Ballin’

(Beach Balling, Yeah I’m, Beach Balling, Yeah I’m)

Yeah I’m BEACH
Beach Ballin’

Edited by Wesley Burrows
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
On 7/10/2018 at 11:29 PM, Texasguy said:

I was just deleting a line that was 40' long and it took 10 seconds! Not acceptable.

 


Management would like to see the file where this occurred for you in, you can post it here or message be directly and attach the file there if it is private.

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“Beach Ballin’”. That is very funny and yet quite sad.

 

I mentioned on the Facebook page that it takes 16 seconds for me to open a sheet layer to edit, change a si for digit in it’s name and then save it. While 16 sec doesn’t sound like a lot, I would think one should be able to do a simple task like that in 4 seconds tops.  So that is roughly 400% slower than it should be. By the way, my timing only included starting at the pressing of the Edit button. The sheet layers window was already opened. Add another 9-10 seconds for that and another 4-5 seconds tonclose the window. 

 

Press edit

click at the end of the name in the window

press delete once

type the new single digit number

press OK

 

5 button presses. 16 seconds plus 14 seconds to open and close the SL window. Unacceptable. 

 

 

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I have to totally agree with this, I have pretty much stopped using VW2018 as even the most simple files just grind to a halt. I have commented on this in the past in previous threads mostly in particular to viewports, i have found once you add 2 or 3 viewports to a sheet layer the lag is so bad it is unusable. forget about using clip cube or section viewport unless you have a whole day to render a single section it is faster just to redraw it as a line drawing in AutoCAD.

 

I also Autocad, Sketchup, Rhino and the whole Adobe Designer suit and they all scream along with no issues, in fact, I usually have them all open at the same time and no problems at all.

 

Opening VW 2018, I usually have to close everything on my machine, run only VW2018 which takes about 10 minutes to load and then spend the next 2-3hrs committing to seriously slow workflows that take way too long to process for simple tasks like a plan, section, elevation, isometric sheet layer, rendered in hidden line on what I would perceive to be basic geometry.

 

As @scottmoore mentioned above they are very good at sending out the renewal invoices but I am so reluctant to upgrade as VW's has gone from my primary tool to my least favourite in the space of about 12 months it has cost me serious time in the last year and it seems anytime I meet up with peers who use VW2018 it is a common conversation, the 2019 release better be pretty amazing to hold on to their existing customer base

 

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Guest Texasguy

Joshec,

I agree with everything you have said and have all of those same problems and more.

As far as 2019 being pretty amazing......I would be happy to have NO NEW features, but make the ones we already have work properly.

Also I feel like we have gone backwards in the event seating section. Why can't we draw a seating section and simply draw a rectangle through it and clip it out like we used to be able to do.

There are cool features in the event seating, but some that should be there are missing.

Anyway.......Peace and now I will take a deep breathe, and spend another 4 hours trying to draw another 5,000 seat layout.

 

 

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The biggest annoyance I have is that I'm working with some pretty simple 3D scenes with very few assets (small exhibition stands). I've previously used anything from Vectorworks 10, AutoCAD 2004 and up and Studio Max 7 and up and none of these programs have had an issue modelling and displaying these simple 3D scenes. Hidden line displays, openGL shading and even simple renders have all been able to be used for continuous 3D rotating, panning and general modelling operations on some pretty average computer hardware. Now I have a pretty decently specced work computer and Vectorworks '17 I get this slow and unresponsive modeller that struggles with even the most basic of operations.

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Cant agree more with the comments already posted here. Whenever I know I have a day in VW, I know it is going to be a sh*t day and that is a sad state of affairs...especially considering the money I pay each year.

 

A lot of the drawing I do in VW is what I would call typical size shows where there are 500-1000 fixtures. These fixture counts are easily reached in todays productions and VW becomes very hard, if not impossible to use. I have a fairly fast Mac Pro and even when I hand the drawing to someone on a fast Windows machine they also experience the same issues.

 

Like others, I would be happy to see no new features added and just make the program function like it should do but what worries me is that will never happen. I recently got a questionnaire from VW about making a cloud based version and that just made me realise they don't have a clue about the current user base and the struggles we face daily in a business where time is usually our number one enemy. They just seem to be interested in adding extra stuff that is of no real use to certainly me and most of the users I know.

 

Sad times.

Edited by Simon Allan
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Guest Texasguy

Simon you nailed it.

 

Your comment of".....the struggles we face daily in a business where time is usually our number one enemy.", is spot on.

 

Vectorworks please give us back the gift of time. Make your program fly on Mac & PC so we can too! We are usually exhausted from doing shows by the time we have time to sit down and draw/design a show so make it work so flawlessly that it wakes us up with awe and wonder about easy Vectorworks just made our lives.

 

I really am interested in Brace Works, but do not want to invest in another program that is going to slow me down even more so I cannot embrace it yet. Please help me believe that it will be a wonderful experience by making Vectorworks do what it already does with speed and accuracy.

 

Thanks,

 

Troy

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
20 minutes ago, scottmoore said:

Troy,

Vectorworks was just like that about 8 years ago. It was lightning fast, rock-solid and I always looked forward to working on it. 

 

Now.....not so much. 


We certainly have issues that need fixing, I'll be the first to admit that especially when it comes to speed, However the above is most likely a case of nostalgia getting in the way of objective fact, the 2008-2010 era was when I got the most slowness complaints and the majority of those specific slowness issues have been resolved since then:
https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/search/&q=slow&page=1&search_and_or=or&start_after=976579200&start_before=1293753600&sortby=relevancy

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12 minutes ago, JimW said:


We certainly have issues that need fixing, I'll be the first to admit that especially when it comes to speed, However the above is most likely a case of nostalgia getting in the way of objective fact, the 2008-2010 era was when I got the most slowness complaints

 

VW2008 was significantly slow because its when the new selection system was introduced. Similar growing pains to the new VW graphics module. VW2009 was very reliable....

 

KM

 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Many people had different experiences in that era due to hardware as well. The selection highlighting and subsequently some of the parasolids stuff increased the hardware reqs significantly, those that had decent machines loved working in Vectorworks, but those who didn't saw the dramatic dip in speed vs 12.5 and cried foul. I was not heavily active on the forums during this time if at all, but the phone lines were ablaze with speed concerns.

This, again, is not to say that Vectorworks in it's current state does not merit improvement. I am just clarifying that Vectorworks has never been as fast as it should be, (at least not as fast as *I* think it should be and many users would likely agree with me on that,) but we do fundamentally keep getting faster all the time, we are just doing a lot more additional background things now than we may think compared to a decade or so ago. 

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On 7/13/2018 at 9:58 AM, Joshec said:

i have found once you add 2 or 3 viewports to a sheet layer the lag is so bad it is unusable. forget about using clip cube or section viewport unless you have a whole day to render a single section it is faster just to redraw it as a line drawing in AutoCAD.

 

One workaround that I have found is to hold off on rendering / hiding lines / shading the viewport till the last possible instant before publishing your files. It appears that Vectorworks needs to refresh every viewport and re-render elements for every screen refresh. This means that for every instance of zooming (really easy to control on a magic mouse huh? questions why anyone would want a scroll wheel doesn't it /sarcasm), panning or changing of pages every viewport needs to refresh and rerender. 

 

This of course only works when you're first creating the file and doesn't help for any files that you are making revisions to.

 

I'm seriously considering switching back to AutoCAD now I've found they do a Mac version

Edited by Aargh
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21 hours ago, Jim Wilson said:


We certainly have issues that need fixing, I'll be the first to admit that especially when it comes to speed, However the above is most likely a case of nostalgia getting in the way of objective fact, the 2008-2010 era was when I got the most slowness complaints and the majority of those specific slowness issues have been resolved since then:
https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/search/&q=slow&page=1&search_and_or=or&start_after=976579200&start_before=1293753600&sortby=relevancy

Jim,

What is different between 2010 and 2018 is that my drawings have become more complicated. Certainly more viewports. That said, I would seriously disagree with the idea that 2018 is any way comparable to 2009 or 2010. There was no way that I ever sat around and waited for over 10 seconds for the program to allow me to change the active class. I timed that particular issue at roughly 15 seconds this morning. I do recall 2008 being a bit of an issue, but what I am seeing now is really unacceptable. Certainly, 2010 was nothing like this. 

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I'm increasingly finding 2018 to be painfully slow as well. In fact I've just spent the last few hours tidying up some drawings sheets for issue; the kind of task where you are panning around on sheet layers, clicking in and out of viewport crops and annotations, etc. All operations that ought to be very simple but it's laggy and slow. Some of the viewports are set up as 'sketch' style and this seems to make it even worse (its not a render mode that I usually use). Even if it's only a half second or so on each of these operations, when you're dotting around a drawing set editing things it all adds up and it makes work very frustrating.

 

I've not renewed my subscription this year. I'm wondering if I should revert to 2017 as it seemed less bad.

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It is painful when I make a simple change to my geometry and then got to all my SLVP's to update annotations for dims.  Takes an hour to update 3 VP's and do Hidden Line Renders to see the geometry correctly.  Files are getting more complex, I try to have everything a symbol to ease the process, but it is a slow process to get anything done.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/10/2018 at 8:29 PM, Texasguy said:

Just entering data in the seating section tool takes forever!

The seating section tool is particularly dumb the way it redraws with every single keystroke. This morning I wanted to create a 100x300' section of banquet tables but before I could select the symbol I want first it insists on drawing 11,800 seats all crammed in next to each other as though I'm trying to make a 30,000 square foot chair warehouse. Then after I select the table symbol it again has to draw the area with all of the tables just touching each other... and then it keeps redrawing with every single digit I enter for the spacing parameters. And then on top of all this on my PC the seating tool performance took a huge hit in 2018 and apparently nobody has any thoughts on how to fix it.

 

Ok, sorry for the rant. I'm just a bit frustrated after spending so much time fighting with this tool... I would just give up but for some reason my clients want seats at their events.

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47 minutes ago, WesR said:

The seating section tool is particularly dumb the way it redraws with every single keystroke. This morning I wanted to create a 100x300' section of banquet tables but before I could select the symbol I want first it insists on drawing 11,800 seats all crammed in next to each other as though I'm trying to make a 30,000 square foot chair warehouse. Then after I select the table symbol it again has to draw the area with all of the tables just touching each other... and then it keeps redrawing with every single digit I enter for the spacing parameters. And then on top of all this on my PC the seating tool performance took a huge hit in 2018 and apparently nobody has any thoughts on how to fix it.

 

Ok, sorry for the rant. I'm just a bit frustrated after spending so much time fighting with this tool... I would just give up but for some reason my clients want seats at their events.

 

FWIW I have spent WAY more time trying to make the seating tool work than should be allowed by law.    I've wasted way more brain cells than I care to admit being pissed at that thing,  and quite frankly it just isn't worth the fight.     Do I wish it was actually useful?   You bet!   But as far as I can tell,  in real world use situations,  it's more of a PITA then it's worth.     You'll end up saving hours of time and frustration just using groups,  move by points,  duplicate array,  rotate plan,  and mirroring.      I actually started a thread here last year or so asking others how they approach large seating layouts and there were some great answers from @scottmoore and @EAlexander (and others who's names escape me at the moment).     

 

 

EDITED TO ADD:

 

That thread can be found here:

 

 

Edited by Wesley Burrows
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