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Vectorworks is REALLY SLOW lately!


Guest Texasguy

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2 hours ago, Amorphous said:

@Zeno are suggesting we should downgrade to VW2015 because it is a more stable version of VW?

No

follow the 2015 instruction of the link to completely unistall vectorworks 2019. Then reinstall and try. Sometimes it worked for me

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3 hours ago, Amorphous said:

Everything is slow! Simple things like:

 

Editing a dimension is slow.

Moving objects around is slow.

Navigating between sheets is slow

Save and commit is slow (yes it has improved, but lets face it, still slow)

 

There's a 2-3 second delay in everything I do....

 

Is anyone at Vectorworks doing anything about this??? I don't want to be frustrated anymore. 

 

Normal drawing activities, like moving or dimensioning, shouldn’t have a delay. Have you tried testing in a new document? That would determine if something is amiss or inefficient about your file. 

 

If you have a lot of verticies or end points, particularly with imported geometry, that can slow things down when you are snapping. Adjusting snap and or layer options can help, as otherwise you are asking Vectorworks to provide hundreds of SmartCursor cues in a short time. 

 

2019 added caching of sheet layer viewports. You may notice a slight delay when first navigating to a sheet layer, but then navigating within that layer should be significantly faster. If you are noticing long delays, submitting your file as a bug will help Vectorworks improve this feature. 

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I have been doing some drawing recently where I have only been using my personal symbols. No Spotlight instruments, (no focus points YAY!!!)  no Bracworks truss, no anything requiring a plug-in object with the exception of perhaps the screen tool. VW seems to move along just fine even with pretty complex drawings. As soon as I start replacing my fixtures with Spotlight instruments things start to slow down significantly. It’s also where I start getting frustrated with buggy behavior. 

 

Many VW users have transitioned from those that draw to now using VW as a plug and play solution. There is nothing wrong with that and the functionality is great, but that, along with an arguably dated architecture (CPU, GPU usage) are where the issues lie I suspect. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I am working on a project where I used all my own symbols to create the presentations. It is a fairly large arena show and I have been flying around it with very little difficulty. I’ve now replaced my symbols with Spotlight lighting fixtures and Braceworks truss as I am sharing this with collaborators. It has immediately become an intolerable sloth. Waiting 60 sec to change views, seeing lighting fixtures completely disappear (even “refresh instruments” won’t bring them back), and beach balls for days. I spent about 25 - 30 min just rotating six viewports. It’s amazing how much better VW works when it doesn’t have to plow through countless unseen processes   

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9 hours ago, scottmoore said:

I am working on a project where I used all my own symbols to create the presentations. It is a fairly large arena show and I have been flying around it with very little difficulty. I’ve now replaced my symbols with Spotlight lighting fixtures and Braceworks truss as I am sharing this with collaborators. It has immediately become an intolerable sloth. Waiting 60 sec to change views, seeing lighting fixtures completely disappear (even “refresh instruments” won’t bring them back), and beach balls for days. I spent about 25 - 30 min just rotating six viewports. It’s amazing how much better VW works when it doesn’t have to plow through countless unseen processes   

 

I would agree that slowness is definitely not caused by geometry alone. Native geometry is also way better than imported geometry.

Kevin

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19 minutes ago, scottmoore said:

I am on Mac. 2014 MBP, 2018 MBP and a MacPro tower. I did just realize yesterday that I apparently have lost 8mb of RAM due to a failure so more is on the way. 

Thinking of investing in a Windows gaming machine (laptop for mobility) (as much as I really don't wish i had to) and to get VW on there to see if it's a MacOS vs Windows issue - I know Sketchup runs sigificantly smoother on PC's than it does on Macs (at least in my experience) so it might/can be the same for VW?... can only try to find out.

Edited by Janvin Lowe
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@Janvin Lowe

 

We are running a PC-based WV office. Unfortunately, we face  speed issues as well. Our machines are mostly  i7700K @ 4.2GHz with Quadros and 1050Ti's. While some Mac-based users have reported some weird issues with Mojave, I don't think you'd see any significant performance increase in shifting to PCs. Currently hardware is not really what is making VW slow. IMHO it is pointless to invest large sums into hardware if that is making only a marginal difference.

 

We have very slow performance with any elevation viewports, even hidden line viewports stripped of everything extra. 2019 is faster than 2018, clearly, but multi-threading somehow seems not be quite there yet: I see CPU utilization from 12.5-25% most of the time, although curiously, with the slow viewports it seems to be multi-threading more intensely, at 84%.

 

I have an old 2012 Dell T3600 with a Xeon E5 1620 @ 3.5GHz at home; I started wondering why it seems to run 2019 practically at the same swiftness or slowness as the newer machines at the office. One reason could be the single-core performance speed, which hasn't increased so much. The number of cores have, instead.

 

If you look at this benchmark chart, you can see that a high-end i9900 is only about 1.5 times faster than an old Pentium Gold, if comparing single-core performance:

 

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

 

So it would seem that complete multi-threading combined with streamlining the code would be the answer. Maybe the tech people at VW can chime in with better knowledge on this. I'm seeing only about 25% CPU usage while doing everyday work. Maybe there is more to this than that though, but it would seem the program is not using that many cores, most of the time.

 

 

 

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14 hours ago, JMR said:

@Janvin Lowe

 

We are running a PC-based WV office. Unfortunately, we face  speed issues as well. Our machines are mostly  i7700K @ 4.2GHz with Quadros and 1050Ti's. While some Mac-based users have reported some weird issues with Mojave, I don't think you'd see any significant performance increase in shifting to PCs. Currently hardware is not really what is making VW slow. IMHO it is pointless to invest large sums into hardware if that is making only a marginal difference.

 

We have very slow performance with any elevation viewports, even hidden line viewports stripped of everything extra. 2019 is faster than 2018, clearly, but multi-threading somehow seems not be quite there yet: I see CPU utilization from 12.5-25% most of the time, although curiously, with the slow viewports it seems to be multi-threading more intensely, at 84%.

 

I have an old 2012 Dell T3600 with a Xeon E5 1620 @ 3.5GHz at home; I started wondering why it seems to run 2019 practically at the same swiftness or slowness as the newer machines at the office. One reason could be the single-core performance speed, which hasn't increased so much. The number of cores have, instead.

 

If you look at this benchmark chart, you can see that a high-end i9900 is only about 1.5 times faster than an old Pentium Gold, if comparing single-core performance:

 

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

 

So it would seem that complete multi-threading combined with streamlining the code would be the answer. Maybe the tech people at VW can chime in with better knowledge on this. I'm seeing only about 25% CPU usage while doing everyday work. Maybe there is more to this than that though, but it would seem the program is not using that many cores, most of the time.

 

 

 

Thanks for the insight - sure sounds like a mult-thread optimization issue - haven't looked too far into that but I'm sure they've got some verbiage about it, albeit probably just for the buzz though.  As for Windows, I'm half torn on the performance of VW and the other half on my 2016 i7 MacBook Pro which wasn't cheap but at the price and at the time I got it for, could've netted me a PC book with a signficant spec-bump.

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  • 6 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Well this is alarming, confounding, and angering all at once!

 

The hardware recommendations on VW site say a lot about needing a powerful graphics card - load up on VRAM: https://www.vectorworks.net/sysreq

 

And their tested hardware page has a long list of NVIDIA QUADRO cards: https://www.vectorworks.net/support/quality-tested-hardware

 

This is precisely why I purchased an expensive workstation last year with:

NVIDIA® Quadro® P4000 (8 GB GDDR5, 4 x Displayport 1.4)

Intel® Xeon® W-2133 Processor (3.6 GHz, up to 3.9 GHz w/Turbo Boost, 8.25 MB cache, 6 core)

32 GB (2x16 GB) DDR4-2666 ECC Memory

 

In JimW's post, not only does he say NVIDIA QUADROS tend to have problems with Vectorworks but he also says, "(As a general rule and as of the writing of this article, you should not nomrally need to spend more than $150 on a video card to use with Vectorworks.)"

 

What?! Can you find a video card for $150 that has Vectorworks' recommended minimum VRAM and OpenGL2.1 compatibility?

His post was edited January 2017. If it is/was valid information, I wish I would have seen it before I purchased my system last year.

 

I think JimW has a long history with Vectorworks so I don't think his post can be dismissed as uninformed.

 

I hope he is listening/watching this. It is an old thread but I do not understand the conflict between his post and Vectorworks' information on their website.

I happen to be having a SLOW problem right now myself. I think I will start a new thread for it.

 

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Dear Vectorworks users,

 

I've seen a lot of complains lately (myself included) about the speed that Vectorworks 2018/2019 is operating. 

 

Today I had contact with the service select office in Gouda from The Netherlands. 

My Vectorworks was fixed problem by this simple trick and I hope this works for you guys aswel.

 

If you experience lag/loading time/crashes etc. Please follow the following instructions:

Note: I had to translate the option names from Dutch to English they might be called different in the English version.

 

Step 1: Open Vectorworks 2018/2019

Step 2: Go to the tab 'Extra' 

Step 3: Go to 'Settings' this should be second last option.

Step 4: Select 'Vectorworks Preferences or Preferences Vectorworks'

Step 5: Go to the second tab 'Display'

Step 6: Go to the bottom and click on the bar that says: 'Display during navigation'

Step 7: Select the 'best performance' option. (NEVER put it on the second option)

 

Restart Vectorworks. This helped me to get rid of the following problems:

 

- Lag in 2D drawing like, windows, ploy lines, etc.

- Lag in Sheet Layers.

- Lag in 3D OpenGL views.

- Hidden Line renders take ages to create in Sheet Layers.

 

If you experience any trouble feel free to contact me! 

 

 

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3 hours ago, Wrecktorworks said:

Step 1: Open Vectorworks 2018/2019

Step 2: Go to the tab 'Extra' 

Step 3: Go to 'Settings' this should be second last option.

Step 4: Select 'Vectorworks Preferences or Preferences Vectorworks'

Step 5: Go to the second tab 'Display'

Step 6: Go to the bottom and click on the bar that says: 'Display during navigation'

Step 7: Select the 'best performance' option. (NEVER put it on the second option)

 

This makes me chuckle a bit. Over the last two versions, downgrading this option has been the workaround suggested by Tech Support for bugs in the VGM. Now that workaround has become an issue.....

 

Kevin

 

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6 minutes ago, Kevin McAllister said:

This makes me chuckle a bit. Over the last two versions, downgrading this option has been the workaround suggested by Tech Support for bugs in the VGM. Now that workaround has become an issue.....

 

I find myself constantly switching between the different Display settings options to circumnavigate different operational issues I may be experiencing at any given time. It is strange that no option seems to be the best option.

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  • 6 months later...

michaelk,

If we turn off a class that contains high-vertex count meshes (for say plumbing fixtures), will VW quit trying to process them or does it process them anyway?

I believe I tried this and did not notice any gains but was done on a more complete project where there was plenty else to process so hard to say what is happening.

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11 hours ago, Mik said:

michaelk,

If we turn off a class that contains high-vertex count meshes (for say plumbing fixtures), will VW quit trying to process them or does it process them anyway?

I believe I tried this and did not notice any gains but was done on a more complete project where there was plenty else to process so hard to say what is happening.

I think this can help, yes, it's something that I do. Plumbing fixtures are a typical source of problems, and I often have a class that I can turn off in 3d which makes certain operations run much more smoothly (for example I find the push-pull tool in particular can stop working when there are meshes in the background).

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