Civil 3D 2018 | Slow Selection?

[BlackBox_]

Is anyone else seeing really slow selection times?

I'm in the early stages of a new +/- 900 lot residential subdivision, doing the typical swapping of this size lots for that size over there, etc in client fashion, and I literally timed it at +/- 3 seconds to select a single Parcel with Properties Pane open (before a Select Similar to get a resultant count).

Not sure if it's an issue with Civil 3D 2018.1 as this is the first time I've used Parcels in 2018 (this is my pilot project), or not - I have also just recently installed Windows Fall Creators Update, but nothing else seems (no other application) to be having an issue at all.

Cheers

[BlackBox_]

When you extrapolate this lag out over the course of a year, the amount of production time lost per user due to this slow selection is significant.

While we all select a different number of objects a day and for different reasons, just as an approximation (as that's all I can offer without some big data analytics), if a user selects 1000 C3D Objects a day, they're currently losing +/- 3.5 weeks per year to selecting objects... Not modeling surfaces, not printing, just selecting C3D Objects... Now, how many users does your firm have and how much project budget does that consume from the profit/pay raise/bonus columns, hmm?

[thejac]

Turning off Dynamic Input options in Drafting Settings seems to help for us, although I still feel like this is something that needs to be fixed.

[rkmcswain]

@BlackBox_  wrote:

Any chance we can get an update on this?

Still have the same +/- 3 second lag when selecting even a single Parcel using Civil 3D 2019.2 & beta.

Without having to go back and read all 60+ posts, can you remind me/confirm that I understand the problem? I know what I wrote in post #19, but as of today, I am not seeing this delay in 2017 or 2019. Perhaps it's "in that groove" at the moment? (You mentioned it goes aware periodically?)

I will say the one thing that did change (I'll stop short of saying "fixed") is that when you select a parcel or other AEC Object, and then press ESC - In 2017 the cursor changes to the Windows cursor, an arrow, and remains so until you click in the editor. And if PICKAUTO = 1, then when you click to restore the crosshairs, you start a selection window, forcing you to press ESC *again*.

[BlackBox_]

@rkmcswain -

Your post #19 is still spot on here, using C3D 2019.2+... Nothing's seemingly changed but the date.

I select a single C3D Object/Label with Properties open, it takes +/- 3 seconds for Properties to populate and cursor to be usable again, which makes attempting to rapidly select a sequence of individual C3D Objects/Labels a PITA.

By comparison, attempting same with vanilla AutoCAD Objects (even in C3D) is near instantaneous.

[rkmcswain]

@BlackBox_ - I am not seeing this at all right now.

[BlackBox_]

---

@rkmcswain wrote:

@BlackBox_ - I am not seeing this at all right now.

---

Can you show me?

I must be doing something wrong... Here's a quick GIF of how slow Civil 3D 2019.2 is at selecting a small Parcel in an empty drawing:

I'm two doors away from the file server in our SMB office, running a workstation with Win10x64 Enterprise (configured for best performance, 65536 MB Page File), 4.2 GHz Core i7-7700K CPU (w/Turbo, OC with Intel XTU), 512 GB Samsung 970 Pro NVMe/M.2 SSD (over provisioned), 32 GB DDR4 RAM, 8 GB NVIDIA Quadro P4000 GPU, 3x Gigabit NICs w/SMB3, with all of my CAD-related support files and temp folders located on a +/- 9000 MB/s RAMDisk (yes, that's a big B; at Seq Q32)... I kind of feel like 'slow selection' shouldn't be an issue for me. Haha

[Edit] - I just tested this again after turning off Graphics Performance and have the same lag. 

[Edit] - UserBenchmark workstation score from June 2018 (is UFO good?): https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/9215448

[rkmcswain]

__ @BlackBox_ 

[BlackBox_]

Thank you.

Following the 'I must be doing something wrong' premise, I've precluded ALL customizations from loading (Autoloader apps, acad.lsp, acaddoc.lsp, disabled all reactors, etc), loading the OOTB <<C3D_Imperial>> Profile & DWT (all on C: drive) and even repeated this attempt using clean screen, closed ribbon, etc... So Properties palette is the only thing 'open'.

In the GIF below, I cannot even hit <ESC> until Properties is done populating, to attempt to quickly re-select a Parcel the way you showed is possible.

This is no different (albeit for me) when all customizations are loaded and the same behavior I've experienced since 2017 (which we skipped, only I tested it) & 2018 versions which is when I reported this. 

I'm at a loss... Any suggestions at what to even look into at this point? 

[BlackBox_]

---

@BlackBox_ wrote:

Separately, @Anonymous - I appreciate the suggestion, but I've just tried that and still experience all of the original issues as described above.

---

@Anonymous - While setting COGO contextual tabs to full without focus didn't seem to change much, doing so for parcels does have a noticeable improvement for some reason (perhaps some of the GPU settings changes I just made contributed too?).

Really wish there was a means by which to set all C3D Object contextual tabs to this setting globally (perhaps I can do so via code?). 

Just wanted to say thanks again for the suggestion. :beer:

Cheers

[rkmcswain]

@BlackBox_  - per my earlier post (#19 ) - I absolutely know what you're talking about.  The PC I'm using today is the same one from that time. I'm sure some things have changed on it, but nothing noteworthy, like an O/S change or anything.

Why is it working fine for me today? I have no idea. 

Here's a thought. Perhaps someone at Autodesk can chime in and figure this out. The code is doing **something** that is causing the delay. It can't be that difficult to figure out can it? I know they pay a lot of smart people, a lot of money. There is no reason to keep a customer frustrated over something like this. Why wouldn't they get someone to remote into your system, run some diagnostic tools that they have, and just figure this out?

Civil 3D is slow enough as it is, without any more delays like this.

BTW: My PC is fairly customized, with a lot of network paths, a custom menu, routines that run at startup, etc., so it's obviously not any of that causing the problem, confirmed again by the fact that you've disabled all of that.

[BlackBox_]

---

@BlackBox_ wrote:

... (perhaps some of the GPU settings changes I just made contributed too?).

---

Umm... I may not have the C3D Object selection speed I want at all, but all of this discussion led me to making those GPU settings changes (overriding application settings - against Autodesk recommendations when I asked them for help, multiple times over the last year, BTW), which just made a HUGE difference in C3D's performance with some of my larger drawings (current stockpile drawing is 212 MB) and my GPU utilization went up from +/- 7-10% to +/- 30% (in Editor window, LAYISO is now near instantaneous, LAYUNISO is +/- 1 second) & +/- 47% (in Object Viewer).

... And for that, I am grateful! :beer:

Cheers

[Anonymous]

What GPU changes have tweaked?  What card are you running?

Thanks,

[BlackBox_]

I made a point of reaching out to Autodesk on GPU settings multiple times and to multiple product teams. 

Back in mid-April 2018, I couldn't even get Scott Crider (Senior Product Manager for AutoCAD Team) to return emails asking for his help with this. To boot, I've been asking the C3D Team for help since June 2018 and they didn't even bother to respond at all (before Tim joined this thread, of course, for which I am grateful, assuming something eventually comes from their participation here):

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/civil-3d-forum/civil-3d-nvidia-quadro-settings/m-p/8065853/highlight/...

However, even after following their recommendations I still found C3D's performance to be utterly miserable.

My earlier Snagit GIF didn't even do this justice, as I noticed after the fact that Snagit's default capture frame rate was only 15 FPS, so what I posted previously was actually faster than what was really happening for me in CAD - I've adjusted that to be 30 FPS but am also now just going to use Camtasia to produce the full frame rate GIFs.

In these last few posts, I've now ignored Autodesk's recommendations and just look at the difference for yourself:

Selecting vertex-dense Polylines and Feature Lines still have a noticeable lag for single Object selection, but even that has improved from what it was before.

Separately, as @Anonymous (if not also others before them in this thread) aptly pointed out, there's still something going on with contextual tabs, as they have a noticeable lag behind the Properties palette... Despite the GPU settings changes, there is improvement using Full Without Focus over Full With Focus, but using Merged I can literally count to 3 or 4 out loud before it shows up.

Hey @TimYarris  - It would be really great if the C3D team could document something useful for certified GPU hardware settings. I'm not even sure that I have the 'best' settings yet, having only gone against Autodesk's recommendations a couple of hours ago, but the difference is night and day. So anything more than the big fat nothing we have today would be awesome. Haha :beer:

Cheers

[TimYarris]

Hi @BlackBox_  

My research tells me we addressed the slow selection issue in Civil 3D 2019.1. I'm not sure why you're still experiencing this. I can try to research GPU settings; so that I have a baseline, can you tell me where you found the Autodesk Recommendations you mentioned?

[BlackBox_]

---

@TimYarris wrote:

Hi @BlackBox_  

My research tells me we addressed the slow selection issue in Civil 3D 2019.1. I'm not sure why you're still experiencing this. I can try to research GPU settings; so that I have a baseline, can you tell me where you found the Autodesk Recommendations you mentioned?

---

Hi @TimYarris - 

I'm not privy to that research, but am on 2019.2 and have had the same behavior as when I first reported it nearly a year ago (until today).

Scott Crider never bothered to follow up and neither yourself, nor @peterfunkautodesk responded to this thread, despite multiple 'need an answer' escalations and a Salesforce case being submitted:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/civil-3d-forum/civil-3d-nvidia-quadro-settings/m-p/8065853/highlight/...

As for recommendations, that's the problem. 

The only person who did try to help - and I'm incredibly thankful for their time & effort - was Christopher Chen (AutoCAD Team) in the Customer Council forums +/- 7 Months ago, which I cannot share the entirety of (obviously). They don't understand how or why AutoCAD limits Civil 3D when working with our large data sets, so there's only so much they can or will do, as such problems don't affect them with vanilla AutoCAD data sets.

The takeaway (and I'm paraphrasing) was 'let the application handle it' via GPU global settings since AutoCAD Performance Drivers are no longer offered the way Maya profiles are (there's never been one for Civil 3D, AFAIK, but should be one given the nature of the data sets we use, IMHO), and to just 'use hardware acceleration'... Not really an effective solution to the problem.

https://www.nvidia.com/object/AutoCAD_PD_workstation.html

I knew this - a lot of it, not necessarily 'everything', as this isn't my wheelhouse - was GPU-related and just needed someone to help. 

I really tried doing things the 'right way' - going through proper channels, being patient, etc - and kind of got hung out to dry for it... I'd very much like to not repeat that again. Haha

Cheers

[BlackBox_]

Just wanted to thank you again, for taking the time to help with this, @TimYarris .

I know that you've got a lot of plates to keep spinning and so I greatly appreciate your time and consideration.

Even when nothing came from the Salesforce case, I really should have tinkered more on my own before - that's on me - I just didn't understand why nothing came from it (if that makes sense?) that nobody at Autodesk followed up at all.  I didn't actually expect you or @peterfunkautodesk to handle it personally, I just didn't know who to speak with and was merely hoping one of you might have someone chime in that original thread.

Cheers

[TimYarris]

Thanks for the followup, @BlackBox_ . Please don't think I'm ignoring you; I'm still digging through a number of channels for GPU settings but have been coming up empty so far. 

[BlackBox_]

---

@TimYarris wrote:

Thanks for the followup, @BlackBox_ . Please don't think I'm ignoring you; I'm still digging through a number of channels for GPU settings but have been coming up empty so far. 

---

Not at all! You've been awesome to work with; while you can never make everyone happy, I know how much better of a job the Civil 3D team does than any other team at Autodesk. 

I don't even feel like you or Peter ignored me per-se in that other thread, I just didn't know who else to reach out to, so I mentioned you both - I feel like those 'need an answer' escalations and the subsequent Salesforce case should have been handled by someone else (even if they too didn't quite know how to help with the specificity of my request).

As I said, I really should have tinkered a lot sooner - I just know that it made a world of difference and that is something others should have at their disposal OOTB, IMHO (if using certified graphics hardware). That's all.

Again, I really appreciate your time and consideration. :beer:

Cheers

[TimYarris]

@BlackBox_ , have you stumbled across this before?

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/certified-graphics-hardware

[Simon_Blain]

Can you share your settings Blackbox ?