Vectorworks is REALLY SLOW lately!

[Kevin McAllister]

1 hour ago, Wesley Burrows said:

You'll end up saving hours of time and frustration just using groups,  move by points,  duplicate array,  rotate plan,  and mirroring. 

^ This has been my experience. I tried to make the last version work and gave a lot of feedback about it. Not sure that the new version is much better, just different.

 

Kevin

[scottmoore]

I think we often get too focused on the parametric tool sets. Those can be great assets but they can also be a huge time suck leaving one with less than satisfactory results. 

 

Case in point; I needed a curved I-beam ladder truss for a project yesterday. I thought I would give the curved truss tool a go which I generally never use but I do know how it works. I spent about ten minutes futzing with it trying to get something like what I needed. I punted that and drew my own in under five and it was precisely what I wanted. 

 

Point being; for every parametric tool set, one has to learn how it works, where the buttons and appropriate fields are located how data manipulation returns what kind of results, etc. Now that is all very cool when you can quickly turn out something that is exactly what you wanted. On the other hand, one can learn one set of tool sets for direct modeling and that one set of tools that work the same way everytime (or at least they are SUPPOSED to) allow one to draw pretty much anything you might ever need.  

 

Modeling is really not all that difficult. It’s a skill that will serve you well. 

 

And yes, VW is still slow and buggy....

[Kevin McAllister]

1 hour ago, scottmoore said:

Modeling is really not all that difficult. It’s a skill that will serve you well. 

^ definitely this. Its partly why I wish some development time was spent on improving the base modelling tools. In the beginning modelling can be slow but when you do it a lot it becomes much faster and more intuitive.

 

Kevin

 

[line-weight]

9 hours ago, Kevin McAllister said:

^ definitely this. Its partly why I wish some development time was spent on improving the base modelling tools. In the beginning modelling can be slow but when you do it a lot it becomes much faster and more intuitive.

 

Kevin

 

 

90% of what I need to model day to day can pretty much be done with rectangles, lines and the push-pull tool. But the push-pull tool is glitchy. These base tools should be rock solid reliable, but it doesn't feel that the problems with the push pull tool are being dealt with in any great urgency.

 

It's the equivalent of a 2d drawing environment where the function to resize lines or polygons sometimes refused to select the object. No-one would consider that acceptable.

[tekbench]

I don't want to pile on here, but yeah. VW has gone from nice and fast to really slow just on the last project I spun up. I imported a PDF, and that seemed to just kill it. I deleted all the PDF 'parts' and just left the raster lines. Still so slow I can't zoom in or out without waiting.

Thought it was some of the fill I was doing. Pulled all that out. Still so slow I can't zoom in our out.

Thought maybe it was other applications. Turned them all off. No change.

Thought maybe it was the PDF again, so I re-drew the entire page in a new document. No change.

This drawing is a 2D wiring schematic for an AV system. I'm running the ConnectCAD plug-in to do most of the work.

Thing is, I pull open an old document (in 3d, significantly more complicated) and can pan and zoom all over the place in all three dimensions.

I also have AutoCAD for Mac loaded on my machine. I exported the VW file as a DWG, opened it in AutoCAD and AutoCAD seems to be super fast, no 'slowness' issues. So not sure what VW is doing here, but I have a file that is just super slow to work with in Vectorworks. Some slowdown is OK, but this level of slowdown is really really bad.

Its a 17 meg file, and by far not the biggest file I have, and honestly one of the more simple files I have.

Any help here? I've read a bunch of posts and tried a few of the items listed. Just doesn't seem to be helping speed things up.

 

[line-weight]

9 hours ago, tekbench said:

Any help here?

 

Just cross your fingers that this will have been sorted out in VW2019 I think....

[JBenghiat]

PDF slowness seems to be related to snapping.  Until this is fixed, turning off snapping for the PDF in object info will at least improve performance.

 

@line-weight What issues are you having with push-pull?  I haven't experienced any issues with creating or modifying extrudes.

[line-weight]

4 hours ago, JBenghiat said:

PDF slowness seems to be related to snapping.  Until this is fixed, turning off snapping for the PDF in object info will at least improve performance.

 

@line-weight What issues are you having with push-pull?  I haven't experienced any issues with creating or modifying extrudes.

 

See here

 

 

[Joshec]

And this is why i just cannot use VW18 anymore..... 25min hang time to simply trim 1 line in a very basic line drawing.. takes 100% processing power?? WTF

i redrew the entire drawing and finished it Rhino in under 1hr no issues, no lag, no hangs... gave up in VW18 after 2hrs and constant hangs and fails.

not acceptable. not for the money you pay which is more than 4 times more than what Rhino want.

 

I am hoping 2019 is try before you buy.. because there is no way I'm forking out more money to deal with this nonsense.

 

Apologies, rant over...

 

[SharonP]

Interesting reading - I came here looking to see what is going on with my computer - when I try to change the class of an object, it can take a couple of minutes for the cursor to scroll down through the classes.

Also, publishing drawings to pdf, I get the coloured circle for several seconds after pressing each button..... and this is something that has changed in the last month - before that it was all working fine.

My work is all simple single houses - typically two storied. The file I was working on yesterday when this was happening is 55MB.... is that normal? 

 

Anyone have anything like this happen?  

[tekbench]

It's insane. My drawing is 19.5MB. Some of the other specific slowdowns I'm experiencing reflect what you describe. It takes sometimes 2-5 seconds to change a rectangle or a an object to 'Make all attributes by class'. That should be instantaneous. It certainly has been in a number of much more complicated 3D drawings in the past. It feels like, to me, that changing anything that reaches out to the internal database records slows way down on drawings. Sometimes just simple line drawings (I'm doing an AV schematic 2D flow chart), and sometimes on the more complicated (4 bedroom modern structure with built in curved ladder rail, 3D car models, surfaces and wood grain). So It doesn't seem to be the complexity of the file or the size of the file directly. It is something else. I do agree that modifying classes or doing anything in the attributes pallet seems to take longer than it used to. That might be a good place for VW tech support to start looking. I've already PM'ed a file that failed miserably the other day. I selected everything in the drawing, scaled everything and everything disappeared. I don't remember that 'feature' in the sales brochure. We had to revert to a backup file. the 'working' file was just plain empty after the scale operation. Like nothing on any layers, no items anywhere. All the class and layer structure stayed, but no data stayed. Still dunno what that was all about, but my frustration level with VW is getting higher ever day.

I have a meeting with our AutoDesk Rep on Thursday. I'm the last guy in our office on Vectorworks, and this last version hasn't inspired confidence. I still prefer the product, but ONLY when it functions. At this point, it just doesn't function very well. I moved off AutoCAD over a decade ago because the price and 3D features of VW are great in comparison. Now, it seems to be swinging toward AutoCAD again.

I wish they'd come up with at least a root cause on this. 

[tekbench]

Bumping this topic. today's slowdown is epic. it takes 4 seconds to select something using rectangular marquee select. Just click, drag a box around some items (or no items) and it takes between 3 - 5 seconds to process that command. I tried moving my entire drawing to the left within the page, and it's now clocking in about 13 minutes and giving me the beachball. Finally had to force quit.

It just keeps getting worse. I try closing all other drawings out, whitelisting/shutting down anti-virus, closing everything on my laptop. I also tried a drawing today with no LV wiring/ConnectCAD plugins. Just a small job, no big deal. I'm trying to process a simple print package (open view, shuffle, snap viewport, print viewport to PDF), and VW just keeps choking.I can't even move things around on the screen.

I'm going to reset my Vectorworks preferences here in a minute.

But something is very very wrong with 2018, current service pack. I'm not happy at all.

AutoCAD is not experiencing this slowdown with drawings. I've eliminated my laptop and graphics card as potential issues at this point. Other incredibly graphics intensive operations in a number of other applications work fine. This is clearly a Vectorworks issue that very clearly needs to be fixed.

[scottmoore]

it seems to me that what really slows down VW is the usage of plug-in objects, Spotlight symbols that have to reference a lot of data, Design Layer Viewports and other items like that. It also seems like the physical “size” of the drawing (such as site plans that are 100s or thousands of feet wide) can be culprits. The amount of memory used in a drawing seems to impact things as well. So long as I am doing straight up drawing, VW seems to behave fairly well except for all the known and frankly, ridiculous bugs. 

 

I am not a computer expert by any stretch of the imagination but I am pretty certain that VW is extremely dated in how it handles processing from a CPU and GPU standpoint. I would have much rather had improvements in that area than the multi-viewer feature or any other “improvements” added over the past several iterations. 

[Kevin McAllister]

3 hours ago, tekbench said:

Bumping this topic. today's slowdown is epic. it takes 4 seconds to select something using rectangular marquee select. Just click, drag a box around some items (or no items) and it takes between 3 - 5 seconds to process that command. I tried moving my entire drawing to the left within the page, and it's now clocking in about 13 minutes and giving me the beachball. Finally had to force quit.

It just keeps getting worse. I try closing all other drawings out, whitelisting/shutting down anti-virus, closing everything on my laptop. I also tried a drawing today with no LV wiring/ConnectCAD plugins. Just a small job, no big deal. I'm trying to process a simple print package (open view, shuffle, snap viewport, print viewport to PDF), and VW just keeps choking.I can't even move things around on the screen.

I'm going to reset my Vectorworks preferences here in a minute.

But something is very very wrong with 2018, current service pack. I'm not happy at all.

AutoCAD is not experiencing this slowdown with drawings. I've eliminated my laptop and graphics card as potential issues at this point. Other incredibly graphics intensive operations in a number of other applications work fine. This is clearly a Vectorworks issue that very clearly needs to be fixed.

 

Since you are Mac based, here are a few things I would look for -

1. Does your hard drive have enough free space? SSD drives need more free space than traditional drives. The new Time Machine snapshot feature has made my hard drive space swing by up to 30gb or more.
2. Have you tried turning off wifi or switching to wired internet?
3. When you're experiencing slowdowns is Time Machine backing up?
4. Are you using Dropbox? Its syncing can cause slowdowns.

If most of your slowdowns are with one file, I would consider submitting it to tech support.

 

Kevin

 

[ptoner]

11 hours ago, scottmoore said:

 

I am not a computer expert by any stretch of the imagination but I am pretty certain that VW is extremely dated in how it handles processing from a CPU and GPU standpoint. I would have much rather had improvements in that area than the multi-viewer feature or any other “improvements” added over the past several iterations. 

Thats exactly the issue i think. Not using the GPU for processing or at least sharing the load with the CPU. OpenGL being an outdated Render Engine also does not help. Metal 2 would create smaller file sizes and faster workflows. I can see why Apple are forcing this change onto Vectorworks, as currently they are struggling with OpenGL it seems. Yet no news if VW are actually going to move to Metal or not.

[Wesley Burrows]

12 hours ago, Kevin McAllister said:

Does your hard drive have enough free space? SSD drives need more free space than traditional drives. The new Time Machine snapshot feature has made my hard drive space swing by up to 30gb or more.

I have 642 GB Free on my 1TB Mac Pro SSD.

 

12 hours ago, Kevin McAllister said:

Have you tried turning off wifi or switching to wired internet?

I also use hardwired ethernet to my internet to take full advantage of it's speed.  (1Gbps Fiber)

 

12 hours ago, Kevin McAllister said:

When you're experiencing slowdowns is Time Machine backing up?

I don't think so.   There was actually a period where I disabled Time Machine entirely thinking it might help,  but there was no real discernible improvement. 

 

12 hours ago, Kevin McAllister said:

Are you using Dropbox? Its syncing can cause slowdowns.

I use dropbox business,   I have my own complaints about their app,  but I haven't noticed a correlation.

 

 

I know I'm not who you asked,  but I'm also primarily a Mac user and experience the same sort of stuff.     Vectorworks chokes all sorts of hard when dealing with large(ish) imported DWGs.   Large in terms of scale,  not really file size.  (that my 10 year old machine handles no problem in AutoCAD)     Same deal when trying to navigate around imported/scaled PDFs.    VW has never really been a Stallion at it,  but it seems to be getting worse with each release.     When 10 year old hardware can outperform current on a 2D DWG line drawing (albeit in it's native software),  that's pretty embarrassing.       This is my experience with most drawings for me,  as I'm usually starting from an existing DWG import.

Edited September 4, 2018 by Wesley Burrows

[tekbench]

SSD has 68 Gig free.

I use WiFi for everything. I have the issue with my office WiFi (50 meg down, 25 up) and my home internet connection (1Gig Fiber to the home. runs about 600mbps in real life on 5GHZ.).

I can re-pro issue with wired internet. Doesn't seem to make a difference.

Time Machine is always in ‘manual’ mode. It never runs until I tell it to.

I do use dropbox. But the issue is happening when dropbox shows ‘up to date’ and not sync’ing. I've turned that off.

I'm using a 4K Acer monitor at home, connected via USB C. No dongles.

I'm using a 4K LG monitor at work, connected via USB C. No dongles.

To echo Wesley Burrows, I'm a Mac user. I also have the same coloquial experience with autoCAD working fine, but VW being really slow. I also use imported DWG's, and PDF's, but in this case (two different files), I have neither in my drawing.

 

[Kevin McAllister]

1 hour ago, Wesley Burrows said:

I have 642 GB Free on my 1TB Mac Pro SSD.

I also use hardwired ethernet to my internet to take full advantage of it's speed.  (1Gbps Fiber)

I don't think so.   There was actually a period where I disabled Time Machine entirely thinking it might help,  but there was no real discernible improvement. 

I use dropbox business,   I have my own complaints about their app,  but I haven't noticed a correlation.

 

I know I'm not who you asked,  but I'm also primarily a Mac user and experience the same sort of stuff.     Vectorworks chokes all sorts of hard when dealing with large(ish) imported DWGs.   Large in terms of scale,  not really file size.  (that my 10 year old machine handles no problem in AutoCAD)     Same deal when trying to navigate around imported/scaled PDFs.    VW has never really been a Stallion at it,  but it seems to be getting worse with each release.     When 10 year old hardware can outperform current on a 2D DWG line drawing (albeit in it's native software),  that's pretty embarrassing.       This is my experience with most drawings for me,  as I'm usually starting from an existing DWG import.

 

So most of your slowdowns are with 2d objects? When the DWGs are imported do the lines become 2d objects in VW or 3d polygons? Your machine is pretty high spec so I wouldn't expect these issues. Have you talked with tech support?

 

16 minutes ago, tekbench said:

SSD has 68 Gig free.

I use WiFi for everything. I have the issue with my office WiFi (50 meg down, 25 up) and my home internet connection (1Gig Fiber to the home. runs about 600mbps in real life on 5GHZ.).

I can re-pro issue with wired internet. Doesn't seem to make a difference.

Time Machine is always in ‘manual’ mode. It never runs until I tell it to.

I do use dropbox. But the issue is happening when dropbox shows ‘up to date’ and not sync’ing. I've turned that off.

I'm using a 4K Acer monitor at home, connected via USB C. No dongles.

I'm using a 4K LG monitor at work, connected via USB C. No dongles.

To echo Wesley Burrows, I'm a Mac user. I also have the same coloquial experience with autoCAD working fine, but VW being really slow. I also use imported DWG's, and PDF's, but in this case (two different files), I have neither in my drawing.

 

Personally I see slowdowns in VW when my SSD has less than 100gb free. Below 75gb free the issues become significant. Its recommended that you have at least 15% free for general use (so at least 75gb on a 500gb drive). Do you use a wireless input device? That's one of the reasons I switched off wifi. If someone else was streaming something on wifi I could see it in the performance of my machine.

 

My workflow is 100% 3d in the design layers, so that may be why I don't have these issues like many others. But I'm running complex models on a 5 year old MacBook pro that only has 1024mb of graphics memory without issue. There's definitely something going on given there are so many posts about this issue but not all users are seeing it. I would recommend talking with tech support to see if they can isolate the issue.

 

Some of the delays may be addressed by on-demand tessellation feature in VW2019 teased here - 

 

 

Kevin

 

[scottmoore]

Kevin,

when you say your workflow is 100% 3D, are you mostly using direct modeling or do you use a lot of plug in objects and Spotlight symbols?  I do all of my drawing in 3D using a combination of direct modeling and custom symbols. 

 

I’ve often wondered how much processing is going on “behind the scenes” when using items that are referencing data such as Spotlight symbols. I also wonder what all is involved, from a processing standpoint, when using Design Layer Viewports? 

 

I have been on record as saying that the last really bullet-proof, blazing version of VW for me was 2010. It occurs to me at that time I was using all my own symbols (which is still the case) but I did not include the Spotlight functionality beyond being able to add text via the label legend manager. I also had not yet implemented the idea of design layer viewports until Landru demonstrates that for me. 

 

I clearly recall the last project I designed in 2010 and how quickly I had it drawn and rendered.  The difference between then and now is astounding and I am curious as to how much of that is the application and general and how much is due to how it is being used. 

[Kevin McAllister]

1 hour ago, scottmoore said:

Kevin,

when you say your workflow is 100% 3D, are you mostly using direct modeling or do you use a lot of plug in objects and Spotlight symbols?  I do all of my drawing in 3D using a combination of direct modeling and custom symbols. 

 

Mostly direct modelling and custom symbols. I use some architectural PIOs (walls, doors, windows) and a few entertainment PIOs (softgoods). The softgoods PIOs are set to simple 2d and simple 3d however because I find the extra geometry bogs things down. I rarely use Spotlight lighting symbols because I mostly do set/exhibit design these days. 

 

Even though I work entirely in 3d most of the time my plane is set to screen plane. This is because I like to use 2d objects to do layout and automatic/layer plane objects slow that process down. I avoid Auto Hybrids and meshes/multiple extrudes because they slow files down.

 

I think many of the delays present in Vectorworks are related to the selection highlighting and snapping systems which are single core and not drawn by the VGM. They struggle a lot with heavy geometry files. I have pre-selection highlighting turned off and only have object and intersection snaps permanently turned on. I turn other snaps on/off as needed.

 

1 hour ago, scottmoore said:

I’ve often wondered how much processing is going on “behind the scenes” when using items that are referencing data such as Spotlight symbols. I also wonder what all is involved, from a processing standpoint, when using Design Layer Viewports? 

 

I have been on record as saying that the last really bullet-proof, blazing version of VW for me was 2010. It occurs to me at that time I was using all my own symbols (which is still the case) but I did not include the Spotlight functionality beyond being able to add text via the label legend manager. I also had not yet implemented the idea of design layer viewports until Landru demonstrates that for me.

 

I don't usually use design layer viewports.

 

1 hour ago, scottmoore said:

I clearly recall the last project I designed in 2010 and how quickly I had it drawn and rendered.  The difference between then and now is astounding and I am curious as to how much of that is the application and general and how much is due to how it is being used. 

 

I'm sure many of the issues are workflow related, which is why I've been a big advocate for the open beta wish. The more people who test a new version of VW earlier in its life, the better. Some users are still using the same workflows they developed in the early 90s. Other users are using the latest tools only. I tend to fall somewhere in the middle since I like to pick the best tool for the job. I often try new approaches, keeping things that work and removing things that don't. I also revisit features as they get updated.

 

My biggest struggle with VW is working within container objects (see this wish). I am expecting to upgrade my hardware in the next couple of months. I'll be curious if I start to experience some of the other issues after I do.

 

Kevin

 

[line-weight]

I am quite sure that complex 3d symbols and plugin objects cause slow-down and problems, certainly whilst working in 3d. I avoid them as much as possible for this reason. When I import any 3d symbols that have any complexity to them I sometimes put them in a special class/layer that I keep switched off unless I absolutely need to be able to see them. I've found they can make drawings almost impossible to work on otherwise.

[tekbench]

Hey all/Kevin - 

I did a big purge of files and freed up a ton of "hard drive" space (even though we know it's just a chip). I now have 168 gig available on my internal drive. I will say this sped things up significantly in Vectorworks. It seems silly that you need over 100gb of free space on the primary drive to operate, but so be it. Vectorworks seems to be the only software package that takes such a hit. AutoCAD didn't nor did Adobe.

I also transitioned over to a more traditional Vectorworks "Model and Viewport" workflow. That seems to speed up a few other things by ONLY using dimensions and notations on sheet layers. It's taken a week or so of fooling around, but I think there is some validity to old work habits mixed with new tools and functionality all adding up to poor performance. I just bit the bullet and am moving away from some of my old time saving habits and developing new ones.

That advice was useful and helpful. Thanks. 

[lgoodkind]

I will add to this jokingly sad state of affairs - especially now that yet again they have released another version -2019.  What a joke.  I've been trying to actually do a CD/BIM/Model drawing set using the Hardscape tool and regretting it.  It can take 30-60 seconds simply to open the edit dialog for an individual hardscape object.  Even more if there is a slope to it.  We are constantly actively looking for an alternative to this madness.  So much of my life these days goes into waiting for VWorks to do things, restarting due to a crash or waiting for poor quality renderings that could have and should have been done in Sketchup with Lumion.

 

Mac Pro 5,1 

12-core 3.3gh

NVIDIA Titan X  - yes that's right - I should not be waiting for anything to complete with this hardware.

 

 

[lgoodkind]

The rant's are hard to avoid here but I may have a few suggestions to everybody coming here with the same level of ire.  The resources library is almost always the culprit when in comes to slow downs.  I have no idea why it is this way but it is.  If you have a lot of objects in your resources library or have a custom workgroup library AND especially if it is on a network drive you are going to be driven mad.  The only solution seems to cut your resources library content way down and if you are on a network use Dropbox or something to store everything locally.

[line-weight]

VW was really testing my patience yesterday, trying to do some renderings up against a deadline using a file that started in 16/17 imported into VW18. The frequent beachballs, malfunctioning push-pull tool, painfully slow navigation around a sheet layer with several viewports, the renderings that turn black, only to be resolved by restarting vectorworks which then takes an age to start up again, Vectorworks crashing, having to redraw geometry that didn't want to regenerate, using messy workarounds to create sectional perspectives because RW renders them hollow. I was still cursing the thing at 1am, and I'd like to have and could have made the renders a bit better if I hadn't wasted time messing around with this nonsense, and on top of running out of time I'd got to the point where I was nervous to make further adjustments in case it broke something.

 

Not a happy state of affairs at all.