Trimble Business Center

I have a customer that is using TBC v5.0

he has been complaining that TBC is very slow.

We have read a lot of articles about this on the Trimble forums and have tried all kinds of solutions without any results. The ThinkPad P51 machine specs:

• CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1505M 2,8-3,7GHz quad core
• RAM: 1 x 16GB ECC DDR4 2400MHz SoDimm
• Monitor: 15,6" 4K IPS LED
• Resolution: 3840x2160
• GPU:
  
  • Integrated Intel P530
  • NVIDIA Quadro M2200M 4GB
• Disk 1: 512GB SSD NVMe M.2 2280, OPAL 2.0
• Power: 170W
• OS: Windows 10 Professional 64 Signature ed.

Im no TBC specialist, i'm a computer specialist :-)

and I have been diagnosing the problem:

looking at task manager:

CPU usage is not much

RAM usage is not much

GPU usage 0% ?? what ??

disk usage is not much...

..... so the computer is not even trying or having a hard time when working on TBC... the computer is actually just fine. But TBC is acting like it is trying very hard to make simple tasks.

We have opened same document in version 3.7 and 3.6 and it is much faster... even on older computers.

When I was reading articles where people have no problem with v5.0 they all have intel i7 processors

All articles where i read where TBC has slow performance I see that people are using xeon processor.

......so im thinking : is TBC v5.0 flawed .... or ... does TBC v5.0 not like xeon processors? :-)

we made some tests today:

• we imported txt file with a whole lot of GPS data into TBC v5.0 XEON CPU machine... this took way too long to wait for.
• we imported the same txt file into TBC v3.7 old intel i7 processor... and this was actually much better. The staff member said this is working fine.

so.. does anyone have any insights on this matter?

does anyone here have a XEON processor with TBC v5.0 and everything is working fine ?

should we be looking at intel i7 or i9 processors ?

should we upgrade or downgrade trimble ?

I have a XEON processor, that's not the problem.

Most likely the program is using the integrated graphics processor and not the dedicated one.  You should be seeing usage of the dedicated card.  Refer to your computer / graphics processor documentation to see how to make sure TBC is using it.  Also update your graphics driver to be the current version.

Next check to see if they have enabled "draw all lines as solid" setting.  The default setting changed in some of the prototype project files in the 5.0 release.  There should be minor differences between these versions in terms of speed.

There is a very remote possibility that the processor was not soldered in correctly.  We had one of these come through the office a while back. The entire computer was replaced with the same and problem solved.   

tim

Thank you Tim for a quick response.

Good to hear that someone is using XEON with v5.0 and everything is working good.

I will make some tests with the GPU settings as you suggested and report here with my results.

I heard that if the computer has 2 GPU's , then TBC might not be using the correct GPU.

Some suggest to disable the on board GPU from bios, but that might give us other problems.

I also read with nVidia cards we can enable some settings which give us ability to right click an application and choose "Run application with **this** GPU card"

I will make some tests and report later...

We disabled the onboard GPU. Made no difference.

everything is still very very slow.

this document has 350.000 points.

any other suggestions ?

Archive the project file and send it to me and I will run a benchmark.   Time how long it takes to do a zoom extents and we can compare.

You may have the display of symbols etc on.

tim_mcclannahan@trimble.com

I have sent you a link to my onedrive.

it is a zip file with both the VCE file and also a TXT file with RAW data.

So the problem is that the 350,000 points were imported as survey points.  These types of points have 5k of information attached to them to position them with lat long and grid coordinates, names, feature codes, etc.  The file as I received it takes 6.2 GB of memory to load.

The file also has all of the point display options enabled.  This causes a lot of text to be parametrically displayed.  It may be that the difference you are seeing between versions is that newer version have options to display more of the points properties, hence more is drawn.

You should import them as a surface or a point cloud.  If you rename the .txt file to .yxz then you can drag and drop the file into your project and it will create a point cloud object rather than 350,000 points.  This point cloud will now display instantly.  It takes a long time to delete the original point objects (they are written to disk so you can undo them) so I would start with a new project as you have very little other data.  With the new objects when you display the point properties the points in the point cloud will not display their properties, but your control points will.

Once you have a point cloud it can be used to make a surface.  You will need to set the point cloud related settings in the option command.  This will allow you to control the size of the point cloud used to make a surface.  I would set the max to be 100,000 and clean up the areas not needed before you create the cloud.

Your new project will be very fast to load and display and will have a minimum memory foot print.

You may want to review the following document found on this blog for more tips.

Technical reference Document - Managing Your Data for Speed.doc

Hey Tim, thank you for the response.

unable to click the document you sent :-)

I will review your suggestions with the staff member that works on the computer and report back.

But he tells me that he took the same file to another company that has TBC v3.7 and everything was very fast and perfect there.

he also told me that he had tried this point cloud method and he said it was a little bit faster but when he wanted to show me then everything was very very slow.

so another thing I must mention is : this staff member receives these files from another company.... and continues work from his side. So i'm not sure if your suggestions are gonna work in this case.. But I will review everything tomorrow with this staff member and report.

But I think we are almost to the point where the staff member needs another computer with TBC v3.7 so he can work faster.... which I think is stupid if you ask me :-) but he is very frustrated when he needs to work on TBC.

thank you for the time and help. I will report back tomorrow.

I want to confirm that Tim's suggestions worked for us perfectly.

The staff member followed your suggestions and the project became very fast with minimum memory footprint as promised :-)

Technical reference Document - Managing Your Data for Speed.docx 

I have the same processor and a slightly slower graphics card in a Dell precision 5520.  It's ok but not the current high end.  The slowness is due to displaying so many labels and the type of objects.  I will email a file with just the point cloud.  It displays and moves instantly.  The only way it would appear to display faster in another version, is if the settings are set to not display the labels of the points.

Note that VCE files are essentially not backwardly compatible. 

If you have a large number of points then I would do one of the following 

1) Create a Surface out of the points and then use the Surface to Points macro to convert the point data in the surface into a Point Cloud and reimport it as a Point Cloud (the command does all of this) and then delete all of the points - the Point Cloud is the way to go s it is one object, the points are now in a database not the project and can be handled like a point cloud which is waaaaaay more efficient. Unless you have a very good reason to need all of the points as 3D Points I would go to Point Clouds every time.

2) Depending on where the points came from, if they are a CSV file for example, you can change the extension to .PTS and when you import them the points are read as a point cloud directly. The extensions .XYZ (N,E,Z format) and PTS (P,N,E,Z format) (I think it is N,E and not E,N but would have to check so watch that) are always read as point clouds. If they are not in that format then try using Excel to get them in that format or import to TBC (that will be slow), select in TBC(that will also be slow) and then Export to a PTS file in P,N,E,Z format and then start a new project and reimport them from the PTS file and you will be good to go.

Here is an extract from a Doc you can download (Search Speed in the forum to find the Doc) 

The doc is a good reference for many things that you can do to make TBC faster in all workflows and I would recommend that you take a look at it - I have captured many pointers that will assist you

Alan

Make sure you hided line marking.

That helped in my case. (I have similar configuration and without turning off this option PC is just getting super slow)

Turn all lines to Solid, Use Line Markings only on the Lines that you are

working with (use the Filter Line Markings Command more than the Filter

Line Markings Toggle), and be aware of True Type Text as that slows you

down a lot. Also Points (CAD or Survey Points in large numbers and Point

Labels on large numbers of points will also slow you town.

These are the main things that slow graphics down and all can be managed.

Alan

On Fri, Jan 31, 2020 at 3:54 AM sylwester.kowalski@graham.co.uk <

I too have an issue with TBC 5.0 running slow. I have 2 xenon 5680 processors, 64gb ram, and a radeon VII gpu. What I think should be buttery smooth is very choppy and takes forever when I try to drag multiple lines (blueprints for a building) to where they need to be orientated in Business Center. When I look at the activity monitor it shows that virtually no resources are being used.

Doing the suggested above cured my slowness problem. Thanks!

Edit: I'd like to add that i changed the Graphics Display Driver in the options tab. I changed it from automatic detection to OpenGL2, that made a world of difference in my case.

I have a large point cloud in TBC 5.21. I have been having the same issues when dealing with point cloud data. I have a new (expensive) computer. The CPU is an Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-2125 4Ghz with 128GB of ram. The graphics card is a Nvidia Quadro P2200.  Registering scans and selecting and moving regions is very slow. (It is not down to CAD points line or text settings) I have tried Open GL2 with no luck. The computer does not use much of its power. Can anyone Help.

Thanks

Regards Matt

Since the Xeon doesn't have his own GPU there should only be the Nvidia card available. So it's a long shot, but maybe the mainboard has a weak graphics chip that is falsely being used.

Check the Nvidia control panel

that TBC is actually assigned the Nvidia graphics adapter?

Hi

I need more detail on where in the Nvidia control panel I can find the relevant settings. Hundreds of settings in the control panel.

Thanks

You might after all just have one GPU, since my panel looks like that. As mentioned, was just a long shot idea.

Have a look in the Windows Task Manager how many GPU it shows on the Performance tab.

As you can see in my case it shows 2 GPU, hence I have to tell the system which program shall use the Nvidia GPU.

The TBC release notes actually state that we should disable the integrated GPU in the mainboard BIOS. Due to IT security settings I pretty much can't do anything like that on that computer, but it works with the settings in the Nvidia panel.

(I do on the other hand have problems when trying to run TBC or any other 3D software for that matter in DirectX mode. But that's an Nvidia driver issue. Even the latest drivers will crash to a windows blue screen when using DirectX on the Quadro Card as soon as I zoom or pan.

on the internal GPU both, DirectX and OpenGL work

on the Nvidia only OpenGL2 does works)

Definitely only one GPU.

Matt

Looking at your data - I think this is one for the Geospatial Guys to take

a look at - can you repost your question on the Geospatial Forum. We dont

handle the Scanners on CEC Side today, and this is very much a SX10 TX7

discussion and those guys will be better equipped to support you.

Alan

On Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 4:11 PM matt@mainlandsurveying.co.nz <

How large is Large Matthew? i guess we should start there and work backwards. Are e talking Billions, hundreds of millions or 10s of millions or millions of points in this Large Point Cloud.

Second. What settings do you have in Support - options - Point Clouds? How many points do you show in Max number of points in spatial sampling algorithm? What Rendering memory cache size do you have set in GB as these two settings will control to a large extent the speed of your graphics while in TBC at least. These settings will have zero effect on what gets moved / referenced but will have a big effect on graphics performance if you set them up too high for these processes.

There are of course some computer settings that if set wrong can screw you up, but 9/10 it has nothing to do with Computer Settings and more to do with the data itself or the settings inside TBC.

Typically I would want to take a look at your Project - I would need an Archive Zip of everything so I get all the Point Cloud stuff as you have it set up. Lets take a look at it on a different PC and see if we are seeing what you are seeing and then go from there. If you dont have a Share Drive you can use - I can stand one up for you to drop your files on and I will take a look for you.

Send me a link to alan.sharp@rockpilesolutions.com and I will grab your files and take a look

Alan

Hi Alan

I Have 230 scans a mix of SX10 and X7 full dome scans. I am unsure on how to find the number of points in the job.

Some of the scans are doubled ups as I had holes develop in some of the features (unsure why).

Thanks Matt

Link to data sorry it’s not zipped

There is no link in your post, so I can't say how large your files are but 230 full dome scans sound massive.

According to the X7 spec sheet a full dome on the lowest setting might have already 12 million points. On the highest setting it might be around 100 million points for 1 single scan. The SX10 full dome is also about 10 million points.

With 230 scans we are probably talking about billions of points.

1 million points are about 30-40 Mbyte in RAM, 1 billion might be about 30-40 Gbyte.

Where have you temporarily stored your project, on the internal SSD or a network drive?

Does the Windows Task Manager show heavy load on any component while you are doing your manipulations, hard drive or network, low RAM?

Hi yes this project is very big, The TBC files are around 60 Gbyte. So over a billion.

The data is not on the network it is on the SSD

I think i have had a small breakthrough i have changed some settings in the Nvidia Control Panel

Under Manage GPU Utilization - Dedicate to graphics tasks and other stuff and it is using more ram up to 45% its still very slow.

Did a restart of computer and it has reverted back to not using much power at all.

Your CPU is running at 12 %. Your Xeon has 4 cores running 8 threads. That means that at least one thread is running 100 %. I've seen that before in TBC. Especially on import but also using the project cleanup that only one thread is utilized. My CPU has 16 threads, so even if one is at 100 % I only see 6-7 % utilization in total.

There are operations that can hardly be multithreaded because they depend on the result of another computation. Not sure how the functions you are using are actually programmed and if they could be multithreaded.

But you also might want to do as Alan already suggested and create another post in the Geospatial forum and refer to here. They might have more ideas or even debugging tools to see what is going on with your data set.