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Drawing not fully loading?

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Message 1 of 11
rdlongbow
789 Views, 10 Replies

Drawing not fully loading?

I've previously posted about poor performance across our WAN, and working with Toolspace open. I have suspected that maybe the drawing wasn't loading completely, so whenever I did certain operations, C3D needed to go back across the WAN to the server for more of the drawing, or maybe just to read some portion of the drawing file, where the request was getting delayed by latency in the server.

 

Anyway, today, I copied a drawing file to my harddrive and opened it. As expected, the drawing loaded fairly quickly, except for having to go out to the server to syc the references and xref'd drawings. But once loaded, everything worked the way it is supposed to. I can turn on the contours, and it just happens. I can open the drawing settings, and then close them, and I instantly have control back, all with Toolspace open.

 

Now, C3D may still be needing to go back to the drawing for whatever it is that it needs, but being on my harddrive, it can get what it needs very quickly.

 

My question is: Why doesn't C3D completely load a drawing into memory? We now have 64 bit systems with access to gobs of memory. There shouldn't be any reason for leaving some of the drawing behind, should there?

10 REPLIES 10
Message 2 of 11
machadt
in reply to: rdlongbow

Hi Charles,

C3D doesn't work with partial loaded files, when you open a drawing in C3D the program is unresponsive until the drawing is fully load it.

If it takes to long to load and/or to save the changes when working from the network most likely this issue could be related to a conflict within your network such as:
Synchronizing time between server and workstation
Network saturation
Excess server workload
Virus protection on the client
Virus protection on the server
"Misbehaving" network drivers on the client or on the server
It could be a server environment, NAS.  

Hope this will help.

Tatiana Machado
AEC-ENI Application Engineer
Message 3 of 11
rdlongbow
in reply to: rdlongbow

If the drawing is fully loaded, then why do I get a busy cursor for 30 secs. or more when I open the drawing settings, and close them without making any changes on a drawing loaded from a server on the WAN, but I get control back instantly when the drawing is loaded from my harddrive? If the drawing is fully loaded, it shouldn't need to go to the server to just close the setting dialog, right?

 

BTW: Thanks for the response.

Message 4 of 11
machadt
in reply to: rdlongbow

You just said it there if you save the drawing locally everything works as expected.

But not when you are working from the network therefore the problem must be on the network.

Tatiana Machado
AEC-ENI Application Engineer
Message 5 of 11
rdlongbow
in reply to: machadt

Please read the original post. If the drawing is fully loaded from the network, why does it have to go out to the ntework when I open the drawing settings?

 

Theory: Back in the days of 32 bit everything, memory was limited, and C3D on a 32bit os crashed a lot with out of memory errors. To minimize this, Autodesk programmers made it so that not all of a drawing was actually loaded, thereby saving precious physical memory. Maybe drawing setting and such were left behind to be retrieved as needed. Sort of a modular thing.

 

Flash forward: 64 bit everything has access to just about as much memory as you can stuff in a system, but the code hasn't been changed except to make it 64 bit aware.

 

That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

 

Our company is trying an expensive workaround to this problem by way of Vault. However, we only have a few licenses, and only the C3D files from certain projects are going to be put into the Vault. I have no doubt that working in drawings checked out from the Vault will work as advertised, as a full copy is made on the local drive. Ah, ha. A full copy on the local drive. Fancy that.....

 

It could very well be that there is something on our servers that is causing the problem, but if the drawing is fully loaded into memory, the server would be a non-issue except for opening the drawing, saving the drawing, loading xrefs, sycing with source drawings on the server, etc.

Message 6 of 11
rdlongbow
in reply to: rdlongbow

Another test to help everyone understand this question: I created a new drawing on the server without any C3D objects, no xref's and no references to shortcuts. I open the drawing settings, and then click cancel. It takes 1 min 20 secs before I get control back. I've attached a snapshot of task manager so you can see that they is network traffic during the time of the frozen cursor. The network utilization was zero before clicking cancel. It bumps up to about 0.15% during the frozen cursor, and drops back down to zero after it's done doing whatever it was doing. Copy the drawing to my system, and do the same thing, and the get control back instantly.

 

So once again, if the drawing is completely loaded in memory, why is it necessary for C3D to go back to the server when cancelling the drawing settings.

Message 7 of 11
rdlongbow
in reply to: rdlongbow

Keeping the issue alive.............

 

A little backup for my theory taken from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff647804.aspx

 

Inefficient data retrieval. Retrieving XML data from a data source on a per - request basis, rather than caching the data, can cause performance bottlenecks.

 

Much of C3D appears to be in an XML format. Of course, if the drawing were fully loaded, this wouldn't be a problem.

Message 8 of 11
machadt
in reply to: rdlongbow

About your observation, we did make it where CIVIL 3D modules weren't loaded until needed back in the 32 bit days, but the drawing has always been (and always will be) fully loaded.
Do you have digital signatures enabled?
Tatiana Machado
AEC-ENI Application Engineer
Message 9 of 11
rkmcswain
in reply to: rdlongbow


@rdlongbow wrote:

Please read the original post. If the drawing is fully loaded from the network, why does it have to go out to the ntework when I open the drawing settings?


Just wanted to throw my 2₵ in and say I understand exactly what you're talking about. I suspect our network is to blame for a lot of our slowness, pausing, waiting, etc. also. I just don't know how to prove/fix this w/o knowing exactly what C3D is doing "behind the scenes".

R.K. McSwain     | CADpanacea | on twitter
Message 10 of 11
rdlongbow
in reply to: rdlongbow

Digital Signatures was enable, though I don't have a digital signature. Doesn't make a difference with it off. I do believe that the SMB 2 hotfix was installed on my system. I'll double check on that one.

 

Thanks for the response!

Message 11 of 11
rdlongbow
in reply to: rdlongbow

We finally have C3D 2013, though it hasn't been put into production mode yet. I've done some testing, and it appears that the issues I have experciencing have been resolved. No delay after opening and closing drawing setting or CTRL-Tabbing between open drawings, etc. Everything just happens......finally, and this is with Toolspace open!

 

Some might say this was due to the fresh install, but I had 2012 completly uninstalled/re-installed twice, so it wasn't that. Whatever the problem was, it has been corrected.

 

Now the question: what do we do with our half-a-dozen Vault licenses that we no longer need?

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