Slow Civil 3d, cause by slow server, but still frustrated

kickhead70 · ‎02-07-2013

Our server recently got tied up running backups, so all performance suffered for a morning, but it revealed some of Civil 3D's behavior that may otherwise go unnoticed. Here's relevant details:

Win 7 Pro 64, HP EliteBook 8760w with add-on 27" monitor, 16GB RAM
Civil 3D 2012, all latest patches/service packs.
All support files pathed locally.
drawing being worked on is the source for surface data for data shortcuts.
all automatic rebuilds of any kind turned off.

Many, many common functions of even vanilla autocad were unreasonably slow. Why should there be a 20 second delay after clicking a hatch to grip edit? Why should there be a delay after editing a feature line (no auto rebuild)? I understand the lag with rebuilding the surface, but not the simple things. It was my understanding that AutoCAD had a system where all drawing data is been copied locally to work on, and saves go back over the network. It seems like Civil3D / AutoCAD generates a ton of unneccesary network traffic for many things which should be able to happen strictly locally. Am I missing out on a setting somewhere?

Thanks!

larf_andersson · ‎08-21-2015

This is by far the best post i've seen in this area, and i'm wondering if you ever found a solution to your problem of civil 3d being extremely slow when

working against a remote server. As in the files you are using are on the remote server, civil 3d is locally installed.

Did you end up running mirrored servers or did you find a different solution?

Regards

Björn

brent.morris.widseth · ‎08-21-2015

Most the most part I think the problem is Windows 7 SMB2 & Autocad

We have done 2 things now to speed things up.

We copied all of our CADD standards that all the CADD stations were looking at to their local computer, we then use RoboCopy to mirror our network CADD standard to their local CADD standards.

We then moved all of our data into the Cloud using Nasuni as our cloud provider, we now have a Nasuni cloud appliance at all 7 of our offices so in a way each office is working on files locally.

By doing these two things it has really speed up working in AutoCAD Architecture, MEP, Civil 3D, Revit, Microstation.

Most companies can't afford the cloud option but if you are using CADD standards on the network I would recommend putting them on their local machine and then use something like Robocopy to update everyone when you make changes to the standards.

Brent

larf_andersson · ‎08-26-2015

Thank you for a quick reply to an old thread.

The CADD standards part sounds like an easy thing to do to speed things up. I didn't actually think that a cloud option was viable, but glad to hear it can work. I'll have to take it up together with mirrored servers and and see what they'll decide to test.

Björn