Switching Workspace Very Slow

[ghlad]

Our company finally made the leap from Land Desktop 2005 to C3D 2014. The experts keep saying the complexity will be appreciated once we get over the steep learning curve, but at the moment hand drafting would be faster. Here is one of many issues: it takes 1 minute and 20 seconds to switch workspace from Civil 3D to Drafting and Annotation. It takes just as long to switch back. What is going on here?

I have SP 1 installed, but not 2 yet. See attached Docs for System and Search path info.

Thanks, Greg

[doni49]

1) What are your system specs (OS version, Processor & ram)?  It's possible the PC doesn't have enough "power".

2) In the almost two years that I've been using C3D, this was the first time I've ever switched to the "Drafting and Annotation" workspace.  It took maybe 25 seconds.  But There's nothing (as best I can tell) that I'd need to do/be able to do in that workspace that I couldn't do in the Civil 3d workspace.  So do you really even need to switch to it?

EDIT:  Forget the first question.  I just noticed that you have that included as an attachment.  FYI -- There's no need to embed your images in a doc file for attachment (in fact doing so will prevent SOME people from seeing the image as not everyone has MS Word).  You can save the image as a png file and upload that either inline (my preference or as an attachment).

Here's the image from his attachment for those who can't open a doc file.  I see that you have Win8.  I don't know off-hand what kind of ram is required there.

[doni49]

And Greg's "FileSearchPaths".....

The only possible issue I see with the paths is if Acad is having trouble finding one (or more) of the folders specified.

[ghlad]

Thanks for the tip on posting files using the PNG format.  I don't know that I will need any workspace other than Civil 3D, but in following the suggestion posted in this forum for troubleshooting another issue I came up against, one step required the switch to access a different menu.

[Jeff_M]

Is the P:\ drive a local or network drive?

If you have a number of customizations/menus in your P:\* paths, move those paths to the top of the search chain using the Move Up button on the right.

Make sure you don't have something loading that cannot be located in your search paths. This includes printers, pc3 & pmp files, lisp, dll's, etc.

Changing workspaces should only take a few seconds (less than 3 for me).

[ghlad]

The P:\ drive is a network drive.  This issue came up right out of the box, before any customization, which has been minimal so far.  Paths to printers, pc3, pmp and lsp files are defined and working.  Its the etc. that I'm not sure about.  How would I know what it's searching for, if that is the issue? 

I should clarify that when switching workspace the new one comes up almost immediately, but briefly (visible for a sec or less) than app window goes black with only title bar (with dwg name) and app menu button (top left corner) visible.

Thanks.

[ghlad]

Forgot....the Windows wait symbol is also visible while the screen is black, so something is happening in there.

[doni49]

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@ghlad wrote:

The P:\ drive is a network drive.  This issue came up right out of the box, before any customization, which has been minimal so far.  Paths to printers, pc3, pmp and lsp files are defined and working.  Its the etc. that I'm not sure about.  How would I know what it's searching for, if that is the issue? 

I should clarify that when switching workspace the new one comes up almost immediately, but briefly (visible for a sec or less) than app window goes black with only title bar (with dwg name) and app menu button (top left corner) visible.

Thanks.

---

Try removing ALL of the custom folders from the list (for the time being) and restart acad.  Now try again.  If the issue persists, then it's not likely anything to do with them.

[KirkNoonan]

Does this happen with an empty drawing? Is it just one machine, or all of them? Does it happen with one of the OOTB templates, or only a customized one?

A couple of setting to check:

DYNMODE = 0

In the options dialog box -> Open and Save tab -> 'Maintain visual fidelity for annotative objects' should be unchecked

In the options dialog box -> System tab -> 'Cache model tab and all layouts' or 'Cache model tab and last layout' should be selected (experiment to see which works best for you)

Type 3dconfig -> hit Manual Tune and make sure that the hardware acceleration is turned on. You also might want to uncheck the adaptive degredation box on the previous screen

[ghlad]

It happens whether the dwg is empty or not.  I was just now in a dwg with points only and after creating point groups and closing the toolspace window I got the black screen of death (Program not responding and the eternal wait symbol).  I left the program alone and about ten minutes later C3D returned from the nether world with all systems go again.

I'm the guinea pig in our office, so I have to figure this out (thanks to YouTube and this Forum) and train everyone else on C3D. 

I have only been using customized templates.  Dynmode was 3 but the 10 min. blackout happened after setting it to 0.  Another expert recommended setting the Layout Regen Options to Regen for best memory performance, so that is where that is.  I just unchecked 'Maintain visual fidelity for annotative objects', but that wouldn't have affected an empty dwg, would it?  I have already been through 3dconfig and hardware accel is on.  Haven't tried unchecking adaptive degrade yet.

Thanks for the help. Got to go.  I'll report more on Tuesday. Have a great weekend.

[ghlad · Accepted solution]

Update and resolution: 

Long answer:

Turns out the problem - which was not limited to switching workspace, but to any feature requiring Civil 3D to locate a file - was not directly related to AutoCAD, unless you can fault Autodesk for designing software that doesn't verify network connections.  The problem is a Windows "feature."  When I log onto my Windows 8 station, all my network drives are mapped to various letters.  Our projects drive is mapped to O:\ and program data that we want available to all users is mapped to P:\.  In Civil 3D under Options>Files we have paths to plotters, LISP programs and various customized support files directed to the P:\ drive.  The problem was that Windows doesn't make the connection to the mapped drives until you click on the drive in Windows Explorer.  If you launch Civil 3D before you make those connections, it cannot find files on those drives, even after the connections are made later!  So Civil 3D appears to hang up, for as long as ten minutes, searching for the required files.  Even something as simple as selecting a group of points in Model space would cause C3D to "freeze" while it tried to connect to the network, so C3D was really unusable.

Short Answer:

By adding a shortcut to network drives (O:\ and P:\ in my case) in my Windows Startup folder I can force a connection to these drives before launching Civil 3D.  Now the program runs much faster.  So far I haven't had any of the usual "hang ups" that I ran into before.