Memory Management (RAM Purge)

[Ross McLee]

Hi,

An observation (and a request for advice!):

My workstation isn't the most powerful (and I admit is due for an upgrade soon, but with 16GB RAM and a reasonable graphics card it copes well).

I have an 80Mb VW (2021) file which has primarily 2D content (including ConnectCAD schematics etc).

It is broken down into multiple design layers some of which contain viewports to a single reference file which has multiple DWG's imported into it (imported to separate layers (level 00, Level01, level 02 of my building) - They are my backgrounds from the architect, on to which I put my content over on a separate design layer.

 

On starting up VW2021 I am using 8 out of my 16Gb RAM with a further 1Gb added when I open the file

... I can work all day in schematics etc and performance is OK.

 

If I start showing other design layers the RAM usage goes up (no surprise there)... If I show all layers simultaneously I go over my 16Gb max and start using paging files/virtual RAM which is really poor performance.

 

BUT.. if I then hide all the layers the RAM usage remains the same (ready to be displayed for later I guess). But at 16+GB the performance is dreadful (barely workable).

 

Is there any way I can 'flush out the RAM'?  or is there a setting somewhere to manage my memory usage, layer display etc?

 

Thanks,

R

[nwfonseca]

I am having the same issue after moving to 2021. What version of VW are you on? I noticed that the RAM requirements doubled from 2020 to 2021. For 2020 the minimum RAM was 4GB for "entry level" and 8GB for "High-end" for 2021 it is 8 and 32 respectively. That is a huge jump in a very short time.

 

check this link out https://www.vectorworks.net/sysreq?version=2021

[Ross McLee]

@nwfonseca I am running VW 2021 (and am new to VW generally so don't have any experience of previous versions to compare performance with).

 

We noticed that the required specs have gone up too, significantly.

 

During the open house event last week, I raised performance and memory/processor management. The VW team were quite open to ideas on how to improve performance, my main point being that as a user I don't want to spend any time or effort in troubleshooting what might be causing performance issues, rather that VW is clever enough to know what are the optimal settings for the hardware I have, and to manage the resources effectively to give my a responsive experience. Identifying bottlenecks, excessive or unnecessary geometry which can bulk out a file. We even discovered that geometry [accidentally] placed far beyond the origin or other main geometry has a massive impact on performance.

 

I am looking forward to my new machine! - when graphics cards are available AND a sensible price!

[Art V]

1 hour ago, Ross McLee said:

We noticed that the required specs have gone up too, significantly.

Those are the specs for high end that have gone up a lot and this is mostly because of some features in 2021 having a significantly higher demand. If you don't need/use those features then you should be ok with the mid level specs.

 

Though it is not just Vectorworks only that is causing the minimum requirements going up, Windows and other software also need increasingly more RAM so my guess is that the requirements are in part also to account for that given the average usage scenario for most users (i.e. having multiple programs open like e.g. e-mail, spreadsheet and VW).

 

What may help in your case is to import the DWG files into empty VW files and then link to those VW files instead, then you should have less overhead with the linked files which may increase performance. (Linking DWG files likely causes more overhead than linking VW files with the same content).