SLLOOWWW

[Tom Klaber]

Vectorworks seems to be running slower and slower.  It will just stop and think about nothing for MINUTES.  A change in sheet layer will be met with 3 to 5 minutes sitting there.  No operation done - just a change in view.  The view is visible - but it will go into Not Responding for MINUTES.  What is going on??  What is it thinking about?? Its just a sheet with 2 elevations.  It is so frustrating. 

[_James]

Spare a thought for those of us on 16GB shared between CPU and GPU!

[Wesley Burrows]

This is becoming infuriating.   Even with a single file open,   zooming,  beach ball,    layer change,  beach ball.   Whatever mundane task it is,  the thing just chokes for no reason,  at random.     I can't say for sure it didn't do this in SP2,  but it is loud and clear in SP3.

 

Based on peoples signatures in here it seems to be a cross platform problem too.

Edited February 9, 2023 by Wesley Burrows

[Wesley Burrows]

This.   This right here,  super fun.

 

[zoomer]

10 minutes ago, Wesley Burrows said:

Based on peoples signatures :

 

MacPro 2019 | 3.2 Ghz 16-Core Intel Xeon W | 96GB | AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo X 2 | LG 32:9 49" Ultrawide Display

 

Wow !

 

👍

[Pat Stanford]

@Wesley Burrows I read pretty much everythign here and don't remember seeing a lot of people with issues similar to yours.

 

I suggest that you start a new thread. This one is almost a year old and was started on VW2022, not VW2023.

 

What have you tried so far? VW Re-install? Different User Account? Safe Reboot? Updated video drivers?

 

What you are seeing is not typical. 

[zoomer]

1 minute ago, Pat Stanford said:

What have you tried so far? VW Re-install? Different User Account? Safe Reboot? 

 

What you are seeing is not typical. 

 

 

Looks like a real Driver issue.

 

 

1 minute ago, Pat Stanford said:

Updated video drivers?

 

 

Should be hard on a Mac Pro or Apple Computer (?)

 

Well, assuming the Mac Pro is running macOS, not Windows via Bootcamp ....

[JuanP]

3 minutes ago, zoomer said:

Looks like a real Driver issue.

I do agree - that could be the Vega drivers issue we have seen also in some iMac's - Could you check for possible system updates missing?

[Jeremy Best]

On 2/8/2023 at 10:29 AM, Tom Klaber said:

I'm slumming it with 32GB - I was thinking of upgrading - but if you have similar with 96GB - then sounds like the issue is more fundamental.

 

No matter how much RAM you have installed one of the most important aspects to monitor is the total percentage of memory consumed. Getting slightly more technical; The amount and the rate that memory is being extended to the disk drive is a concern - more so for those with an HDD (hard disk drive) as opposed to an SSD (solid state drive). 

 

For Windows users: 
If the 'Memory' graph in Task Manager indicates the majority of memory is in-use then that's when you should start to consider either reducing the demands you place or increasing the RAM installed. That's the least technical way to measure but it's not the most accurate. If you want to be more precise or nerd out, this question on Superuser.com elicits this excellent comment which provides a more accurate way to gauge if memory size is an issue.  

 

For Mac users: 

Open Activity Monitor. In the Memory tab, look at the graph at the bottom. If the graph is yellow, orange or red while you're trying to work, you need more memory OR to reduce how much demand you're putting on the memory. If this happens often, more memory is warranted. 

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

Hello,  I had this problem.  Eventually I just did a re-install.  But, the problem was in a preference file somewhere.  I am pretty sure of that.  I was working on a very complex 3D object at the time.  Somehow, I believe that file corrupted a "pref" file.

The problem only occurred when I was working in 3D and not 2D.

 

[line-weight]

21 hours ago, Jeremy Best said:

 

For Mac users: 

 

Open Activity Monitor. In the Memory tab, look at the graph at the bottom. If the graph is yellow, orange or red while you're trying to work, you need more memory OR to reduce how much demand you're putting on the memory. If this happens often, more memory is warranted. 

But I get the impression that people with 16GB, 32GB, 64GB of RAM are reporting this kind of pressure on memory. Maybe even 96GB unless @Wesley Burrows is experiencing some other problem.

 

So just how much more memory is warranted?

 

 

 

[Wesley Burrows]

Update to this,   I did a repair installation of SP3,   and the hesitations and beach-balling remained.   I've since reverted to SP2,   and SO FAR,  I haven't had any of the hesitation,  lagging issues.   I'll report back after more time passes.    But so far so good,  you know,  other than having to deal with all the bugs in SP2 that SP3 fixes.    But I guess it's a trade off I have to live with to make the software more useable.  

 

I've been rolling with 7 or 8 drawings open all day,   so far so good. 

 

 

1 hour ago, line-weight said:

But I get the impression that people with 16GB, 32GB, 64GB of RAM are reporting this kind of pressure on memory. Maybe even 96GB unless @Wesley Burrows is experiencing some other problem.

 

So just how much more memory is warranted?

 

 

 

 

Vectorworks has been open all day here,  with the above 6, 7, 8 drawings open simultaneously and this is where I'm sitting so far:

 

[Tom Klaber]

New low....

Vectorworks freezing and consuming 42% of memory with NO FILES OPEN - just the new home screen. 

 

[zoomer]

I am used to VW 2023 eating a minimum of 3-4 GB RAM, just for running itself.

 

Should be the same if freezing (very seldom here) or running normally.

If it has problems, it usually just disappears from screen for me.

 

 

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

One fellows comment jogged my memory on this.  I did a re-install without first doing a "de-install" and the problem persisted.  I tried a second time, but first doing a complete uninstall and then reinstall.  That is when the problem stopped, hence my feeling is that there is a corrupted "pref" file somewhere.

[Jeremy Best]

6 hours ago, Tom Klaber said:

New low....

Vectorworks freezing and consuming 42% of memory with NO FILES OPEN - just the new home screen. 

 

 

@Tom Klaber, Your screenshot doesn't show Vectorworks using 42%. That percentage at the top represents the total memory consumed by all processes currently running on your computer, including the operating system and other programs. If Vectorworks' use of ~4GB is 42% of your total memory you probably need more memory for your work as Vectorworks 2023 does indeed have a higher baseline than Vectorworks 2022 did. 

 

In relation to Vectorworks using more memory when all files have been closed vs when Vectorworks is first opened:

If you have had a Vectorworks file open this session Vectorworks will retain some aspects of your interaction with that file in memory. I wouldn't expect those to remain indefinitely but if they did and it wasn't in order to offer some benefit to the user - such as being able to reopen that file faster - then it would warrant a bug submit or a enhancement request. 

[Tom Klaber]

52 minutes ago, Jeremy Best said:

 

@Tom Klaber, Your screenshot doesn't show Vectorworks using 42%. That percentage at the top represents the total memory consumed by all processes currently running on your computer, including the operating system and other programs. If Vectorworks' use of ~4GB is 42% of your total memory you probably need more memory for your work as Vectorworks 2023 does indeed have a higher baseline than Vectorworks 2022 did. 

 

In relation to Vectorworks using more memory when all files have been closed vs when Vectorworks is first opened:

If you have had a Vectorworks file open this session Vectorworks will retain some aspects of your interaction with that file in memory. I wouldn't expect those to remain indefinitely but if they did and it wasn't in order to offer some benefit to the user - such as being able to reopen that file faster - then it would warrant a bug submit or a enhancement request. 

Correct.  Not using 41% of memory - but fact remains - crashed with no file open.  

[Jeremy Best]

On 2/14/2023 at 11:44 AM, line-weight said:

So just how much more memory is warranted?

 

I reiterate: No matter how much RAM you have installed one of the most important aspects to monitor is the total percentage of memory consumed. - There is no limit to how much memory consumption user actions can induce, so if the work performed is the sort that creates a lot of demand it is necessary to learn how to manage that consumption. 

Is there a bug involved? 

I will be concerned if there is a significant percentage of users experiencing high memory consumption that does not correlate with user actions. I am not receiving reports of this in my market so at this stage I'm not suspecting a software bug. If it were a bug, it may be dependant on conditions or workflows that aren't common in our market. 

 

Why is my Vectorworks installation slow? 

There are various potential causes of slowdowns and high memory consumption so submissions should be made to your region's Tech Support. Due to the number of variables that can be involved with memory consumption and slow-downs, they may need to get online with the user while the issue is happening. 

 

If you are experiencing behaviours in Vectorworks that do not correlate with the demands induced, log into your Vectorworks Customer Portal to contact Tech Support for your region. 

[Jeremy Best]

17 minutes ago, Tom Klaber said:

crashed with no file open.

 

Sorry @Tom Klaber, I did not absorb your mention of this. I was addressing only your memory consumption comment so the uninitiated will have some perspective. 

If Vectorworks crashed when it wasn't doing anything - in my view - this makes it more likely it was caused by something other than Vectorworks, but I'm not asserting this is the case. 

 

If Vectorworks is crashing every time a particular action is performed, or if crashing of any kind becomes a frequent problem: 

1. Contact Tech Support for your region. 
2. I recommend all users have 'Error Reporting' turned on (preferably 'verbose') in Vectorworks Preferences as this helps engineers recognise systemic issues. 

[Tom Klaber]

14 minutes ago, Jeremy Best said:

 

Sorry @Tom Klaber, I did not absorb your mention of this. I was addressing only your memory consumption comment so the uninitiated will have some perspective. 

If Vectorworks crashed when it wasn't doing anything - in my view - this makes it more likely it was caused by something other than Vectorworks, but I'm not asserting this is the case. 

 

If Vectorworks is crashing every time a particular action is performed, or if crashing of any kind becomes a frequent problem: 

1. Contact Tech Support for your region. 
2. I recommend all users have 'Error Reporting' turned on (preferably 'verbose') in Vectorworks Preferences as this helps engineers recognise systemic issues. 

I was thinking the same thing... - but we run a pretty clean system - and I had no other programs running at the time. We have the adobe suite - chrome - Todoist.  A while back we reinstalled windows on all machines in desperate hopes of cleansing some small conflict.  This seemed to have no effect on Vectorworks - which is the only miss-behaving program we have.   

 

So - on the one hand - you could say it was caused by some other program on the machine - or that Vectorworks just does not play well with Windows.  

I have traced many problems to rendering hidden line viewports - which seems to cripple VW even after the rendering is done - requiring restarts. In response - we have also stopped implementing BIM workflows and retreated back to drawing manually in most cases.
 

[BartHays]

Might not be related, but I was having multiple crashes recently too.

I spend most of my time in VW so it was easy to point at it as the culprit. 

 

However,  I started crashing more often, full blue screen of death, finally I used MEMtest86  and checked all of my RAM, First all-at-once and them by pulling them all out and trying one stick at a time ( I have four 16 GB sticks)

 

Sure enough one of them was bad, I put the other three back in and I have not crashed since.

 

Bart

[line-weight]

I've been seeing what it takes to stress VW out on my system (16GB Mac mini, VW 2023 sp3).

 

If anyone wants to try replicating:

 

https://we.tl/t-qD6Jn6aVxQ

 

1. Download & unzip file at above wetransfer link (about 1.3GB in size)

2. Make three copies of it (so you have four in total).

3. Open one copy in VW. In my case, apple's activity monitor tells me VW is now using about 16GB of memory

4. Open the other three copies in VW so you now have four copies open. In my case VW now using about 36GB of memory

5. In one of the open copies, update all nine viewports. In my case memory use goes up to about 60GB at which point I start getting alerts about system memory and VW eventually beachballs indefinitely.

 

So it would seem that maybe you want to have at least 10x as much RAM as the largest file you want to work on - in order to open the file without starting to rely on swap memory.

 

That doesn't seem to scale linearly if you have multiple files open. In my case, 5GB of open files means about 7x as much RAM.

 

Once you want to start working on those files though, the multiplier looks like it might start to be more than 10x.

 

Is this normal/reasonable behaviour memory-wise? I have no idea!

[Wesley Burrows]

As far as the laggy/slowness/freezing goes with 2023,  I've found this:

 

I am 100% convinced that something with the VGM got jacked up in SP3.   I've been using 2023 SP2 for a few days now,  and it works fine.   I "upgraded" back to 2023 SP3 and the problems come back. 

 

Doing same mundane navigational tasks,   zooming,  panning,  orbiting,  etc in various files yield different results in different service packs.   In SP2 the GPU stays low most of the time,  occasionally hitting half way on the GPU usage history.

 

SP2:  

 

 

 

However,  in SP3,   doing the same activities will randomly peg the GPU.   This is when VWX will lag out,  or the drawing window will lock entirely,  though you can interact with menus, tools,  but nothing in the drawing window,  it's frozen.

 

SP3:  (The first screenshot was a laggy hang that recovered,  the second was the drawing window completely eating it)

 

 

 

 

I've switched back and forth between SP2/SP3 and the problems consistently go away in SP2 and return in SP3.    I haven't even had so much as a laggy interaction with SP2.    

Edited February 16, 2023 by Wesley Burrows
Updated with larger screenshots.

[MPereira]

I am experiencing this in vw2024 on both PC's home and work. Both have 32GB of Ram but different processors. My home laptop is a Ryzen 4600h and work desktop is an i9. On both machines vectorworks does not uses more than 16% of processing power but sometimes memory goes up to 90%. Vectorworks crashes when updating the site model and gives all types of errors on landscape areas and hardscapes... I call for assistance with the official distributor in Portugal and he just opened my files on his old 7 yo macbookpro and everything was working well and very very fast. I am very disapointed with this program because if it is not optimized to work with windows they should not sell it. Or should be provided as a BETA program. It is very frustrating when you put confidence on this and in a middle of a work you loose everything or cannot move forward. I see similar posts like this all over the internet and no solutions. 

 

 

[Pat Stanford]

@JuanP