Jump to content

LONG save times in Vision??


Recommended Posts

I'm trying to understand why Vectorworks can save a very complicated file in seconds, and a Vision model built from the very same information can take several minutes to save?

 

I know my Vision model is getting "complicated" but it's really not that huge. About 12 universes of fixtures, some moving trusses, etc.

 

I'm very conscious of the polygon count vs. model responsiveness ratio, but the model performs quite well. When just saving the file, however, it means a coffee break. Seriously, it's taking 3-5 minutes to save the model.

 

Any ideas??

 

Thanks!

peace

aj

 

Link to comment
  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

There are many many reasons why this is the case. Some of them are limitations in Vision. Some of them are rooted in raw differences between how VW and Vision represent objects (more generically, the difference between realtime and non-realtime rendering software).

 

Vision does not have a concept of symbol definitions or symbol instances. You can imagine how bad VW would perform at save time if you were not able to use symbols. This is a significant problem affecting many aspects of Vision; file size, load time, write time, rendering performance, and more. This is an item that is high on our priority list but something that obviously is going to take a lot of effort but in code and in UI/UX/workflow.

 

Beyond the lack of symbol support in Vision, there are some things that Vision does which are arguably "better" than VW. This is obviously a matter of opinion and what features / functionalities are valued most. One item in particular is in how file formats are handled and their versioning. You may have noticed that Vision does not require exports to open in previous versions. This is largely due to how the scene is processed when being written to disk. Where VW may take a simpler/faster approach to writing to disk, this often forces users to perform exports due to limitations of this file format design. With Vision, we are striving to avoid exports unless they are necessary for technical reasons. In a perfect world, the end user would never have to concern themselves with file versions or exports and Vision has largely achieved that. This does come at an expense and that expense is increased write times. All of this being said, there is always room for improvement and even with the extra work Vision is doing at write time, we should be able to profile likely speed the code up.

 

The other major difference between VW and Vision is in how models are represented. In general, when in VW, it is often preferred to use tools like extrudes, poly lines, NURBS, and more when modeling. Because these tools are optimized for VW, their geometry performs best there. It is my understanding that it is generally not recommended to model in VW with only triangles (more of a mesh representation). This is because, generally speaking, meshes take up much more memory and require much more processing that something like NURBS which is optimized for certain scenarios. So, while VW is performing fairly well for you and Vision is performing poor, this is because they are not using the same scenes; one is made of models optimized for BIM (VW) and the other is made of triangles/meshes optimized for realtime rendering (Vision).

 

I do apologize for any issues you are having. I hope that you understand we are taking this request seriously and it is something we can investigate in more detail. We are always looking for feedback and take it into consideration when planning out our internal road maps.

  • Like 1
Link to comment

@bbudzon I was really going to throw this gaming laptop in the street until...

 

Vision became unresponsive for so long that I force quit the app. On relaunch, I took the advice to "reset all defaults and run in Safe Mode"

 

That helped considerably. Damn!

 

I have seen this dialog before, but would plow through without going "Safe" just to keep my window layouts, etc.

 

What exactly is "Safe Mode" then?

 

Is it something I have to turn off, or is it just some misleading vernacular?

 

As in... does the resetting of defaults then start you off "Safe" so you can go screw it up again by messing with texture and haze settings? Is there a way to accomplish this without forcing the app to quit to get the dialog on relaunch? I couldn't find such a function in the Vision app.

 

Putting some settings back to the way I want them is a small price to pay... when this happens again I'll be sure to reset and safe mode the hell out of it.

 

Regarding the different handling of VWX vs. Vision geometry... It has been a habit now for some time to convert what I can to either Mesh or Generic Solids for export. However, is this simply handled in the .MVR export process anyway? There don't seem to be any controls for polygon reduction on MVR export, but VWX Extrudes, for example, must be getting converted to end up in the MVR package for other applications to use?

 

Thanks again

peace

aj

 

 

Link to comment
  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
1 hour ago, ajpen said:

Vision became unresponsive for so long that I force quit the app. On relaunch, I took the advice to "reset all defaults and run in Safe Mode"

 

That helped considerably. Damn!

This is something new to me but I imagine you could end up in certain situations where this might make the difference! In particular, it is easy to inadvertently change some preference and not realize it. It is also possible that if you've used previous versions of the software for long enough, there are conflicts occuring that we have not prepared for in code. Safe Mode resetting everything could clean things up.

 

1 hour ago, ajpen said:

I have seen this dialog before, but would plow through without going "Safe" just to keep my window layouts, etc.

I do exactly the same thing. I rarely leverage safe mode unless I have to.

 

1 hour ago, ajpen said:

What exactly is "Safe Mode" then?

 

Is it something I have to turn off, or is it just some misleading vernacular?

 

As in... does the resetting of defaults then start you off "Safe" so you can go screw it up again by messing with texture and haze settings? Is there a way to accomplish this without forcing the app to quit to get the dialog on relaunch? I couldn't find such a function in the Vision app.

 

Putting some settings back to the way I want them is a small price to pay... when this happens again I'll be sure to reset and safe mode the hell out of it.

Safe Mode essentially is an attempt to rescue the application from a crash. There are many things that can cause Vision to crash, but one of the possible offenders is insufficient GPU for the given settings. Say you are playing with render settings and you adjust one too high, it crashes. Now this setting is saved in your application... how are we going to change the setting if we cannot get it to boot? If you end up in this case, we need a way to floor the settings (a special "mode"), just so that you can boot into the application and "fix" your settings (ie; match them to your hardware so it no longer crashes on boot).

 

So, it is not something you turn on or off. Behind the scenes, it clears all user data (including preferences) but not licensing/reporting. We also do not delete any files on your hard drive. So, things like application and document presets will persist. NOTE: Be careful using these as these may be what caused the issue to begin with!

 

The easiest way to get out of safe mode is to shut down Vision cleanly (ie; without crashing) and start it again. If you must get out of safe mode without restarting Vision, you can open the Application Preference dialog, select the <Default> preset, and click ok. (In theory, any change to the application settings should trigger the application to leave safe mode. I simply suggest using our defaults and they are generally sane.)

 

1 hour ago, ajpen said:

Regarding the different handling of VWX vs. Vision geometry... It has been a habit now for some time to convert what I can to either Mesh or Generic Solids for export. However, is this simply handled in the .MVR export process anyway? There don't seem to be any controls for polygon reduction on MVR export, but VWX Extrudes, for example, must be getting converted to end up in the MVR package for other applications to use?

I'd have to have some internal discussions to state anything definitive here.

 

My understanding is that the advantage of converting to a mesh or generic solid in VW before export is that it bypasses any decimation / mesh simplification when exporting to MVR. In particular, large objects with curves often look bad when overly simplified and converting to a mesh before export avoids this issue. A hack was introduced at one point where if an object is beyond a certain threshold in size, we would not decimate it during the MVR export as it may result in bad quality.

 

If you are using parametric objects, NURBS, and various other non-mesh non-generic-solid types, then I do believe that these will be decimated during the MVR export. This will happen behind the scenes and not affect your VW document. This also is only true (I believe) if the object is under the size threshold mentioned above.

 

There are currently no user controls for decimation in MVR exports. I think that is something we should investigate. Ideally, at least in my opinion, decimation could be controlled at both a global and a per object level with overrides.

 

So, in regards to streamlining workflow, and to the best of my knowledge, there is no need/benefit to converting objects to a mesh or simplified geometry unless that object looks broken (ie; low quality) when imported into other programs. This saves you time not having to convert things, but also should (in theory) result in better performance as objects that were not being decimated before now are; the total poly count should end up reduced.

 

 

I hope this answers your questions. There is certainly room for improvement in both VW and Vision in regards to optimizing scenes for realtime and dynamic lighting. It is very hard to compare the two products side by side as they serve two fundamentally different purposes. While this does apply to rendering, it also applies to things like file formats and what an application considers to be important.

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...