Speeding up X1

[Doug Park]

There are several timings to take note of here.

1) Build model time. This is the time it takes to build the 3D model. It will be slower on the first 3D and faster on subsequent ones.

2) Screen redraw time. This is the time it takes to draw the 3D once it is generated.

3) The entire time from start to finish. This should be very close to the addition of the above 2 times.

We split these out because they vary quite a bit depending on the model.

Also, timings vary greatly between runs depending on what else is happening on your system. I generally will hit F5 3 or 4 times and take the shortest time as that will have the least amount of variation and most accurately reflects the actual system time used. Although, that isn't really what you want as the average time is what you experience in real life. In any case make sure you do the timing multiple times and at the very least throw out the worst time as it is unlikely to be representative.

Also a side note is that on multi-core AMD machines running V10 the timing reflected by status bar is inaccurate due to a bug in the OS. X1 should report the time correctly on all machines. If you ever get a negative time, you know you have an issue.

If you want to measure the build time, take the last one reported before the redraw time. Each floor is reported separately with the last time being the total.

Our vector view benchmarks show mixed results depending on the model. In most cases the build model time is faster in X1 than V10. The redraw time is a mixed bag with some models having a slight edge in X1 over V10 and others being slower.

I encourage accurate benchmarking of a variety of models. If you find one that is significantly out of whack with V10, it would be very useful for us to have that in house so we can determine where the time is being spent.

One thing to be very aware of when you are benchmarking is whether or not you are digging into virtual memory or not. I suspect that in a small percentage of cases some of the very slow redrawing is caused by not having enough memory. The memory use of X1 is more than V10 so it is possible that you need more memory.

There are a lot of factors with the draw time in vector view. One is number of surfaces. Another is number of pattern lines. A simple plan with lot's of pattern lines can take a long time to draw. Tudor is an example of a plan that is pattern heavy.

Low detail turns off patterns as well as providing low detail versions of symbols that makes drawing a lot faster. Sometimes, just turning off patterns can be a big gain.

Most of the time we find that very slow models have highly detailed balusters, moldings, or other symbols. These benefit greatly from dropping into low detail. You can also set up layer sets to turn off things you don't care about in a particular view. This can give you 10X or better performance improvements. Of course this also applies to V10 and earlier as well. By being smart about how you work with your model you can make things much faster.

[Ash]

Doug; I'm working in a fairly big house with custom countertops, I drew a polyline and converted to countertop (circular and chamfers.. etc). I noticed in render view that the build time is huge, over 3 minutes!! when I deleted this counter (in a test copy) the time improved a lot.

[dannystiling]

what are you talking about "double buffer". I couldn't find it under the General tab of Preferences...this is what I'm looking at (in X1, by the way)

Danny

[Bullwhip]

Danny,
Check preferences\appearance tab

[DL Drafting]

Danny,
It's under the "Appearance" category

[Dermot Dempsey]

"I'm working in a fairly big house with custom countertops, I drew a polyline and converted to countertop (circular and chamfers.. etc). I noticed in render view that the build time is huge, over 3 minutes!! when I deleted this counter (in a test copy) the time improved a lot."

This sounds like the type of performance "bottleneck" that we would like to know about to see if we can make it better. It would be great if you could send us a copy of the plan with that counter top in it so we could investigate further.

[Ash]

Dermot; please look at Ticket 1512, it has the plan attached (for another issue), Pls. go to Basement floor at the BAR area. Also, the main floor at the two circular Kitchen counter tops.
Thank you for following up with the performance speed issue.