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Stripping Down Vectorworks for 2D Work?


j@sper

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Hello,

My office uses VW for all of our drafting needs and we like it because the drawings look great and graphics are controlled quite easily. However, it seems to be incredibly slow and for years we've just dealt with it. We do not use VW for ANY 3D or rendering work whatsoever, everything we do is just 2D drawing and sheet setup/annotations. We are using VW '19 and I've attached a screenshot of our computer specs. I have scoured message boards and tried all of the optimization techniques out there... I typically have to use the "best compatibility" setting or else I'm staring at beach balls all day. With computers as powerful as (I think) these are, I just don't understand why there seems to be such a struggle with simple drafting work. Our file sizes range from 20mb to sometimes over 100mb. The main source of slowness seems to be multiple viewports referencing other drawings in design space, for example plan drawing viewports to help create interior/exterior elevations. Turning off the layer with the all the reference viewports seems to speed things back up again. Is there a better way to do this?

 

My main question is this: is there a way to streamline the 2D work by removing functions used on the 3D/Rendering side, or are there any more optimization tips out there that people have found helpful? I've read that fusion drives seem to struggle with VW more than solid state. Maybe these computer specs just aren't as good as I think they are? I'm no expert on that topic. 

 

Any advice is appreciated!

 

2118696420_ScreenShot2021-04-22at11_40_33AM.thumb.png.2e8d5db64e0f195068462bd2601f3ddc.png

 

Thanks

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@j@sper Your computer seems a lot better than mine, yet I do not experience these problems you mention.

And I routinely work on files in excess of 1GB in size, fully 3D modeled.

 

Sheets at an appropriate DPI, Viewports with the correct design layers turned off, class visibility management, and the use of appropriate fill styles all seem to have a big impact.  Running certain programs in the background can have significant negative impacts.  For instance, there is a conflict between Outlook and Filemaker Pro that messes up the plant database and introduces graphic issues.  I'm sure there are plenty of others.

 

A client of mine experienced a crippling slowdown today on one of her projects.  Purging the document of duplicate objects made a night and day difference due to over 14K duplicate nurbs surfaces created from a 3D sink in the file.  She didn't create these duplicates, they were an artifact Vectorworks magically created on its own.  So try purging and see if it helps.  In her case, viewport updating went from 10 minutes to 20 seconds just based on that one purge.

 

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I don't know about iMacs, but MacBooks have the option of using either Built In Graphics or External Graphics (at least the high end models). I found last week that I had the External Graphics turned off that was making things very slow.

 

For me it was in the Battery Control Panel in System Preferences. For an iMac it might be Power?  It is called Automatic Graphics Switching. With this turned off, the external graphics card is always used to get the best performance.

 

image.thumb.png.bb5b43754de29bf948ec791aefa9eb6d.png

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