Slow Network Performance Due to Search Paths

[Anonymous]

This really should be posted in an AutoCAD Ideas forum but I wasn't finding one.

The problem:

  AutoCAD performance degrades significantly when network locations are added to the Support file Search Path. This has been an ongoing problem for many releases.  It makes AutoCAD nearly unusable when trying to work on files over a network with a slow connection.  Each keystroke can take seconds or more to process as AutoCAD searches each network path with each entry.

Autodesk attempted to resolve this problem by introducing Project Files Search Paths.   On the face of it, this seems like it would be a solution.  The problem is that the implementation contained a boneheaded caveat:  The Project files Search Path is tied to a variable that is stored in the drawing itself.  if the variable is not set correctly prior to the drawing being loaded, the reference files are not found. At best, the designer must manually reload the unresolved reference files.  The real headache comes in when a designer tries to batch process or publish drawings that have an incorrectly set PROJECTNAME variable. The references aren't loaded.  This has resulted in many a drawing being plotted incorrectly or worse, issued to a client.

Autodesk could turn the Project Files Search Path into a workable solution by doing one thing: Create a "DEFAULT" override that will force a specific Project Files Search Path regardless of a drawing's PROJECTNAME variable setting.

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

which files do you have on the server and used support paths to point to them?

My experience is that

• NAS drives are not really server replacements, especially small files are really slow (and AutoCAD's files in support paths are small in general)
• having a large amount of files in one folder is slow (I saw a symbol library with 6000 files in one folder ... that's bad for every access to the drive)

My way to work (in most cases) is

• create a network folder with all your support folders and -files
• create a login script which syncs these folders to the users local drive
• set AutoCAD to only use the local files

- alfred -

[Anonymous]

Localizing files has always been hit or miss. Our projects tend to be large and distributed, not that it matters as even small projects would benefit from this and we can provide consistency with the workflows regardless of project size. Sometimes we're on a client network, which can be quite restricted on what can or can not be run.  Login scripts provide a single refresh. Not much good when files are being updated continuously. 

80-90% of the search path performance issues could be resolved with the Project Files search path, if it could be guaranteed consistent and reliable.  Being able to set a default path value that overrode any drawing based ProjectName variable setting would fix the issue without needing to localize or run external scripts, programs, batch files, etc. which only provide another potential point of failure.