2012 Slow operation - with diagnostic notes

[sboon]

This appears to be a similar problem to other recent posts.  I've been playing around with it for several hours now, and I want to get my notes on what I'm seeing down for other users to check.  I think that I've isolated the problem to something related to sheet sets, but I don't have a solution yet.

• Civil3d startup with empty drawing.  No significant issues.  I have the Task manager running.  Network traffic increases from zero, and starts a regular cycle up and down between 0.01 - 0.07%.  This cycle stops only when ACad is busy; during a regen for example.  No other programs running.

• Open up the Design Base drawing.  This file includes one XRef of an Existing Conditions plan, which includes Civil3d objects.  It also DRef's in a surface and pipe network from the same drawing for design and labeling.  Network traffic is unchanged.  This design drawing already has a corridor built and has view frames in place; ready to create plan & profile sheets.

• Create one layout sheet in the current drawing.  The drawing is now associated with a new sheet set.  Network traffic increases by almost 100x, and is now cycling between 0.9 - 2.0%  The system is now noticeably draggy with hesitations during pan and zoom.  All operations now seem to be slower, particularly regens and layout switching.  The network traffic is now NOT affected by other program operations.  Eventually this becomes annoying and I close down the offending drawing.  Network traffic is unchanged.  Exit from ALL drawings - no effect.  The only way to stop this is to exit ACad altogether and then wait another minute or so for the ACad process to shut down.

• Restart Civil3d and open the design drawing again.  As soon as the Sheet set Manager is open the network traffic starts again, and the slow behaviour starts to become a problem.  Shut ACad down again.

• Erase the .dst file and reopen the drawing one more time.  Deal with the error message by removing the association to a sheet set. Network traffic returns to the original condition and the dragginess appears to have gone away.

Hopefully this is enough for someone to figure out what the problem is.

Steve

Vista Business Edition 64 bit
Intel Q9550 CPU
8GB of RAM
Nvidia Geforce 9600 GT running 8.17.0012.6099 driver

[hgohel]

Two questions come to mind:

1. Which virus checker are you using?  Can you eliminate that from the picture for your tests?

2. Because the network is an issue, I'm assuming your files are stored on the network.  Can you test with all files local on your machine to eliminate that as a variable?

Process Monitor from Microsoft is a to help diagnose what is going on with process...you may want to try using that.

[sboon]

Good morning Himanshu,

The virus software is Sophos.  It's controlled by IT so I cannot do much about it.  It doesn't seem to be the problem however, since the activity only starts when the drawing becomes part of a sheet set.

I installed and ran the Process Monitor software, and then repeated the steps in the original post.  Once the drawing is associated to the sheet set there are repeated errors from the network directory.  I don't really know what I should be looking for, but the cycle time of these errors seems to match the network traffic cycles that I am seeing.

I then copied the drawing directory to my Desktop and repeated the whole process.  With the files on the local drive there are no delays and the network traffic stays at normal levels, but Process Monitor is still showing an awful lot file accesses even when ACad is idle.

I'm only speculating at this point, but it seems like the program is constantly trying to access the drawing file.  The network is not able to respond as fast as the local drive which causes the problem.

[hgohel]

Hello Steve,

Thanks for the follow-up. It may be worthwhile to have someone from your IT dept. to come take a look at what's going on.  I would suggest that you ask them to temporarily disable your virus protection to determine if that changes anything.  Another thing they may want to take a look at is exemptions from scanning, e.g. DST files may need to be excluded from virus scanning if necessary, and perhaps even DWG files if deemed appropriate for your organization.

Keep in mind that just because there are a lot of accesses to files/network locations doesn't mean it's bad/wrong.  Process Monitor reports everything it sees, and the output requires some serious filtering to find only the problems.  The trick is knowing what to filter :). It's difficult to be very specific...your IT dept. should be able to take a look and work with you to figure out what's going on.

[ScottCampbell]

Hello guys,

We haev had massive problems over the last few years using ACA2009. We have about 2000 sheets in a dst file in project navigator and the dst constnatly blew up and was reduced to 0kb (search 0kb dst in discussion groups!).

We eventually stopped the problem by excluding xml files and dst files from our virus checker. As Project Navigator would start up, every xml file associated with the DST file is rapidly opened and closed by AutoCAD (Autodesk may want to correct me there), and the network/anti-virus saw this as a threat and started scanning files etc.

So give it a go. It certainly helped us. I now have exactly the same problem that you are describing with 3 PC's that I have migrated to ACA2012. I just need to check with IT if the anti-virus exclusions are still in place.

Good luck,

Scott

[blt]

This is also a C3D 2011 problem.  See the following thread: 

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD-Civil-3D/Civil-3D-2011-freezes-randomly/td-p/3037872

Our IT also uses Sopho anti virus and we will be looking into excluding the xml, dst and dwg files.  Is there any others that should be excluded from scanning?

Thanks for your research on the problem.