Trimble Business Center

With the new 4.11 update it seems to take way longer when panning or rotating in either the plan view or model view, the "processing graphics for plan view" takes a bit longer than in previous views.  Is there a way to speed up this up or turn it off?

Hi Tyler,

We need more information to conclusively identify what's causing this slowdown. There were no significant changes made to the graphics engine between versions 4.10 and 4.11, but we are happy to investigate for you if you provide a few more details. How many MB is your project and what kind of data does it include (assuming it's not an empty project). Does your project contain point cloud or any kind of unusual data? Thanks.

David

The project sizes vary from 1mb to 30mb, the project include CAD linework, PDF sheets, multiple surfaces (finish grade and topo surfaces), nothing unusual.

Tyler Tani

Teichert Construction

GPS Project Engineer

4401 Duluth Avenue

Rocklin, CA 95765

Phone: 530-406-4204

Mobile: 530-304-6607

Is this the same on all Projects or one project specifically?

Are you running v4.11 and comparing it to Version 4.1 or an older version than that?

Do you have both versions installed on the same computer - If yes run a check between both versions on the same PC with the same Project and make sure that this is indeed what you are seeing. 

The one thing that did change with the v4.1/4.11 version and earlier versions is the support for DirectX 11 compared to DirectX 9 in earlier versions. You can change the default Graphics behavior by going to Support - Options - Advanced and changing the Graphics Display Driver and click the check box for Override Automatic Detection and then select DirectX9 as the override. You can also try OpenGL and OpenGL2 to see if that makes a difference.

Other than that maybe some Snap Settings have changed - this can slow you down if you have too many snaps turned on by default and you are showing "Display Visual Snaps" because these are looking to display all the snap options for the data within range of the mouse cursor and I have seen that sometimes with some data cause a slow down in performance. Try turning off Visual Snaps under Snaps to see if that helps.

Lastly did any of your Image management settings change between versions - the Images (PDF Pages that you show) are rendered on screen using settings in Support - Options - Images and also Support - Options - Advanced you may want to check those against your earlier version to see if any of those settings changed.

If it is unique to one specific project then there is something in the data that is causing the issue (is my guess) if it is in all projects then it is most likely a setting or settings somewhere that has changed - I have not personally seen any major change in performance on my machine at least and I haven't heard this as an issue until now.

Hope this helps

I changed the setting to what you suggested below and it did not seem to make a difference, especially with a 30mb file.

Tyler Tani

Teichert Construction

GPS Project Engineer

4401 Duluth Avenue

Rocklin, CA 95765

Phone: 530-406-4204

Mobile: 530-304-6607

Tyler

I took a look at your Project today and tracked the issue down to one major issue and a second minor one. Here is what I found

1) Business Center while it handles Linestyles, on large projects where you have a lot of data and images, they can have a negative effect on Graphics performance. If you go to Project Settings, View, Display Options and set the "Show All Lines as Solid" setting to Yes, the graphics regeneration becomes much much faster and the Pan and Zoom works great on even a modest computer. I think that this has changed in your prototype project that you are using and that is why you are seeing the difference between earlier versions and the current version of the software.

2) The Project evidently has a lot of imported CAD data. CAD files from Autocad that contain a lot of text items, can slow down the Graphics again on large projects if there is a lot of True Type Fonts used to display the Text. When I looked at the project, all of the Red Text in your Project has a true Type Font, if you change the Text Style of those Text items to a Font that uses a Stoked Font vs True Type you can often find that that will make a difference to the Graphics speed and regeneration time.

3) The last issue in this scenario that can cause slow downs in large projects are the following

a) Lineweights - Heavy Lineweights take more graphics memory and are slower to regenerate

b) Surface Model Transparencies - These can also slow you down on very large projects

c) Lots of High Resolution Imagery

d) Showing all of the Triangle Faces in Plan and 3D View on Large Surface Models - it is cheaper on graphics memory to show the surfaces as solid color or color by elevation than to show Triangles, backfaces, breaklines and Drape Lines - use those sparingly

There are many things that can make things slower - I will share a document that I have that discusses how to make your projects faster and more manageable that you may find useful.

While all of the above items are desirable and used a lot in BC-HCE, when you start to push the envelope and start to see slow downs, take these into consideration and use the tools as "smart" as you can and only where necessary if you want the highest degree of performance.

Thanks for the question, I am sure that this will be helpful to many people as I had this issue come up twice just today.

Alan

I’ve also noted v4.11 seems graphically slower at times than the v3.92 I was using. I’ll try some of these settings looking for some improvement. One question that arose while reading your post was changing line weight. Is it possible to do a blanket line weight change for the entire imported CAD data? I usually use layer manager to change each layers weight and style to 0.00 and Solid. There is still frequently lines that have properties set independent of the layer. If there is absolutely no text on any of the visible layers I can Select All and usually change the offending lines. However if there is any object classified as text that will not work until the layer with the text is turned off. So does the function exist to change everything at one time?

George

Yes - you can select all objects in the Project, and then in the Properties pane, at the top you will find a small pull down that lists all of the Object Types selected i.e. Blocks, Text, Polylines, Linestrings, CAD Lines etc. You can only pick one type here - but once you have done that, the Properties pane will show all of the Properties for that type of Object including Lineweight and it will likely say "Varies" and you can change it to whatever value you want. You will need to do it for each type of line - which means maybe doing it two or three times until you got them all to what you need.

I thought you could also do that using Advanced Select but Line Weight is not one of the selection methods - I have asked development to add that to the list of selectable properties in that function also.

Since most CAD lines we see are set to property "By Layer" you can go through the Layers also and change the Lineweight from whatever the Layer Property says and change it to the value need - but that can take a while if you have many layers - the Properties method is the best way to go.

I believe that since a few people have raised the speed issue over the last week - I am thinking that the default prototype projects that are being shipped with the product may actually have that Project Settings - View - Display Settings - Show All Lines as Solid set to No - if that is the case you can start a New Project, Pick the Prototype that you are using, then when the Project is open, go into Project Settings and change the setting to Yes and then after exiting Project Settings use Save Project as template to update the template or create a New one.

I am pretty certain that that is the setting that is causing the slow downs on big projects. Let me know if it doesnt help.

Alan Sharp

Thanks Alan. I tried replying on the website but I’m on vacation until the middle of July and it wasn’t working. I’ll try the suggested methods once I return. It will be interesting to see how the seemingly slow graphics takes shape.

George

Sent from my iPhone