Hi James. I'll try to answer as many as I can.
1) do you use a smartcache server at the office(s)?
No, we do not use SmartCache servers on-site. There are a few offices that require live databases for Revit shared models or Survey databases, but we have been putting those (and only those) on ACC or on a separate server. Without a caching server, Egnyte is a check-in / check-out file system.
2) did you see deleted files reappear sometimes, usually a few minutes later.
Maybe a couple of times, but it's pretty rare. Most of the time when I have seen this happen it's due to multiple people attempting to sync the same set of files for offline access with multiple disconnects/reconnects.
3) did you get really slow right click menu performance in explorer, for first click every 5 minutes or so?
Not that I have noticed. I really don't like Windows 11 'new' right-click menu. I haven't done the registry trick to bring the old one back. May be worth a look though.
4) Do you use the "sync for offline access" much?
No. I tried setting it up a few times, but ran into issues (as noted in #2). My biggest failed use case for this was with data shortcuts though. Our old server had a single common working folder for all C3D data shortcuts. There were about 3,000 projects under that one single working folder (not my decisions to set it up that way). This caused massive delays when opening Civil 3D or trying to set that working folder for the first time. To be clear, it was an issue using local servers too, but was made much worse by Egnyte. It was this massive common working folder I attempted to set for offline access under the assumption it would stop the delay if the files were saved local. However, there were so many people accessing that massive set of files constantly, the Egnyte app couldn't keep up. We have been slowly moving all data shortcuts into the project directories, so each project has its own working folder, and the 'projects' are the phases and sections of that project (how it should have been).
5) Do you get long pauses in acad every 10 minutes or so, or at open?
Not anymore. At open I used to get the long pause mentioned above. But once a project's data shortcuts were moved into a proper location (and the ShortcutFolders.XML file was deleted from the '%appdata%\Autodesk\C3D 2026\enu\Project Management' folder) there is no more delay at startup. As for the pause every 10 minutes, that sounds like an autosave issue. Make sure those are being saved locally, and set ISAVEPERCENT to 0. I also turned off the creation of .BAK files. Since Egnyte does file versioning, they aren't really needed.
6) was there some key tweak that helped the most?
Some of the things that helped the most (aside from the ones mentioned above) were disabling anything that pings multiple files in rapid-fire. Such as setting SSMPOLLTIME to 600, SSMSHEETSTATUS to 0, BLOCKMRULIST to 0 (if you use the horrible new insert panel), setting STARTUP and STARTEMODE to 0 (to start to a blank drawing, not the recent tiles). In your options, set the File Open number to 0 (and Application Menu to 0 if you want to keep the startup screen). Egnyte also really doesn't like excessive regapps, so keep XREFREGAPPCTL to 1, and keep SAVEFIDELITY to 0 (unless you need to save annotative objects to very old file types). All these helped a lot, but what really helped the most is keeping an eye out for bad references and links. ANY bad link will cause ~10-15 second delay with everything. It can be a bad XREF path, a recent file that's been moved or deleted (that's why I turn all recent items off), or even bad links in the 'places list' (the vertical bar to the left of the open dialog) will cause the open menu to hang. Bad shortcuts to anywhere network related will cause lots of hangs everywhere. You feel it a lot in CAD, but it will slow down file browsing anywhere.
If you had on-prem servers and like egnyte, you must be using some kind of caching server as performance from the cloud is way slower than on-prem performance (10x minimum). We found it a little better than VPN speeds, not enough to matter though.
No caching servers, and we were using on-prem servers before Egnyte, but they were all syncing to a datacenter, so there was some overhead there. Maybe our VPN was also just really bad, but Egnyte has been WAY faster working remote (after the tweaks above and moving support files local). Working in office has been about the same. Just be sure your office ISP has enough bandwidth. All that traffic is now external, rather than internal. If everyone in a large office is trying to open (download) large files at the same time, there will be some bottlenecks on a slower connection.
I've been managing autocad and bricscad for more than 25 years so have seen how various things affect acad.
The classic thing is some remote drive that is slow can slow all of explorer.
I don't have network paths in my acad support paths, I am strict about that, as remote people get killed by such things.
Its seems like the egnyte drives have some kind of "overhead" handling that is not good.
It seems to get backed up and pauses while catching up. Curious of your experience.
thanks for any feedback.
Moving CAD support files local also had a huge benefit. At my company they used to be saved to the network, but we deployed a custom solution for this at the same time we rolled out Egnyte. From my testing, CAD support files mapped to Egnyte does not work at all. Egnyte definitely has some overhead, and it's more noticeable on larger files. When saving a large file in CAD, it should save quickly, and allow you to keep working. After it's saved in CAD, Egnyte will sync it up to the cloud in the background. Coworkers won't see the new save until they try to access that file AFTER your upload is finished and synced. This gives the illusion that other will see your new save quickly, but Egnyte is still working in the background. The popup in CAD telling you 'someone has modified an XREF' will have a delay to it, but if you manually reload an XREF after the upload is finished, it should sync fine.
Overall, I'm happy with Egnyte. No, it's not perfect, but if you tweak a few settings and know what to look for, it works pretty well.
Hope this helps.
EDIT: changed VISRETAIN to SAVEFIDELITY in response to #6.
