The problem here is that the problem itself is subjective; "I want to it faster".

One very simple way to make it faster is by turning the layers that he doesn't need off but for some reason your customer doesn't want to do this.

I'd be very interested to hear what other software he thinks he will be able to use that will run "faster" on his machine.

David Snipp
Stardraw.com Ltd

ok, he can`t delete any unused entities because when he`s finished with drawing he exports the file back to Dwg and send it back to the company that sended the original (imported dwg file). But David isn`t a HP XW4400 with 2GB memory an Intel Duo Core 2 Ghz Processor and a ATI  X1950 -  256 DDR3 memory not enough. What kind of specifications do I need then. What can you recommend me/the customer. I`m srry to be a pain in the ***.. i can`t help it the customer needs help..

Thnx

Jordi

There are no limitations built into Stardraw and it can import huge AutoCAD files as shown by your customers example: The file has nearly 600,000 entities such as lines, circles, text etc. etc. on 180 Layers. It imports this file very well and draws them very quickly.

The question is, how can your customer improve the speed at which he works on the drawing?

There really are only 2 possible solutions:

1. Decrease the size of the file by either deleting unused entities or temporarily turn some layers off that he isn't working on.

2. Increase the speed of his machine by getting a faster processor, faster graphics card or more memory.

Stardraw really has been optimized to draw very, very quickly and there is not going to be a major update soon that will make drawing an order of magnitude faster.

To be honest, we have had no-one else report any problems of Stardraw being slow and if he tried loading up his file in any other piece of software, he will experience exactly the same if not much worse problems.

David Snipp
Stardraw.com Ltd

Hi David,

so there are limitations with stardraw and big/imported Autocad files. Isn`t there an other way in stardraw to let work a bit faster without turning the layers off?  I contacted the customer and he isnt`s satisfied with the solution to turn off layers. I think he needs software (other than stardraw) to get the job done, Unless the will be an update that resolves this problem. Can you tell if there will an other sollution soon?

Greetz,

Jordi

We've now had a good lok at the file and, as expected, this was a large AutoCAD file imported into Stardraw.

The file has nearly 600,000 entities such as lines, circles, text etc. etc. on 180 Layers.

Naturally, this is going to take a while to load (about a minute on my machine) and to redraw (2 seconds on my machine). It also only takes about 15 seconds to save the file.

While working on the document, I would strongly recommend turning off the layers that you don't need and this will make redrawing a lot, lot quicker.

Also, as the file is so large, I would change the AutoSave settings as the default is that it will save a copy of the file every 5 minutes and if this takes a while, then this could be very annoying. You can change this from Tools->Preferences->Auto Save...

Hope this helps.

David Snipp
Stardraw.com Ltd

I don't understand why they can't select another application in XP while the first application is busy. This is exactly what XP has been designed to do and it doesn't matter what the application is.

Again, we'll have a look at the file and try to see what is going on.

David Snipp
Stardraw.com Ltd

Hi David,



When the loading of the drawing is in progress he can’t check his mail and when the drawing is loaded and he want to turn on/off some layers settings, like print, report (disable or enable checkboxes in the layer screen), change a name of the layer or create a new layer then the system doesn’t respond, he can’t select outlook or an other application. When I view the task manger process it is 50 % and nothing more. It doesn’t use the other free cpu space?

The system has 2 GB of memory and that would be enough.

I will send a link with the file throught the email.



thnx

Jordi

The loading of a file from disk is a serial, synchronous task and it would be a huge amount of work to get this one task to be multi-threaded for very little gain. The advantage of 2 processors is that while it is loading from disk, your machine can get on and do other things, like checking email, posting to forums etc. etc.

The biggest single thing that will make a difference to the performance of Stardraw opening large files is extra memory. If you are running XP, then you should have more than 512MB RAM. If you are running Vista, then increase this to at least 1GB RAM

If your customer still can't get his file smaller, please feel free to post us a link to the file where we can have a look at it and see if we can figure out where the size is coming from.

David Snipp
Stardraw.com Ltd

David,

ok that’s clear he needs to cleanup the drawing and if I understand it correctly stardraw can only use 1 processor of a dual core processor, correct? but..

Will there be a patch for stardraw so it can also take advance of the second processor?



What if there can’t be cleaned (customer is searching but had no luck deleting anything from the drawing, he needs it all) and the customer still want to get stardraw work faster with that drawing, what can you advice for hardware specs (the best around).



thnx

Jordi

He has probably imported this from a very large AutoCAD drawing.

I suspect that the file has tens of thousands of lines in it that are not really used or important.

He just needs to go through the drawing and remove what he doesn't need.

David Snipp
Stardraw.com Ltd